Below is a reply to the comments on my last post..I did not have enough motivation to waste time on that stupid comment box that requires html scripting for formatting...and you can not even put pure html there...I am continuing this word war because i am somewhat tired of me shutting up after just one or two sentences from people who dont beleive me and start arguing ...so this one time i have decided to continue it..Much of the text that follows might not be interest of you..You can simply read the last four paras..as before that ..its a conversation that goes on between me and Raza ....and i guess only he will be able to have the motivation to understand and read all the thing... To get his comments on what i say, do check the comments section later..
Legend:
Blue text is my earlier writing..that i wrote in a comment as response to a comment .
Green text is Raza's reply to that blue writing..
Normal is my present writing which is a response to Raza's green text..
CONVERSTAION WITH RAZA
Ok..lets go through it again:
I still have no interest in the scientific method..why because it is NOT something that you talked about earlier.. you used the word research ..but then you looked on the definition on it and didn’t find any thing objecting Emoto.. then you looked at this link of scientific method (given on the wiki of ‘Research’ ) and then you are using the word ‘scientific method’ to help you to the rescue.. I am sure that you know it more than I do that staying on one word is important in a discussion cause going into the meaning of each and every word makes things out of focus…that why I am still hooking to the word research.. so in the next reply which you will definitely provide. .i don’t want to talk about scientific method cause I don’t think that its helping me.. but if you really think it IS that important ..i am talking about it in the para below when you yourself provided a copy paste from it..
I gave you the criteria for scientific method, which includes peer review. It was paraphrased, here it is again in case you missed it:
Another basic expectation is that of making complete documentation of data and methodology available for careful scrutiny by other scientists and researchers, thereby allowing other researchers opportunity to verify results as well as to establish statistical measures of reliability.
And IN YOUR FACE ...let me tell you that there have been many papers that appeared in scientific journals without any peer review...FAMOUS EXAMPLES:
1. Publication of Watson and Crick's 1951 paper on the structure of DNA in Nature.
2. Abdus Salam's paper "Weak and electromagnetic interactions". Salam even got the Nobel prize for it in 1979. and ou
You ask me why I give such importance to Wiki, for one you quoted it when you posted on Silva so I assumed its a resource you trust, for another although everyone can edit Wikis, Wiki is "open source". Anyone can raise objections and contest material, thereby if there are differing opinions on a matter they are often contested. If you find anything misleading here, you can do the same.
Raza!! We were not talking about MY CRITERIA to understand thing…It should be YOUR CRITERIA all the time… You already have so many objections on my sources and the things that I think are trustworthy….. and btw MOST of the spiritual stuff that I have learnt is from wikipedia.. does it mean that you believe in that all too?? Aint this strange that I guy who believes in research still follows a site which can be objected by anyone and which can be edited by anyone who may or may not be applying the so called scientific methods in editing the wiki. It is even objected by the wiki writers... read...
So how many people do you know who edit wikis using ‘Scientific method’ and how many people in the world are all dedicated to the holy cause of keeping wikipedia correct . You have assumed that all the people in the world have an all time internet connection along with ample of time & motivation to check the wikis of their interest. On the Internet, it's impossible to actually confirm people's identity in the first place, short of getting credit-card information. On any site it's very easy to come up with a fake identity..
WRONG!! Lets see how..there are two objections
not repeatable
double blind
REPEATABLE:
Emoto's experiements are repeateable...Not only that the whole process has been described on the same wiki from where you learnt all the things against him (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaru_Emoto) but also on NBC's website where they even tell you to experiment it yourself.. They the NBC guys call him a researcher btw...
(http://www.nbc10.com/news/5455548/detail.html)
http://www.nbc10.com/news/5476558/detail.html)
When I say repeatable it is in context of technically complete specifications, which is not the case.
A group of students in
NO RAZA.. you are wrong again…. they were able to do it … READ IT AGAIN..its here…It was done by Advanced Placement Psychology class at Durango High School in Durango, Colorado ..They did the whole experiment using ALL the technical parameters defined by Emoto .These technical specifications are written on the Emoto’s wiki and the class itself has defined it in their procedures as well.. … The students were ABLE to do the experiment .. and there results were in conformance .. Read below as I answer
Emoto approaches the issue of objectivity from a radically different perspective: Since each person's state of mind will affect the water, and since much of the experiment is based on the "consciousness of wanting to find that beauty," then a person with a neutral or disinterested perspective might not find the crystals at all, he said.
so are you getting it..the water gets effected differently by the thoughts of different people..so you can not go for the blind test.. Blind test can be used only at the places where the state of changing a person mind wont effect the result..Here , the results WILL be effected..and thats the basic essence of the whole research...the way you presented this thing was as if Emoto was denying any offer of the peer review and was hiding his findings...he, instead, has described his method so clearly that even you yourself can do them to check their authenticity..What else do you want..
First off he hasnt presented his methods in a way that I can do it, or even you can. I've cited you a link where a group of students tried to replicate his results and couldnt simply because there wasnt enough information, and what he did give did NOT give any fancy results.
AGAIN.. YOU ARE WRONG .. The students were able to do it.. citing something and presenting it in a wrong manner wont make your argument true…READ THE WHOLE THING AGAIN.. READ IT here..…Since you have WRONGLY repeated the thing so many time..now I will give the true picture by writing the conculsion that they (the colarado people) had ..It follows
So you see it.. They were able to find the same type of crystals on the same type of message “I despise you”….and although they did not have very very supportive result..they still accept that they do NOT have sufficient evidence to refute or accept the guy…They have concluded that FURTHER RESEARCH should be done.. FURTHER RESEARCH right??? So the experiment did provide them enough curiosity cause they did find something there..Conclusion: We did not find sufficient evidence to refute or accept Emoto’s hypothesis that thought influences water crystal formation. We noticed one interesting similarity between two separate groups of water samples: Similar crystals formed on the same message, “I despise you,” in two types of water. But, for the most part, the crystal formations in each water sample resembled each other, regardless of the messages attached to them. We concluded that in order to make a significant finding, further research would have to be done. So, for now, we will have to live with our curiosity and continue to wonder if our thoughts have the power to influence water and ultimately ourselves.
AND RAZA…here I wonder again.. A researcher who proves his point by giving theories from wikipeida and examples from some Psychology class at a High School . Are they really so credible for you.. Is that YOUR criteria ??? this clearly means that YOU CAN NOT target my criterias when your own criterias are not worth trusting.. Wikipedia and other internet search results should not be a criteria for a proper researcher at least.. and if it so then whats the difference between a normal person and a researcher..
HE never says that you only find the crystals when you want to find them. He says that he hired photographers based on their…..(cited by wiki)
aesthetic sense and character is the important aspect when taking crystal photographs. Therefore, I try to make sure that they can take photographs in a relaxed and positive atmosphere.
…. (citation ends)
SO this is how and why he selects people.. and off course that’s what he should do…why? Because not every person has a properly developed aesthetic sense. Not every person is able to find beauty. You can go on and read this thing in Psychology if you don’t trust me.. and secondly he wants to provide a proper environment in which people wont be fighting on the definition of beauty…
What Emoto is essentially saying is that you consciously look for crystals that support your hypothesis. Either that, or I misunderstand you.
Well..from the thing that I read I don’t think that’s what he is saying..Try to read it with an unbiased mind…
At any rate, theres nothing stopping people from using all their mind power when they're creating the crystals. However if they start using their mind power when photographing the crystals, then you basically are never going to be wrong :).
Well.. the way I understand it…is that the thought projection thing (that you have named mind power above) is done before taking the photograph… i.e the step 2 on the wikipedia …photography is the step 6 in the procedure defined on wikipedia..
Since he says its language independent, he could follow blinding by cursing in one language and hiring the photographer of a different origin who is unaware of what to look for.
Yes ..He has exposed water to different languages and has come up with the same results… Hiring a photographer of a different origin is not important at all…cause that is the step 6… but offcourse this is yet again a very trivial thing which you can use to build another argument only because there is no information on whether he actually tried hiring a photographer or not.. though you yourself know that people on other places (colarado) have done these things… yet again you will come up with something about which there is no information wether it was done or not..just to create confusion…
I didn’t get this sentence.. Paraphrasing may help… The thing that I understand is that your probably mean that you can get what you want from it..the same way ..you and I google on the net and always find opposite point of views on the same things…some time from the same source…some time from same experiment results…especially the Colorado one…which you yourself asked me to READ AGAIN…thinking that I had not read it..and then I have given the whole conclusion here telling that the experiment was infact concluding in the favour of more research.. Citing it went against your points..
And it is true that Emoto has not published in peer review, nor are his methods repeatable (I once again urge you to read the report of the psychology class that tried to redo his experiments).
YES RAZA.. I have read the report of the psychology class..and I don’t urge you to read that..i simply ask you to scroll up and see their conclusion from up there..that I have simply copied and pasted from their website… I am really amazed a psychology class in colarado is all that you are referring again and again.. Hmmm.. a very nice example by a person who claims to look into SCIENTIFIC Methods when proving something…It shows your level.. and you blame that I am the one who believes in things quickly.
By the way, the *Photo Essay* he has out is in the American Journal of Alternative Medicine. So it is clearly not a case of him not having access to scientific journals or anything like that. He merely, for some reason, does not put his research out in a scientific way.
What else?? Oh!! read comments on him at http://66.201.42.16/viewitem.php3?id=511&catid=510&kbid=ionsikc where a woman who is M.D., Ph.D. , Founding President, of American Holistic Medical Association talks about Emoto..
I didnt give my links any credibility just because they were written by Phds. Nor because any TV station called someone a researcher, because I am a "researcher" and that doesnt really mean anything.
Oh..you never gave any credibility at all..though you should have if you are a researcher.It was only me attempting to give some credibility by citing a PHD…all that you ever cited was the wiki searc results…oh how very credible…All wikis are written by PHDs right (sarcastic…cause they are not written by PHDs..They are written by people whose identities can not be verified..)
Masuro emoto ofcourse could be called a researcher. He is after all a Phd, even if thats from the Open University of Alternative Medicine in
Earlier you said in an earlier comment ..the 2nd one in the comments on the post…that he has not done any research.. Read the last line of your comment ..….Now you are saying that he can be called a researcher….Does it prove something..?? You yourself are saying conflicting things…
You havent *proven* anything. Nor have I *proven* anything. Lets not claim results we havent got. Neither of us is Masuru Emoto :D
Oh yeah…and I didn’t prove that you said conflicting things up there....and here again you are blaming Emoto of saying things without a research.. False claims Raza!!.. you are not coming up with anthing solid ..you are just repeating the sentence to make the false look true..
Talking about existance of no research...and then denying an example ...and then keep reading it about from other websites to prove it wrong....when the problem is not the research ...but in my ability to believe those things quickly which you do not...you have been targeting the wrong thing Raza from the very start.
Well this has been an encouraging exercise for me because I've gotten you to read about him, even if that has been from the section of Wikipedia that was sympathetic to him :D.
Wikipedia was sympathetic to him.. really??…Oh you can always raise objections on this article then as wikis are supposed to be neutral…and you claimed earlier in your comments that anybody can do that…Lets see who has too much spare time to go and correct all the wrong things on the wikipedia…Lets see who edits Dr. Emotos wiki now to make it appear neutral..After all , as you claim ,its an open source thing which according to your logic makes it credible and true.
The last time we talked, you gave me an example of the "science" of your stuff, do you remember? That they have captured the katra or whatever with some magnetic resonance stuff. And I dismissed that and said tahts not science. And we had a whole discussion on what science is then, and I told you that the body of knowledge that is accepted in universities and scientists is science (becuase science is a function of what we know).
Do you remember that debate? We ended on whether science is the same as knowledge.
So clearly, my saying that there is no research on this was in context of scientific research. I have shown you how this isnt research, the guy hasnt put out a scientific publication and that he doesnt shield his results from bias (the requirement again is that you dont need to be unbiased when cursing/being nice to the water crystals, but be unbiased when filming it).
WRONG…you have to be biased before taking the picture…REPEATING again…just because you want it to appear it true.. oh..you say (you repeat) that it is not a research as the guy has not come up with any scientific publication…but how is it that you call yourself a researcher when you too have not got any scientific publication against the Water crystals… Let me repeat to make the true thing appear true…that Emoto doesn’t say that you need to be biased when filming the crystal.. you do it before that….
If you think the Randi stuff is non-credible then I'll drop that argument. Anything that either one of us doesnt trust becomes a red herring.
Oh.. Wow…you are trying to show that all the other things that you cited were extremely credible….
so let me be clear..i have been into paranormal stuff and though i have not been able to come up with earthshaking results , i have had enough experinces/reading that make me understand a few phenomenons... uff!!
The way it will work out Sameer (and you can put this upto my being in tune with the cosmic energy of your future) is that you will realise that these things do not bring any appreciable value to your life, eventually, and will discover how people can take advantage of your genuine longing for spirituality in order to fulfill their own very material need for money. However, you will do that only when you've paid a very hefty physical and career price for it.
From various parts of our conversations I've come to see that you want to lose weight but you dont because a lot of your time is spent in this stuff. You want to be progressing career wise but dont because you spend your time and money on this.
From previous parts of our conversations , you consider that fatness is the most important thing in my life …I assure you it is not…There is something else (it is out of scope of this discussion..but what the hell..you are already going out of discussion by leaving Emoto and all of a sudden pointing on me.) .. so I tell you that the reason I have fatness is that I never gave it the top priority..There are other things in my life which I do consider more important..and if you trust my conversation with other people, then let me tell you that I once told my Guru (prof Moiz) that I am not losing weight cause I realize that I do not consider it very important…He answered me that I should apply some techniques to make it appear as the most important thing.. though , he added, that if you are happy with it , live with it…I also know a guy who has achieved a very high spiritual status but is double the size of me… slimness is not at all as important for him…I agree that there are health risks involved with fatness…I am not saying that one should remain fat…its just that it at the moment does not appear as my top priority.. A fat guy who is happy with his life is a million times better than a slim , smart ,handsome and **** guy who is not happy..
There is a time when one needs to look around and evaluate what is holding him back in life, and drop it like it never existed. Tell me this, do either me or Bodi still prefer games over advancement in life?
I don’t know about what you guys prefer…let me just make claims on me ..I do give preference to advancement in life… …. Offcourse you saying this because you have different parameters to define “Advancement in life”…Your idea of having advancement in life might be getting lot of money , enjoying a very good designation etc. etc.. For me the idea is to BE HAPPY with whatever you have.... i want to remain happy even without having much.. (Reminds me of a one liner by bodi….I am happy and I must remain happy)...Its not that i am deliberately trying to be prefer spiritual thing on life..its just that i am prioriting things that are important to make me happy... I dont believe that a good career can keep me happy all my life..
What kind of spirituality inhibits a person's personal life? What is the difference between your tablighi jamaats gasht and making you lose ICI mails and these tapes and meditations and 15000 rupee conferences?
What kind of spirituality is so corporate, so manufactured, so marketed, so prepackaged into nice little consumer boxes?
These are just derogatory remarks.so I am ignoring them.. But I know about research organization that ask for MONEY …They ask for money to get registered WHY????.. ..Knowledge has become commercial..Its not the problem of spiritual knowledge only..Its the knowledge of everything…Be it spiritual ...be it technical papers...
You are supposed to be a free man, free from anything that enslaves you. IF you have control over this, IF you can give this up and focus on other things in your life that absolutely need your focus, and IF this is not hampering your career and health, I would have no objection to it, nor would I write so much.
Yeah.. a guy who is so materialist that he considers CAREER and MONEY the most important things in life is asking me to be a free man… Let me be clear the real important problem of my life (description is out of scope .it has been shared with only few people) can not be solved by a good career and money.. and..errr…Just to give you an example…how can you ever make a person’s idea about God’s existence by giving him lots of money and good career..Can you?? (Clarification: God’s existence is not my real big problem)
As far as my health is concerned , my office job is whats making me fat..
But I dont see it that way. I see you held hostage to this. And I dont think one has an indefinite time in life.
And how do I consider it as any help..when you don’t tell me a way out ….. just telling me that you don’t like something wont be of much help to me…I understand that there is no indefinite time in life…so what is your idea about it..should I devote myself completely to money and career advancement….or should I enjoy my life by learning thing I want to learn…and by remaining happy with whatever I already have.. ..
If you want to talk more about me..we can...and we should as it helps me more than it helps you..but I just want to stay on the current thing..the Dr. Emoto thing…the last few things can be discussed…We can talk about it but for now I prefer to stay closer to the main topic of discussion…
THE LAST FOUR PARAs..
Our discussion started on your objection : I cite it
I disagree with you on key aspects though, foremost that you are too easy a believer, and thereby you undermine your own quest by taking whichever spiritual door shown to you without really questioning anything.
You blame that its me who believes things too easily.. In this course of discussion I have seen you believing in thing that you already wanted to believe…I have always been a skeptic to all my spiritual things myself.. and I look at it in a neutral manner…and I like to discuss it in a neutral manner. ..you seem to have a belief that these things are false.. you are not seeing these things neutrally.. All the objection that you had on Emoto’s experiment was that he had not done any peer reviews…something which by its definition is just expected and not required..that Abdul Salam thing turned out to the rescue ... My god, people are getting noble prizes without peer reviews...something that you hold so dear..
I usually try to have my own experiences and my own opinions…I don’t want to waste my life on copying and pasting…so I go out to have my own interaction with of all the things that I want to learn.. and I guess that’s what a research is.. If at any time later, I decide that all these things are wrong (though at present I don’t feel like it as I am currently successes after a lapse of so many years) I will still have the satisfaction that it was ME who proved it to me....not a copy and paste of somebody’s else writing…and I guess that’s what makes me a researcher..
15 comments:
sameeeeeeeeeeeeeeer...have mercy on us puhleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez..i feel like yelling seeing the length of the post...write its summary for poor readers like me..balkay no plssss plsss dnt write any summary we dont need to read another word on it....Peace Peace Peace :'(
yes, plllllllleeeeeeaaaaaasssssseeeeee
if only it were shorter, i wouldve read it. dont have the energy for it
I just hope that you dont try to find in silva what you were trying to find in religion once.
how about you write a blog in which you tell us what you are planning to do in the next 5 years of your life. I am more interested in finding that out
just read this.
sameer, If you want to continue this discussion let me know. Clearly your getting combative and unduly aggressive, and I always back off when someone is that way, because its really not worth it. perhaps i spurred you to it, in which case im sorry. but if this is getting to you, I dont want it.
IF you want me to answer this without things gettnig more argumentative, drop me a line. Otherwise ill let you have the last word.
KH.
Raza!! Did you really read all that??? kitna jazba hay..cause i myself can read this length...
I am not getting angry on you.. all that i dont understand is why you stress too much importance on trivial things ..i mean..peer review was not important at all..people are getting noble prize without it.. but still..if you want to continue..please read this post again ( tortutre!! isnt it :) ) so that you may have an idea of how i want to understand things..
btw the length of these things is really effecting my work here...we can have some special sessions on weekends...not on weekdays..
i only read enough to see the tone of things. i will read properly and inshallah reply soon.
you cite two thesis as non peer reviewed work that was accepted in the community. While I give you the answer to this, let me first ask you to give the source of this claim. Where did you read this? (yes Im leading to something :[ )
Let me read the rest of your post and get back to you.
As for taking it on weekends, sure, Im actually having a long weekend in Karachi (long long weekend) so its ok for me.
I dont have access to fancy html so Im just going to do bold and not bold to differentiate.
Also Im half done with the reply, I have to get going Im in a net cafe, will write the rest tomorrow or later tonight.
I still have no interest in the scientific method..why because it is NOT something that you talked about earlier..
If you intend on splitting hairs, fine, IF I specifically said research and did not make it clear that I meant it in the scientific context then fine, you were right. However, you would then be focusing on words and not meaning. At most Im wrong in unintentionally fudging up research and research acceptable in a scientific community, according to the scientific method. However, Im not the only one, see over here you say...
Aint this strange that I guy who believes in research still follows a site which can be objected by anyone
So how many people do you know who edit wikis using ‘Scientific method’
Instead of focusing on minutiae and relying on our very unreliable collective memories, can you take me at my word and believe I mean research acceptable to a scientific community (with the context that a a lot of "research" is pseudoscientific garbage). Given that you gave me the example of your katra machine and I said thats a fraud, obviously I was holding "research" upto some standards.
So let me rephrase. There is NO scientific research as yet that gives ANY credibility to ANY of what is my opinion scams in the domain of new age spirituality, specifically: maharishi, katras, scientology, emoto, water crystals, mr silva, neuro linguistic programming etc etc. What *might* exist would be genuine scientific work, such as by Freud and others, that may have been selectively incorporated by movements such as Silva and NLP, that may or may not still be scientifically outdated.
you used the word research ..but then you looked on the definition on it and didn’t find any thing objecting Emoto.. then you looked at this link of scientific method (given on the wiki of ‘Research’ ) and then you are using the word ‘scientific method’ to help you to the rescue..
You assume far too much. I did no such thing, the way I googled it was to look for Emoto then follow the wiki links that occur in the text (Emoto->double blind->science->scientific method). Might have been a different starting point than Emoto, maybe pseudoscience.
I am sure that you know it more than I do that staying on one word is important in a discussion cause going into the meaning of each and every word makes things out of focus…that why I am still hooking to the word research.. so in the next reply which you will definitely provide. .i don’t want to talk about scientific method cause I don’t think that its helping me.. but if you really think it IS that important ..i am talking about it in the para below when you yourself provided a copy paste from it..
No you should talk about every word thats in the text, because the author obviously wrote the definition in a specific way, that included the term "scientific method". then we're either supposed to know what scientific method is or refer to that definition.
Lets just say that Im interested in "research according to scientific methods", and not unscientific research :).
The writing itself says that this requirement is mainly an expectation..and not a requirement..
Im not sure what differentiation you want to draw between expectations and requirements. Can you clarify?
Btw do you know that there is criticism on the "peer review thing'.. mainly because it is slow (taking many years sometimes) and because it makes the ability to publish susceptible to control by elites and to personal jealousy.
Source? That is completely, absolutely untrue by the way. Almost all peer reviewed conferences I have ever seen in my life have reviewing times in the order of 2-3 months. As for susceptibility to control by elites, I would again ask you to provide the source. I have 6 peer reviewed publications in 2 years, and I never had any problem with Elitism. Unless you show me a specific instance of this, or give me a credible source, I just dont buy this argument.
And IN YOUR FACE ...let me tell you that there have been many papers that appeared in scientific journals without any peer review...FAMOUS EXAMPLES:
1. Publication of Watson and Crick's 1951 paper on the structure of DNA in Nature.
2. Abdus Salam's paper "Weak and electromagnetic interactions". Salam even got the Nobel prize for it in 1979. and ou
Once again, source? Im guessing you read this on a website that was trying to show that peer review is not important, I'd like to know what that is. Citing some source is better than citing none, so I atleast know whether I should trust the information you have.
Raza...i have got a very beautiful thing to tell you..but will write you after you give the FULL reply...
and haan! read the peer review thing on wiki..the same thing that had been defining everything in our discussion...
Read "Famous papers which were not peer-reviewed" on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review
Researchers???... indeed... :)
Part 2:
I'll continue from where I left off. I'll only discuss the peer review point, then go jogging then do the next paragraph tomorrow. That way you'll have a whole lot to reply to on the weekend :D
Your reference on peer review was certainly quite interesting, and while I agree with a lot of what the author says, I disagree with your conclusions from it. I'll explain how.
Science is perpetually in evolution, and peer review is by no means the finished work. However, while peer review has flaws (and typically not to the extent mentioned in the article) it is the current "universal" scientific standard, according to the article you cite. And none of the alternatives suggested in the wiki article, "dynamic peer review", "preprints" etc seek to completely do away the necessary funciton Peer Review tries to perform (even if imperfectly), that is to share scientific knowledge with a scientific community in a systematic way. They merely wish to do it [b]better[/b]. This does not mean that while we have nothing better accepted within a scientific community, the existing standards are moot.
To give you an example, suppose a FYP groups in GIKI were campaigning for reforming the format and procedures of writing a thesis. Some suggest single ruled paper, others say that isnt nearly enough material. Some say the references should be written this way, others say that isnt the international standard. Some would wish that the Professors appointed TAs to help with the layout, otheres think they'll interfere. Would someone then be justified in saying that Im not going to publish a thesis because look how they fight about it, you should just be content with my poster presentation and my tie?
Peer review performs a certain function, and the idea is to solve imperfections and hurdles the current solution has, not to dismiss the function as unncessary.
You say that Abdus Salam's nobel prize winning work did not appear in peer review, can you tell me if it didnt appear in peer review after that? He is a prolific writer and has published 250 papers in scientific journals (wikipedia:Abdus Salam). I have been a reviewer in conferences Sameer, and also been a fledgling career researcher. The way it works is you have categories of publications, which determines their prestige and competetiveness:
A. There are Magazines/Workshops/Non Peer Reviewed publications. These have very high acceptance rates. 90 percent. Virtually everyone gets accepted here. You can send any BS you want about anything, and it will get accepted. Any reviewing if it happens here is very cursory and very pointless. They talk about that in the article (the quote ""There seems to be no study too fragmented, no hypothesis too trivial, no literature too biased or too egotistical, no design too warped, no methodology too bungled, no presentation of results too inaccurate, too obscure, and too contradictory, no analysis too self-serving, no argument too circular, no conclusions too trifling or too unjustified, and no grammar and syntax too offensive for a paper to end up in print." is about that). These are not high prestige, papers range in the order of 4 pages and only people within that sub-sub-sub field (workshops are on very specific things) care about it.
B. There are conference papers. These are much more prestigious, publishing here you have 25 percent acceptance rates, material has to be new and has to add value to the scientific community and there is much more rigorous peer reviewing. Reviewing deadlines here range in the order of 3-4 months, and it counts a lot to have a conference paper.
C. Certain Journals/Magazines that are peer review and run by an advisory board, that selects different people from different fields who have made good showing in recent conferences (or have good contacts) and invite them to publish in full length journal papers. These can be mini thesis, upto say 30-45 pages, and are expected to be thorough. It is very hard to get a journal paper, and there you do have issues of elitism and otherwise.
It is possible that Salam's paper was published (and it was a scientific paper (which is still better than a non-technical photo essay)) in a catergory A paper and was immediately heralded as groundbreaking. I read that he made the discovery in 1978 and won shortly thereafter, so its extremely plausible that he merely hadnt had a chance to publish the paper in peer review, or the paper was submitted and being reviewed. Given that he published 250 odd papers, mostly in elite circles, it is highly unlikely that his work was never peer reviewed.
There are problems with Peer Review, but they all cannot occur at once. If the objection is that it takes too long to publish (in "years", which I strongly suspect to be outdated info, since all conferences I've ever seen have reviewing time in months) then the objection that there are too many publications and everyone is publishing everything they way doesnt hold. This implies that these problems occur in different settings, a certain journal may have a problem with elitism, fine, publish in another journal, apparently theres lots of them. If certain journals have lower standards, then fine, publish in one with better standards.
To dismiss the standard scientific method entirely, on your own and to offer no other way of sharing precise technical specifications (i'll come to the technical incompleteness that you missed in the school report) with the scientific community is necessarily going to mean that your work will never be given any credence in the scientific community. And the fact that we can cite no scientist in six years who attempted to replicate Emoto's results and have to make do with discussing a high school report, illustrates how little his pseudoscience is accepted by chemists and biologists and crystallogists around the world.
And God said,"Let there be time ... so that ppl can waste it!"
Part 3
Raza!! We were not talking about MY CRITERIA to understand thing…It should be YOUR CRITERIA all the time… You already have so many objections on my sources and the things that I think are trustworthy….. and btw MOST of the spiritual stuff that I have learnt is from wikipedia.. does it mean that you believe in that all too??
As far as I know, we've only ever talked about three things. Silva, Emoto and NLP, correct me if Im wrong. I know you read OBE waghaira but I dont know anything about that, nor have I read anything about it, on or off Wiki. The Wiki on Silva is very cursory, and seems to be restricted to statings its history and concept without going into scientific correctness. if you take MOST of your information from there, then we have the same information, and probably the same beliefs about the truth of that information. Emoto, again, we have the same information, though different beliefs. And NLP, I dont think you got your information from there, otherwise you would know it has been discredited in scientific and government circles :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming#Criticism
Read that completely, atleast NLP should be discredited scientifically in your mind then, including the left and right brain ideas, (not that you should only use either left or right brain, but that the left and right brains function the way Silva/NLP think based on outdated neurological science from decades back when they were developed)
Aint this strange that I guy who believes in research still follows a site which can be objected by anyone and which can be edited by anyone who may or may not be applying the so called scientific methods in editing the wiki. It is even objected by the wiki writers... read...
So how many people do you know who edit wikis using ‘Scientific method’ and how many people in the world are all dedicated to the holy cause of keeping wikipedia correct . You have assumed that all the people in the world have an all time internet connection along with ample of time & motivation to check the wikis of their interest. On the Internet, it's impossible to actually confirm people's identity in the first place, short of getting credit-card information. On any site it's very easy to come up with a fake identity..
AND RAZA…here I wonder again.. A researcher who proves his point by giving theories from wikipeida and examples from some Psychology class at a High School . Are they really so credible for you.. Is that YOUR criteria ??? this clearly means that YOU CAN NOT target my criterias when your own criterias are not worth trusting.. Wikipedia and other internet search results should not be a criteria for a proper researcher at least.. and if it so then whats the difference between a normal person and a researcher..
Okay, so Im not sure what your saying here. Lets focus on you first. You say that Wiki is untrustworthy etc because of the anonymity and openness, do you trust it yourself? You seem to do so, given that you say you took MOST of your information from wiki, and you also give the Peer Review reference from Wiki. So I'll assume that inspite of the weaknesses you cite, you still trust it as a reference.
Now I'll tell you why I have been citing wiki. Wikipedia is open, communal and moreso independent. The openness means that everyone who has the internet and half a brain can contribute his ideas to a concept. Which also means that concepts that attract more people will have more contributers. The community aspect in philosophy and often in theory means that contributers who care enough about the Wiki project to contribute to it feel a sense of ownership to it, and people will in philosophy try to enforce standards they see in the rest of the encyclopedia i.e. offering different perspectives, citing references, ensuring grammar and structure is correct. The independence factor is the most important, because it means that the encyclopedia is not institutionally tied to any specific goal which would automatically invalidate it. For example, I would never trust the Center for Promotion of Coca Cola in Pakistan to write an unbiased article on Coca Cola's health benefits.
While these factors dont mean that Wiki is perfect, it does make it a reliable starting point for a discussion. I will read a Wiki, go through its references, and figure out for myself if it is biased or not. If the author has tried to adhere to the Philosophy of the encyclopedia then I will use it as a reference within a discussion with my friends. If I were a researcher publishing a paper or presenting my views in a scientific community, I would probably not cite Wiki as a reference. However I would have no qualms in using references a wiki article cites, if those references themselves seem genuine.
Bias can exist in absolutely every information source in the world, and the skeptic would evaluate the information for bias and try to atleast check the existance of references before accepting it. That is the way I like my research papers, and that is the way I like my wikies. You assume too much if you think I automatically accept all wiki as true.
By the way, do you find the wiki article on Emoto biased? What part specifically would you say is incorrect, and on what basis? You may call the references it cites biased or unbiased, but the article classifies them as sympathetic, critical and neutral.
Oh..you never gave any credibility at all..though you should have if you are a researcher.It was only me attempting to give some credibility by citing a PHD…all that you ever cited was the wiki searc results…oh how very credible…All wikis are written by PHDs right (sarcastic…cause they are not written by PHDs..They are written by people whose identities can not be verified..)
Your mistaken if I didnt give you personally any credibility. This discussion wouldnt be so long if we didnt give some credibility to each other. However, a Phd. IMHO is not license to make things up, and sell pseudoscience as science. I would not automatically give credibility to even an MIT phd without evaluating what hes saying, let alone an international relations major with a phd that has a duration of 1 year from the Open International University for Alternative Medicine of India ( http://www.altmeduniversity.net/courses3.htm ). The standards seem worse than the standards of Allama Iqbal Open University, and Im not exagerrating at all, look at it..
You had more research experience (1 year) than this guy when you were in GIKI.
Wikipedia was sympathetic to him.. really??…Oh you can always raise objections on this article then as wikis are supposed to be neutral…and you claimed earlier in your comments that anybody can do that…Lets see who has too much spare time to go and correct all the wrong things on the wikipedia…Lets see who edits Dr. Emotos wiki now to make it appear neutral..After all , as you claim ,its an open source thing which according to your logic makes it credible and true.
No it doesnt make it automatically credible or true. When I cited wikipedia, and everyplace I cited it, I evaluated the content for bias. Had you objected to any of it as biased anywhere based on the fact that anyone can write it, I would have accepted your argument. If there is lack of neutrality in anything I've posted, then I havent seen it so far.
And I didnt mean Wikipedia is sympathetic to him. If it were sympethetic or if it were overly dismissive (without references) instead of merely writing down the concept and the controversy around it (which you can confirm independently of wiki) I wouldnt have cited it. When I said sites sympathetic to him I was assuming that your information is coming from the "sites sympathetic to Emoto" portion in the article, where you have the NBC page and other such stuff. But anyway, your right to object to me assuming where your posting from, but I've had to ask you to give references, which doesnt help.
NO RAZA.. you are wrong again…. they were able to do it … READ IT AGAIN..its here…It was done by Advanced Placement Psychology class at Durango High School in Durango, Colorado ..They did the whole experiment using ALL the technical parameters defined by Emoto .These technical specifications are written on the Emoto’s wiki and the class itself has defined it in their procedures as well.. … The students were ABLE to do the experiment .. and there results were in conformance .. Read below as I answer
AGAIN.. YOU ARE WRONG .. The students were able to do it.. citing something and presenting it in a wrong manner wont make your argument true…READ THE WHOLE THING AGAIN.. READ IT here..…Since you have WRONGLY repeated the thing so many time..now I will give the true picture by writing the conculsion that they (the colarado people) had ..It follows
So you see it.. They were able to find the same type of crystals on the same type of message “I despise you”….and although they did not have very very supportive result..they still accept that they do NOT have sufficient evidence to refute or accept the guy…They have concluded that FURTHER RESEARCH should be done.. FURTHER RESEARCH right??? So the experiment did provide them enough curiosity cause they did find something there..
To quote the report:
Dr. Emoto’s experiment appears to have overlooked certain variables, and some of his conclusions may be based on assumptions that are not necessarily true. For example, Dr. Emoto failed to realize that there are hundreds of crystals in one drop of water, and through “experimenter bias” he may have subconsciously noticed certain crystals while disregarding others because of the suggestion of a certain message. In other words, he could have looked through thousands of crystals to find a beautiful one if he knew the message was a positive one, and – consciously or unconsciously – he could have looked for an ugly crystal if he knew the message was a negative one. Raza: What do you look for? What is the criterion for selecting photographers, Emoto selected people with "aesthetic sense". What is that supposed to mean, do I have aesthetic sense? Would I be able to find the same crystals, or am I too tasteless? " character " is another thing you cite him as needing in the photographer, what is that supposed to mean? Character on what scale, what ethical dimensions, what religious dimensions? If I dont find the crystals, am I a bad person? ..Dr. Emoto does not state if the experiment was a “blind” study, a condition where the experimenter is unaware of which messages were attached to which water sample. This measure would eliminate experimenter bias. Because of Dr. Emoto does not specify whether his experimental procedure was blind or not, we do not know if Emoto only photographed the “pretty” crystals because of the positive messages or was unconsciously drawn to “scary” crystals when he looked at samples with negative messages. Raza: this is the most critical error. You can never refute this, since according to "since much of the experiment is based on the "consciousness of wanting to find that beauty," then a person with a neutral or disinterested perspective might not *******find******** the crystals at all, he said. " ...this clearly suggests what the kids identify as a concern in Emoto's methods. That he is finding the crystals hes interested in finding. Refer to our question of whether one should be disinterested in "making" or "photographing" the crystals, this clearly should settle that doubt for you. You said it was impossible to do this experiment with a blind setup, these kids have shown him how to do it (even if its blind and not double blind).
Replicating Dr. Emoto’s experiment proved to be a little more challenging than we originally thought it would be. Dr. Emoto got most of his water samples from the mountains of Japan; we had to settle with water from the Animas River, and other various water samples. Raza: Is there anything special about the water from Japan? Could the crystal formation be influenced by the chemical content? This may have created a discrepancy in our conclusions, but both experiments tested the effect of thought on water, so the water type should have had no bearing on our results.
You say that they did find that the crystals in one instance looked similar, but disregard that "for the most part" they looked the same. Statistical significance (the measure of something being a chance effect) would suggest that there is a much stronger chance of no-correlation according to these results than the converse. The reason they cannot conclude though is because they cite a number of discrepancies in their results which largely isnt their fault:
1. They have water other than from a specific spring in Japan
2. Their freezer's temperature was in a range as opposed to Emoto's fixed -4C or whatever (something they could have controlled)
3. They could not replicate the manner in which we photographs the crystals because hes imprecise there or unscientific (not blinding)
4. They did not use petri dishes but glass (something they could not control)
AND RAZA…here I wonder again.. A researcher who proves his point by giving theories from wikipeida and examples from some Psychology class at a High School .
That is because theres no higher level scientist who has graced him with the time that I am aware of. You cited Abdus Salam and someone else as someoene who hadnt done peer review yet gotten a nobel, tell me, was Abdus Salam ignored by the scientific community for six years?
HE never says that you only find the crystals when you want to find Raza Key wordthem. He says that he hired photographers based on their…..(cited by wiki)
SO this is how and why he selects people.. and off course that’s what he should do…why? Because not every person has a properly developed aesthetic sense. Not every person is able to find beauty. You can go on and read this thing in Psychology if you don’t trust me.. and secondly he wants to provide a proper environment in which people wont be fighting on the definition of beauty…
Well..from the thing that I read I don’t think that’s what he is saying..Try to read it with an unbiased mind…
Well.. the way I understand it…is that the thought projection thing (that you have named mind power above) is done before taking the photograph… i.e the step 2 on the wikipedia …photography is the step 6 in the procedure defined on wikipedia..
Heres what you quoted before:
since much of the experiment is based on the "consciousness of wanting to find that beauty," then a person with a neutral or disinterested perspective might not ***find*** the crystals at all, he said.
This is with reference to the blind tests, where again the blinding was not during the conditioning, but during the ***finding***. This is the concern about his study, many crystals form, what is the process for finding the crystal your interested in? It is NOT impossible to do blind tests while projecting all the mind power you want to project as the kids did. Its ironic that you disparage the kids experiment clearly as high school stuff, when they have a more rigorous process than this guy who you give credibility as a Phd.
THE FINAL REPLY
Hiring a photographer of a different origin is not important at all…cause that is the step 6… but offcourse this is yet again a very trivial thing which you can use to build another argument only because there is no information on whether he actually tried hiring a photographer or not.. though you yourself know that people on other places (colarado) have done these things… yet again you will come up with something about which there is no information wether it was done or not..just to create confusion…
I didn’t get this sentence.. Paraphrasing may help… The thing that I understand is that your probably mean that you can get what you want from it..the same way ..you and I google on the net and always find opposite point of views on the same things…some time from the same source…some time from same experiment results…especially the Colorado one…which you yourself asked me to READ AGAIN…thinking that I had not read it..and then I have given the whole conclusion here telling that the experiment was infact concluding in the favour of more research.. Citing it went against your points..
YES RAZA.. I have read the report of the psychology class..and I don’t urge you to read that..i simply ask you to scroll up and see their conclusion from up there..that I have simply copied and pasted from their website… I am really amazed a psychology class in colarado is all that you are referring again and again.. Hmmm.. a very nice example by a person who claims to look into SCIENTIFIC Methods when proving something…It shows your level.. and you blame that I am the one who believes in things quickly.
Not sure what you mean in the first paragraph. But I find it funny that you suppose an ulterior motive behind me citing the school report! I dont know what you imagine I intended to accomplish, if the school report did not support my argument why would I find it and ask you to read it again and again? What do you suppose my motive was? Do you think I HAVENT read the conclusion that you so triumphantly cite, do you think Im that stupid? Or do you think I think your an idiot and was merely testing your ability to read?
If you cannot assume honesty in this debate, then this is pointless. You do not know that this is the first time in about a year, year and a half that I have even seriously taken part in a debate, even though I was a very active member of a discussion forum and moderator. I do not believe that people participate in debates to change their views in general, therefore I think the exercise is often an exercise in futility to assuage one's ego in most cases. Which is why usually I abstain from them now. You cited these crystals and said What now raza or whatever and I responded. I dont have interest in "winning" this debate for the sake of winning it, and the only mutual friend we have here already agrees with me about your new age spirituality. Whatever I say here is in good faith and because I believe it to be for your benefit, and if you are going to attribute dishonesty or stupidity to me, then it isnt worth it.
Already I and a bunch of high schoolers have catergorized his methods being technically imprecise and unscientific, amongst other things that I am aware of:
1. The vague significance attached to the source of the water
2. The vague terms of "aesthetic sense" and "character" when finding the crystals
3. The imprecise specification of which crystals one should photograph
4. The unblinding: Allowing conscious or unconscious bias in the process of finding crystals.
5. Not specifying the chemical/mineral/contaminants composition of the water
And I am not even a chemist/physicist (whoever deals with crystals). Do you see the rigorousness needed in science, any of these could be the determining factor in the formation of crystals and you need to know and eleminate these factors.
Look at these characteristics of pseudoscience taken from wiki which in turn takes it from a paper on Medical Research:
Lilienfeld [56] states "the characteristics of pseudoscience are more specifically shown thus", for example:
"The use of obscurantist language" (eg meta programs, parapragmatics, submodalities etc).....
"The absence of connectivity" [23]
"Over-reliance on testimonial and anecdotal evidence" [87]
"An overuse of ad hoc hypotheses and reversed burden of proof designed to immunize claims from falsification" [64]
"Emphasis on confirmation rather than refutation (eg reliance on asking how rather than why)"
"Absence of boundary conditions"
"Reversed burden of proof (away from those making claim (NLP promoters), and towards those testing the claim (Scientists))".
"The mantra of holism and eclecticism designed to immunize from verifiable efficacy" [56](Claiming that NLP is unmeasurable due to too many factors or to simplistically “do what works”[37].
"Evasion of peer review" (If claims were true, why were they not properly documented and presented to the scientific community?)[37]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming#Pseudoscience
How many of these can you honestly recognize in Emoto?
don’t know wether its him or not…I have never read an article or anything from him explicitly saying that he is not deliberately writing things to scientific journal ..May be he tried and was turned down by the political bodies in the scientific community There isnt one journal in the world, and the whole scientific community doesnt hate him...much less care about him...much less *know* him.. …may be no body ever approached him…most publications are not by invitation, they're voluntary submission, itna nawab koi nahi hota..koi scientist atleast (like that 1 million dollar challenge ,in which the foundation never actually directly asked him).. there can be many things..…However, what you should come up with must be an article in scientific journals completely against Emoto Nobody has any interest in refuting a claim that hasnt been scientifically made. NLP did publish papers, based on the science of their time, and they were refuted. If a claim has never been given any credence, very few scientists are going to waste time refuting it.…Can you find that..oh you can always use Google and Wikipedia..
Earlier you said in an earlier comment ..the 2nd one in the comments on the post…that he has not done any research.. Read the last line of your comment ..….Now you are saying that he can be called a researcher….Does it prove something..?? You yourself are saying conflicting things…
You've called yourself a researcher at the end of this post. Do you think you and your PHD emoto are at par then? Do you think NBC should call you a researcher now if they do a piece on you for some reason?
The guy has zero published research. Yea he could be called a researcher, but the title doesnt mean anything. Im not a phd and I was titled Researcher in my lab. And by default phds seem to be called researchers if they claim that, even 1 year phds from the OpenUniversityofAlternativeMedicineIndia.net.
but how is it that you call yourself a researcher when you too have not got any scientific publication against the Water crystals…
Can you tell me when I called myself a researcher? And I absolutely, certainly, positively, would NEVER make a scientific claim about water crystals, and say Im a researcher in context of water crystals, without getting the claim validity in the scientific community.
The remaining part of the post was about the comments I made about how I foresaw this. That is not a part of the debate and i'll let your words be the last on that except for these:
What kind of spirituality inhibits a person's personal life? What is the difference between your tablighi jamaats gasht and making you lose ICI mails and these tapes and meditations and 15000 rupee conferences?
What kind of spirituality is so corporate, so manufactured, so marketed, so prepackaged into nice little consumer boxes?
These are just derogatory remarks.so I am ignoring them.. But I know about research organization that ask for MONEY …They ask for money to get registered WHY????.. ..Knowledge has become commercial..Its not the problem of spiritual knowledge only..Its the knowledge of everything…Be it spiritual ...be it technical papers...
You may try to draw a parallel but fail on important details. The biggest repository of (cs/ee) technical papers is completely free. If you speak of IEEE and IEE, then do they market themselves, and hold seminars of 15000 rupees in PC? Both are non-profit organizations, which means any money that is every taken does not go to any specific individual. Can you say the same for Silva or Dr Moiz? Silva as you are aware is a large corporation, same for NLP, same for Emoto (not corporation, but his "products" are a company that sells "special" water, new age spirituality books and a movie) and same for scientology (which has a corporate wing and presence in California (i told you about the interview where I was asked scientology questions)).
Yeah.. a guy who is so materialist that he considers CAREER and MONEY the most important things in life is asking me to be a free man…
You assume too much. Certainly I have given up career and money both for things that were more important for me at the time. All the same I dont believe in hindering my career and throwing money into corporate "spirituality". But again thats your call, I wont ask you to clarify further.
And how do I consider it as any help..when you don’t tell me a way out ….. just telling me that you don’t like something wont be of much help to me…I understand that there is no indefinite time in life…so what is your idea about it..should I devote myself completely to money and career advancement….or should I enjoy my life by learning thing I want to learn…and by remaining happy with whatever I already have.. ..
I would suggest advance yourself spiritually with a more cautious eye and with the acknowledgement that there might exist a whole lot of people who will try to profit from your desire for spirituality. And if you care about your quest, your should definitely make sure that what you end up with (and you will end up with something) is genuine and not a money minting operation.
At the same time, you shouldnt neglect other aspects of your life such as your health and your career, which my perception is that you are doing, as is Umair's. However since you say its not so important or that you are content with it, then fine.
You blame that its me who believes things too easily.. In this course of discussion I have seen you believing in thing that you already wanted to believe…I have always been a skeptic to all my spiritual things myself.. and I look at it in a neutral manner…and I like to discuss it in a neutral manner. ..you seem to have a belief that these things are false.... you are not seeing these things neutrally..
Not really. As you are aware I am a practicing Muslim, and as you might be aware, Emoto has marketed his idea to Catholic Christians, saying that water carries "prayer", claiming that the crystals in a certain fountain in the holy church are great. There would be a reason for me to be predisposed to accept this, because it validates the faith in prayer, which inturn implies a higher power, which is great as a Muslim. However, I have a belief that a great deal of new age is spirituality is either scam or based on outdated/selective science, stemming from seeing Maharishi's disciples jumping around in the hope of bringing world peace, and knowing about scientology (their headquarters was next to my research lab). In addition Im also aware of the numerous "studies" that were faulty, even at universities (such as Duke University) where they mistakenly concluded that prayer has a positive effect on healing (which they retracted), so I know that even if you do things in good faith you can just be wrong.
So I make a point of exploring the skepticism of any issue. You say you look at it in a neutral manner, honestly tell me, did you know about the criticism of Emoto and that his work was not accepted in scientific circles before this discussion started? Had you read the Wikipedia article, given that you take MOST of your information from there?
All the objection that you had on Emoto’s experiment was that he had not done any peer reviews…something which by its definition is just expected and not required..that Abdul Salam thing turned out to the rescue ... My god, people are getting noble prizes without peer reviews...something that you hold so dear..
Once again, I dont really see the effective difference between "expected" and "required". Furthermore I've given you one more reference now, this time from a paper on medical research, that cites peer review as a criteria for judging something as pseudoscience. I have thoroughly explained away your arguments about peer review, in that while the function they perform is essential (sharing scientific knowledge with the community in a systematic way) there may be quarters advocating doing that better. Which is fine, but doesnt mean you make claims without getting validation from the scientific community.
And this course of discussion also shows the your approach and mine approach to trust is similar.. Its just that you don’t believe at all…I , on the other hand, might be a believer but I am still looking at these things in a neutral manner…I keep looking at things..to verify them…cause I think you have to do things in order to verify wether they are wrong or not..
:) No i dont think you have to do things to verify if they're right or wrong. I would then have to be a Hindu to decide if Hinduism is the right religion, an animal worshipper to decide if they're right, worship the cross for a few years... etc by your logic.
reading on some big words against something is not enough (this comes from a notice on your statement..that silva is nothing but “cold reading”.. I have done silva..it has nothing to do with the cold reading. .the teacher there never ever told us anything about us ..let alone any cold reading..you should have atleast read about Silva or atleast cold reading)..
This predates this discussion, and one of the criticisms of Silva that you might not have read in the links I gave you was that it practices and teaches cold reading implicitly.
I usually try to have my own experiences and my own opinions…I don’t want to waste my life on copying and pasting…so I go out to have my own interaction with of all the things that I want to learn.. and I guess that’s what a research is.. If at any time later, I decide that all these things are wrong (though at present I don’t feel like it as I am currently successes after a lapse of so many years) I will still have the satisfaction that it was ME who proved it to me....not a copy and paste of somebody’s else writing…and I guess that’s what makes me a researcher..
Fine, but you could have spent your time more constructively had you been more skeptical and questioned obvious fallacies (NLP/Silva:outdated science for example) before you followed something, spent your time and money on it fruitlessly. If however your motive is to be a researcher in New Age Spirituality, then all the best, however, then you should be more systematic and scientific in your methods, and foremost of that is the willingness to be skeptical and seek rational alternatives.
ok RAZA.. now i am continuing giving answers to you... i have written new things as ***sameer*** so dont be confused in gettin the new things...
**it starts with your comments below**
I dont have access to fancy html so Im just going to do bold and not bold to differentiate.
Also Im half done with the reply, I have to get going Im in a net cafe, will write the rest tomorrow or later tonight.
I still have no interest in the scientific method..why because it is NOT something that you talked about earlier..
If you intend on splitting hairs, fine, IF I specifically said research and did not make it clear that I meant it in the scientific context then fine, you were right.
***sameer*** thanks ?…
However, you would then be focusing on words and not meaning. At most Im wrong in unintentionally fudging up research and research acceptable in a scientific community, according to the scientific method.
***sameer*** That is a VERY big difference … but since it is a fault from your side so you are making it appear less…
However, Im not the only one, see over here you say...
Aint this strange that I guy who believes in research still follows a site which can be objected by anyone
So how many people do you know who edit wikis using ‘Scientific method’
***sameer*** Neither I get what you mean nor I didn’t get the parallel.. but whatever you are the one saying that I am focusing on words and not meaning.. it will be strange if you come up with a comment on my words and meanings.. Don’t deny your own method to debate..you are not here to follow my method.
Instead of focusing on minutiae and relying on our very unreliable collective memories, can you take me at my word and believe I mean research acceptable to a scientific community (with the context that a a lot of "research" is pseudoscientific garbage).
***sameer*** Yar..masla hay yeah hay…keh now that I you are changing the meanings once..i will really have problem in discussing…Why because this will let you have change meanings whenever you want..i don’t want to waste my time on writing things just to know later that “Oh! You meant something else”.. you are already trying to take the benefits of human errors on your side in this debate..
Given that you gave me the example of your katra machine and I said thats a fraud, obviously I was holding "research" upto some standards.
***sameer*** whats a katra??? Whats a katra machine.. all I got about it is that its “katra is the immortal, living spirit of a Vulcan” ..It is by chance that I know a Vulcan is a specie in Star Trek…I have never discussed about it ..i don’t even know such thing.. and I will not try to show off that I know such thing..i really don’t know what it is…Can you explain..i didn’t even find it on internet..
So let me rephrase.
***sameer*** again!!!
There is NO scientific research as yet that gives ANY credibility to ANY of what is my opinion scams in the domain of new age spirituality
***sameer*** well…whats the basis of this argument..i mean its ok to know that you do not know about any such research.. but offcourse I wont be rejecting any thing on the fact that Raza doesn’t know something…Scientists usually do not use such kind of methodology… your knowledge is not absolute..or is it?? You do not know a million trillion things in the world…that doesn’t mean they are all wrong or are they??? Btw do you have a list of all the researches done in the world…can you share that list to me..
, specifically: maharishi, katras, scientology, emoto, water crystals, mr silva, neuro linguistic programming etc etc. What *might* exist would be genuine scientific work,
***sameer*** oh so now you come up with a “genuine” scientific work…though I don’t know what’s your basis for calling something genuine.. how are you an authority.???
such as by Freud and others, that may have been selectively incorporated by movements such as Silva and NLP, that may or may not still be scientifically outdated.
***sameer*** I see conflict again…you say that Freud’s work is genuine..then you say that this work may have been incorporated by Silva and NLP… What does this mean…??? Tum khud hi kah rahey ho that Freud’s work is genuine and then you call any one incorporating such things as a fraud…and then you say that those things may or may not be scientifically outdated..yar..even if something is scientifically proven, It remains scientific even if it is outdated…but that just my idead…am I wrong on this..cause I though that all the experiments that had wrong conception about the molecular structure of matter are still considered scientific…… A Clarfication..I have not into Freud’s work…I haven’t read him yet..though I plan too…I don’t know whether Silva is from it or not… I don’t know from where you got the link between the two.
you used the word research ..but then you looked on the definition on it and didn’t find any thing objecting Emoto.. then you looked at this link of scientific method (given on the wiki of ‘Research’ ) and then you are using the word ‘scientific method’ to help you to the rescue..
You assume far too much. I did no such thing, the way I googled it was to look for Emoto then follow the wiki links that occur in the text (Emoto->double blind->science->scientific method). Might have been a different starting point than Emoto, maybe pseudoscience.
***sameer*** oh you didn’t get my point..my point was that when you tried to look into the main “research” you didn’t find any thing wrong about Emoto..but since you had to split hair you went further into more words..to help you find a word that may help you prove your point…My point was not point about your correct sequence of reaching to the word scientific_method..i just wanted to comment that there is nothing against Emoto if you compare it on the research level.
I am sure that you know it more than I do that staying on one word is important in a discussion cause going into the meaning of each and every word makes things out of focus…that why I am still hooking to the word research.. so in the next reply which you will definitely provide. .i don’t want to talk about scientific method cause I don’t think that its helping me.. but if you really think it IS that important ..i am talking about it in the para below when you yourself provided a copy paste from it..
No you should talk about every word thats in the text, because the author obviously wrote the definition in a specific way, that included the term "scientific method". then we're either supposed to know what scientific method is or refer to that definition.
***sameer*** Oh! You are supporting my point..yeah! I am exactly talking about all the words that were in the text…you had used the word research in the earlier text..and that’s what I am focusing on..this “scientific method” word came later…it wasn’t in the earlier text by you.. so I just cant get de-focused by these new additions..
Lets just say that Im interested in "research according to scientific methods", and not unscientific research :).
***sameer*** acha.. here you are changing your meaning..i.e you are changing you stance.. there is no point in debating with a person changing his stance…the new term that you are trying to use to help you is "research according to scientific methods" .. I cant predict about what you mean by something unless you properly clarify that…what you are doing now is that you are changing your word ot help you win for the sake of winning…and besides there is no wiki on "research according to scientific methods"…
The writing itself says that this requirement is mainly an expectation..and not a requirement..
Im not sure what differentiation you want to draw between expectations and requirements. Can you clarify?
***sameer***…I am trying to clear to do you that is not important .. stop playing word games… your English is far superior than me..dont tell me that you don’t know the difference between these two words.
Btw do you know that there is criticism on the "peer review thing'.. mainly because it is slow (taking many years sometimes) and because it makes the ability to publish susceptible to control by elites and to personal jealousy.
Source? That is completely, absolutely untrue by the way. Almost all peer reviewed conferences I have ever seen in my life have reviewing times in the order of 2-3 months. As for susceptibility to control by elites, I would again ask you to provide the source. I have 6 peer reviewed publications in 2 years, and I never had any problem with Elitism. Unless you show me a specific instance of this, or give me a credible source, I just dont buy this argument.
***sameer*** Soruce is wikipedia..but I am amazed to see you saying that “That is completely, absolutely untrue by the way” without citing your source.. and when you say that “Almost all peer reviewed conferences I have ever seen in my life have reviewing times in the order of 2-3 months” then please update this thing on wiki so that people may know that your observations are far more correct than the observation of other people…
And IN YOUR FACE ...let me tell you that there have been many papers that appeared in scientific journals without any peer review...FAMOUS EXAMPLES:
1. Publication of Watson and Crick's 1951 paper on the structure of DNA in Nature.
2. Abdus Salam's paper "Weak and electromagnetic interactions". Salam even got the Nobel prize for it in 1979. and ou
Once again, source? Im guessing you read this on a website that was trying to show that peer review is not important, I'd like to know what that is. Citing some source is better than citing none, so I atleast know whether I should trust the information you have.
***sameer*** source is wikpedia.. you can read all about “peer_review” thing on wikipedia .. and btw are you really talking about source???...You??
Part 2:
I'll continue from where I left off. I'll only discuss the peer review point, then go jogging then do the next paragraph tomorrow. That way you'll have a whole lot to reply to on the weekend :D
Your reference on peer review was certainly quite interesting, and while I agree with a lot of what the author says, I disagree with your conclusions from it. I'll explain how.
***sameer***.. Raza… I was trying to tell you that peer review is not at all the most important things in the whole universe …I don’t know what you get from the wiki but my main emphasis is that you have taken criticisim on Emoto from wiki (and not by your own knowledge) based on which you are trying to disprove him…and I am giving you something against your only defensing shield (i.e the peer review) from the same holy source ..(wikipedia)
Science is perpetually in evolution, and peer review is by no means the finished work.
***sameer*** then what is all this fuss about…if scince in evolution..you cant believe it..it will deny tomorrow what it says today.. it may prove tomorrow that the peer review thing is wrong..who knows??/
However, while peer review has flaws (and typically not to the extent mentioned in the article) it is the current "universal" scientific standard, according to the article you cite
***sameer*** When you say that the peer review things has no flaws i.e “(and typically not to the extent mentioned in the article)”..what was your source…was there any or is it again based on your own experience only… I have not checked wether it really is the “universal” scientific standard , but do you mean to say that the universal scientific standard has flaws in it??? Cause peer review has flaws and having it as a part of the universal scientific standarad doesn nothing but makes the universal scientific standard more doubtful… thanks for the info…
. And none of the alternatives suggested in the wiki article, "dynamic peer review", "preprints" etc seek to completely do away the necessary funciton Peer Review tries to perform (even if imperfectly), that is to share scientific knowledge with a scientific community in a systematic way. They merely wish to do it [b]better[/b]. This does not mean that while we have nothing better accepted within a scientific community, the existing standards are moot.
***sameer***..oh..you mean that if we can not agree on something lets have atleast something…even if that “atleast something” is full of flaws…well then there is no point in resorting to that “atleast something” in your discussion if it is not a proper thing …
To give you an example, suppose a FYP groups in GIKI were campaigning for reforming the format and procedures of writing a thesis. Some suggest single ruled paper, others say that isnt nearly enough material. Some say the references should be written this way, others say that isnt the international standard. Some would wish that the Professors appointed TAs to help with the layout, otheres think they'll interfere. Would someone then be justified in saying that Im not going to publish a thesis because look how they fight about it, you should just be content with my poster presentation and my tie?
***sameer*** well… huh!! you are proving my point here….I ask you to give your solution in such a case where people are not agreeing to something. what will you do in such a FYP group where people are not coming up with any agreed upon method…how the hell are you even going to have any criteria at all to justify people???? How? If there is complete disorder how do you define any justification???
Peer review performs a certain function, and the idea is to solve imperfections and hurdles the current solution has, not to dismiss the function as unncessary.
You say that Abdus Salam's nobel prize winning work did not appear in peer review, can you tell me if it didnt appear in peer review after that? He is a prolific writer and has published 250 papers in scientific journals (wikipedia:Abdus Salam). I have been a reviewer in conferences Sameer, and also been a fledgling career researcher. The way it works is you have categories of publications, which determines their prestige and competetiveness:
A. There are Magazines/Workshops/Non Peer Reviewed publications. These have very high acceptance rates. 90 percent. Virtually everyone gets accepted here. You can send any BS you want about anything, and it will get accepted. Any reviewing if it happens here is very cursory and very pointless. They talk about that in the article (the quote ""There seems to be no study too fragmented, no hypothesis too trivial, no literature too biased or too egotistical, no design too warped, no methodology too bungled, no presentation of results too inaccurate, too obscure, and too contradictory, no analysis too self-serving, no argument too circular, no conclusions too trifling or too unjustified, and no grammar and syntax too offensive for a paper to end up in print." is about that). These are not high prestige, papers range in the order of 4 pages and only people within that sub-sub-sub field (workshops are on very specific things) care about it.
B. There are conference papers. These are much more prestigious, publishing here you have 25 percent acceptance rates, material has to be new and has to add value to the scientific community and there is much more rigorous peer reviewing. Reviewing deadlines here range in the order of 3-4 months, and it counts a lot to have a conference paper.
C. Certain Journals/Magazines that are peer review and run by an advisory board, that selects different people from different fields who have made good showing in recent conferences (or have good contacts) and invite them to publish in full length journal papers. These can be mini thesis, upto say 30-45 pages, and are expected to be thorough. It is very hard to get a journal paper, and there you do have issues of elitism and otherwise.
***sameer*** oh thanks ..now you have come up with categories of peer review … but I assure you neither it is convincing me.. nor it is confusing me.. it however does make me more doubtful about the method...
It is possible that Salam's paper was published (and it was a scientific paper (which is still better than a non-technical photo essay)) in a catergory A paper and was immediately heralded as groundbreaking. I read that he made the discovery in 1978 and won shortly thereafter, so its extremely plausible that he merely hadnt had a chance to publish the paper in peer review, or the paper was submitted and being reviewed. Given that he published 250 odd papers, mostly in elite circles, it is highly unlikely that his work was never peer reviewed.
***sameer***..Raza…if you want to talk about mere possibilities than well you yourself can come with a hell millions of them in case of Emoto.. ho sakta hay he might have tried the peer reviewing thing and elitism might not have let him come in..may be this…may be that…may be that something…. Possibilities are so many…
There are problems with Peer Review, but they all cannot occur at once.
***sameer*** how and why?? Source???
If the objection is that it takes too long to publish (in "years", which I strongly suspect to be outdated info, since all conferences I've ever seen have reviewing time in months) then the objection that there are too many publications and everyone is publishing everything they way doesnt hold. This implies that these problems occur in different settings, a certain journal may have a problem with elitism, fine, publish in another journal, apparently theres lots of them. If certain journals have lower standards, then fine, publish in one with better standards.
***sameer*** well this way you yourself are making me doubtful about all these journals.. don’t they all have to agree upon some standard….. is there no “universal” standard for a scientific methods as you said earlier??.. ..i mean why is it that one journal accepts one thing and the other rejects that same thing…
To dismiss the standard scientific method entirely, on your own and to offer no other way of sharing precise technical specifications (i'll come to the technical incompleteness that you missed in the school report) with the scientific community is necessarily going to mean that your work will never be given any credence in the scientific community.
***sameer***..oh if there was technical incompleteness in the school than you should not have given its reference in the first place.
And the fact that we can cite no scientist in six years who attempted to replicate Emoto's results and have to make do with discussing a high school report, illustrates how little his pseudoscience is accepted by chemists and biologists and crystallogists around the world.
***sameer*** correction..its not we ..its you .. who can not get a better citation…too strange that a High school is attempting unimportant things in their classes… coming to your logic..if people do not give importance to something than it doesn’t mean that it is wrong..it just shows that people are already pre-biased towards it to the extent that they didn’t bother trying to disprove it .. The failure to come up with something against it doesn’t mean that it is wrong…you are using wrong logic.
Part 3
Raza!! We were not talking about MY CRITERIA to understand thing…It should be YOUR CRITERIA all the time… You already have so many objections on my sources and the things that I think are trustworthy….. and btw MOST of the spiritual stuff that I have learnt is from wikipedia.. does it mean that you believe in that all too??
As far as I know, we've only ever talked about three things. Silva, Emoto and NLP, correct me if Im wrong. I know you read OBE waghaira but I dont know anything about that, nor have I read anything about it, on or off Wiki.
***sameer***.. if you are trying to say that you don’t know OBE but you know about Silva and NLP (where did NLP come from..when did I talk about it) then you are wrong..you don’t know about either Silva nor NLP..Proof: you once copied pasted that silva is nothing but cold reading..where cold reading is something in which people can describe others basis on some common feature…Silva is not at all this thing. Not any part of it.its is about developing some techniques..Your knowledge on Silva , and Emoto and NLP is not from anyother source but wikipedia only…so you can get the same thing about OBE….
The Wiki on Silva is very cursory, and seems to be restricted to statings its history and concept without going into scientific correctness. if you take MOST of your information from there, then we have the same information, and probably the same beliefs about the truth of that information.
***sameer*** I have stated it earlier that wikipedia is not my only source of information.. I have done workshops (on which there are many objections) and my knowledge is from there…I can easily filter whats wrong in the wiki and whats right…
Emoto, again, we have the same information, though different beliefs.
***sameer*** Raza…we do not have same information.. I am not relying on the wikipedia only..
And NLP, I dont think you got your information from there, otherwise you would know it has been discredited in scientific and government circles :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming#Criticism
***sameer*** first tell me one thing…how the hell did NLP come here…(another attempt to change the topic) but anyways let me talk about it… I don’t know what the wiki says.. but I am clearly telling you that if we now shift our discussion to NLP (jot um pata naheen kahan say uttah ker discussion keh beech main lay aye ho) then again you will be using some unreliable sources…but anyways lets stick to the topic of discussion..NLP was not introduced by me…
Read that completely, atleast NLP should be discredited scientifically in your mind then, including the left and right brain ideas, (not that you should only use either left or right brain, but that the left and right brains function the way Silva/NLP think based on outdated neurological science from decades back when they were developed)
***sameer*** Acha Jee.. Now silva and NLP are totally different things…and as far as the right and left brain idea is concerned that is a whole long discussion and I don’t know why you want to go into that..all I remember is that a link that you once sent me was claiming false thing about Silva; i.e the things are not in the silva in the way that guy was saying..
Aint this strange that I guy who believes in research still follows a site which can be objected by anyone and which can be edited by anyone who may or may not be applying the so called scientific methods in editing the wiki. It is even objected by the wiki writers... read...
So how many people do you know who edit wikis using ‘Scientific method’ and how many people in the world are all dedicated to the holy cause of keeping wikipedia correct . You have assumed that all the people in the world have an all time internet connection along with ample of time & motivation to check the wikis of their interest. On the Internet, it's impossible to actually confirm people's identity in the first place, short of getting credit-card information. On any site it's very easy to come up with a fake identity..
AND RAZA…here I wonder again.. A researcher who proves his point by giving theories from wikipeida and examples from some Psychology class at a High School . Are they really so credible for you.. Is that YOUR criteria ??? this clearly means that YOU CAN NOT target my criterias when your own criterias are not worth trusting.. Wikipedia and other internet search results should not be a criteria for a proper researcher at least.. and if it so then whats the difference between a normal person and a researcher..
Okay, so Im not sure what your saying here.
Lets focus on you first. You say that Wiki is untrustworthy etc because of the anonymity and openness, do you trust it yourself? You seem to do so, given that you say you took MOST of your information from wiki, and you also give the Peer Review reference from Wiki. So I'll assume that inspite of the weaknesses you cite, you still trust it as a reference.
***sameer*** Raza..this wikipedia thing that you are using ..and which is the only source of information for you…is not the basic and only source of information for me…I did not start all my knowledge of these things from Wikipedia..you did…I am using wiki only because it sometimes gives a handy refernce.. but I don’t consider as a final referee in things…infact being a researcher you should be the one criticisizing on wikipedia more than me…
Now I'll tell you why I have been citing wiki. Wikipedia is open, communal and moreso independent. The openness means that everyone who has the internet and half a brain can contribute his ideas to a concept.
***sameer*** so you are making it limited when you say that anyone who has the internet can contribute to it..it clearly means that only those people who have internet access and are very much familiar with it can say things there…it also means that people who are expert in internet can manipulate things more than the people who don’t know much about it.. A guy who has access to internet does not become , by any chance , more knowledgeable and capable and authentic ,then a guy who has no internet connection..
Which also means that concepts that attract more people will have more contributers.
The community aspect in philosophy and often in theory means that contributers who care enough about the Wiki project to contribute to it feel a sense of ownership to it, and people will in philosophy try to enforce standards they see in the rest of the encyclopedia i.e. offering different perspectives, citing references, ensuring grammar and structure is correct.
***sameer*** err…so you mean that the people who are still so conventional that they have not yet shifted their communication mechnims to wiki/internet are not too authethtic..Oh..do you mean that I can find each and every knowledge on wiki…is it the absolute knowledge…
The independence factor is the most important, because it means that the encyclopedia is not institutionally tied to any specific goal which would automatically invalidate it.
***sameer*** oh ..for your information..wiki is banned by many ISPs in Pakistan…reason?? I don’t know.. perhaps some institution here doesn’t consider it too worthy …and that means it is not accessible by everyone…
For example, I would never trust the Center for Promotion of Coca Cola in Pakistan to write an unbiased article on Coca Cola's health benefits.
***sameer*** but I don’t understand why would you trust an article written by “anyone” on wiki… how do you ensure the neutrality…do you ever search for the author profile
While these factors dont mean that Wiki is perfect, it does make it a reliable starting point for a discussion. I will read a Wiki, go through its references, and figure out for myself if it is biased or not.
***sameer*** oh ..so how did you figure out the double blind thing..the only reference given in the wiki about it doesn’t tell enough…acha..and if you CLAIM that you check the reference then how did you give an unsourced reference in a comment on my recent post (the post on dianetics)??? Will you explain that…??
If the author has tried to adhere to the Philosophy of the encyclopedia then I will use it as a reference within a discussion with my friends. If I were a researcher publishing a paper or presenting my views in a scientific community, I would probably not cite Wiki as a reference. However I would have no qualms in using references a wiki article cites, if those references themselves seem genuine.
***sameer*** nice ..so you are now saying that you have different standards for different things..Can you clarify why you wont cite wiki in your research article..well basically because in research people usually go into the complete detail of the claim…and in a discussion with your friend you will try to overwhelm him with the too much knowledge in wikipedia and the inability of your friend to verify all the things…i.e you will be taking benefit of human capability in a normal routine discussion…you are proving my point again…
Bias can exist in absolutely every information source in the world, and the skeptic would evaluate the information for bias and try to atleast check the existance of references before accepting it.
***sameer*** like you did in the Dianetic post comment…
That is the way I like my research papers, and that is the way I like my wikies. You assume too much if you think I automatically accept all wiki as true.
***sameer*** Again..i didn’t assume it..you have given information from the wiki and never from anything else..even the high school experiment you talked about was from a wiki…
By the way, do you find the wiki article on Emoto biased? What part specifically would you say is incorrect, and on what basis? You may call the references it cites biased or unbiased, but the article classifies them as sympathetic, critical and neutral.
***sameer*** I am not calling any part of it anything..when I said it earlier I was pointing on the thing that you said…i.e you yourself understand that the wiki has a non-neutral part..which means that on the whole it is not neutral…
Acha..now coming to the point that you said that you didn’t get what I meant from the text to which you made all this reply..i am going to reproduce it part by part with a little paraphrasing so that you may now get my meaning in it..
Aint this strange that I guy who believes in research still follows a site which can be objected by anyone and which can be edited by anyone who may or may not be applying the so called scientific methods in editing the wiki. It is even objected by the wiki writers... read... …well here I wasnted to give you an idea that even the wiki writers themselves are not willing to trust in it..even though they themselves write the wikies and know more than us about the techn ical credibilities of it…what did you not understand in it..
So how many people do you know who edit wikis using ‘Scientific method’ and how many people in the world are all dedicated to the holy cause of keeping wikipedia correct . You have assumed that all the people in the world have an all time internet connection along with ample of time & motivation to check the wikis of their interest. On the Internet, it's impossible to actually confirm people's identity in the first place, short of getting credit-card information. On any site it's very easy to come up with a fake identity.. What I meant here was that wikipedia is specific to a very few people..those who have internet ..you can give all the authority of proving something right or wrong if it appears on internet only… cause you can not validiate the information on internet very accurately…and there is no surety that every person in the world will be very neutral in writing a wiki…Again the case of cocacola that you mentioned..who the hell will have enough ample time to write about cocacola without much benefits from it.. I e.g might be knowing a hell about the “4D” workshops that I do but may not write a wiki on it because of time…or motivation….and I may find a wiki on it …having wrong things in it and many not feel enough motivation to correct it…
AND RAZA…here I wonder again.. A researcher who proves his point by giving theories from wikipeida and examples from some Psychology class at a High School . Are they really so credible for you.. Is that YOUR criteria ??? this clearly means that YOU CAN NOT target my criterias when your own criterias are not worth trusting.. Wikipedia and other internet search results should not be a criteria for a proper researcher at least.. and if it so then whats the difference between a normal person and a researcher.. I guess its very pretty easy to understand..
Oh..you never gave any credibility at all..though you should have if you are a researcher.It was only me attempting to give some credibility by citing a PHD…all that you ever cited was the wiki searc results…oh how very credible…All wikis are written by PHDs right (sarcastic…cause they are not written by PHDs..They are written by people whose identities can not be verified..)
Your mistaken if I didnt give you personally any credibility. This discussion wouldnt be so long if we didnt give some credibility to each other. However, a Phd. IMHO is not license to make things up, and sell pseudoscience as science. I would not automatically give credibility to even an MIT phd without evaluating what hes saying, let alone an international relations major with a phd that has a duration of 1 year from the Open International University for Alternative Medicine of India ( http://www.altmeduniversity.net/courses3.htm ).
***sameer*** then what is your criteria …you are saying that you wont give credit to a PHD from mit and then you say that you believe in wikis because they are open for all to edit.. this is really baseless.. so what do you mean..even if Emoto get his papers peer reviewed by a PHD from MIT , you wont be listening to him cause you will be looking to references then…????? .. I am not getting it…how do you define the reference then…. Your reference is “research acceptable in scientific community” but then you yourself deny a guy who has done PHD from MIT..??? You are confused of things yourself and you are trying to confuse me …
The standards seem worse than the standards of Allama Iqbal Open University, and Im not exagerrating at all, look at it..
You had more research experience (1 year) than this guy when you were in GIKI.
***sameer*** oh really…how…what was my research …was it acceptable to the scientific community….when did I publish it…I am not clear in what you are saying … ????
Wikipedia was sympathetic to him.. really??…Oh you can always raise objections on this article then as wikis are supposed to be neutral…and you claimed earlier in your comments that anybody can do that…Lets see who has too much spare time to go and correct all the wrong things on the wikipedia…Lets see who edits Dr. Emotos wiki now to make it appear neutral..After all , as you claim ,its an open source thing which according to your logic makes it credible and true.
No it doesnt make it automatically credible or true. When I cited wikipedia, and everyplace I cited it, I evaluated the content for bias. Had you objected to any of it as biased anywhere based on the fact that anyone can write it, I would have accepted your argument. If there is lack of neutrality in anything I've posted, then I havent seen it so far.
***sameer*** really..well what were your parameters to evaluate…you never talked about them earlier but please share with me the parameters that you are using for the evaluation.. talking about your evaluation criteria, do you remember the randy moore guy that you talked about ..which I later told you was unreliable..and you took your argument back at that time… what was your evaluation criteria at that time??????
And I didnt mean Wikipedia is sympathetic to him. If it were sympethetic or if it were overly dismissive (without references) instead of merely writing down the concept and the controversy around it (which you can confirm independently of wiki) I wouldnt have cited it.
***sameer*** acha..to how do you confirm the controversery around it without wikipedia…. Source???.. don’t try to say things without any sources..
When I said sites sympathetic to him I was assuming that your information is coming from the "sites sympathetic to Emoto" portion in the article, where you have the NBC page and other such stuff. But anyway, your right to object to me assuming where your posting from, but I've had to ask you to give references, which doesnt help.
***sameer*** umm…please paraphrase if it is an important thing..
…..************…. Next comment
NO RAZA.. you are wrong again…. they were able to do it … READ IT AGAIN..its here…It was done by Advanced Placement Psychology class at Durango High School in Durango, Colorado ..They did the whole experiment using ALL the technical parameters defined by Emoto .These technical specifications are written on the Emoto’s wiki and the class itself has defined it in their procedures as well.. … The students were ABLE to do the experiment .. and there results were in conformance .. Read below as I answer
AGAIN.. YOU ARE WRONG .. The students were able to do it.. citing something and presenting it in a wrong manner wont make your argument true…READ THE WHOLE THING AGAIN.. READ IT here..…Since you have WRONGLY repeated the thing so many time..now I will give the true picture by writing the conculsion that they (the colarado people) had ..It follows
So you see it.. They were able to find the same type of crystals on the same type of message “I despise you”….and although they did not have very very supportive result..they still accept that they do NOT have sufficient evidence to refute or accept the guy…They have concluded that FURTHER RESEARCH should be done.. FURTHER RESEARCH right??? So the experiment did provide them enough curiosity cause they did find something there..
To quote the report:
Dr. Emoto’s experiment appears to have overlooked certain variables, and some of his conclusions may be based on assumptions that are not necessarily true. For example, Dr. Emoto failed to realize that there are hundreds of crystals in one drop of water, and through “experimenter bias” he may have subconsciously noticed certain crystals while disregarding others because of the suggestion of a certain message. In other words, he could have looked through thousands of crystals to find a beautiful one if he knew the message was a positive one, and – consciously or unconsciously – he could have looked for an ugly crystal if he knew the message was a negative one. Raza: What do you look for? What is the criterion for selecting photographers, Emoto selected people with "aesthetic sense". What is that supposed to mean, do I have aesthetic sense? Would I be able to find the same crystals, or am I too tasteless? " character " is another thing you cite him as needing in the photographer, what is that supposed to mean? Character on what scale, what ethical dimensions, what religious dimensions? If I dont find the crystals, am I a bad person? ..Dr. Emoto does not state if the experiment was a “blind” study, a condition where the experimenter is unaware of which messages were attached to which water sample. This measure would eliminate experimenter bias. Because of Dr. Emoto does not specify whether his experimental procedure was blind or not, we do not know if Emoto only photographed the “pretty” crystals because of the positive messages or was unconsciously drawn to “scary” crystals when he looked at samples with negative messages. Raza: this is the most critical error. You can never refute this, since according to "since much of the experiment is based on the "consciousness of wanting to find that beauty," then a person with a neutral or disinterested perspective might not *******find******** the crystals at all, he said. " ...this clearly suggests what the kids identify as a concern in Emoto's methods. That he is finding the crystals hes interested in finding. Refer to our question of whether one should be disinterested in "making" or "photographing" the crystals, this clearly should settle that doubt for you. You said it was impossible to do this experiment with a blind setup, these kids have shown him how to do it (even if its blind and not double blind).
***sameer*** yar I am not clear what you are talking about… you are saying it yourself that the kids were able to blind the experiment…so what you basically mean… If there is something which is not known, then you are not supposed to consider it in the worst scenario…or are you..if you don’t know something then it doesn’t mean that that thing is either non-existing or wrong…..
Replicating Dr. Emoto’s experiment proved to be a little more challenging than we originally thought it would be. Dr. Emoto got most of his water samples from the mountains of Japan; we had to settle with water from the Animas River, and other various water samples. Raza: Is there anything special about the water from Japan? Could the crystal formation be influenced by the chemical content? This may have created a discrepancy in our conclusions, but both experiments tested the effect of thought on water, so the water type should have had no bearing on our results.
***sameer*** ok now..let me give an example here…you have cited only that part of the article which gives the ideas against Emoto..you do not cite the part in which the kids accept that they were able to see the same pattern for an abuse..
You say that they did find that the crystals in one instance looked similar, but disregard that "for the most part" they looked the same. Statistical significance (the measure of something being a chance effect) would suggest that there is a much stronger chance of no-correlation according to these results than the converse. The reason they cannot conclude though is because they cite a number of discrepancies in their results which largely isnt their fault:
1. They have water other than from a specific spring in Japan
2. Their freezer's temperature was in a range as opposed to Emoto's fixed -4C or whatever (something they could have controlled)
3. They could not replicate the manner in which we photographs the crystals because hes imprecise there or unscientific (not blinding)
4. They did not use petri dishes but glass (something they could not control)
***sameer*** if they could not control all the parameters and were unable to do it..why the hell did they try it….simply because they knew these things were not as important as you are trying to make them…they were even not able to deny the experiment results even by being very critical about it..
***sameer***snd I wonder again…all that you are going to bisect and talk about is this high school report which may or not be authentic…yet you are believing in it..you say that you always evaluate the sources..how do you evaluate the sources in this case..how do you validate the authenticity of this experiment???
AND RAZA…here I wonder again.. A researcher who proves his point by giving theories from wikipeida and examples from some Psychology class at a High School .
That is because theres no higher level scientist who has graced him with the time that I am aware of. You cited Abdus Salam and someone else as someoene who hadnt done peer review yet gotten a nobel, tell me, was Abdus Salam ignored by the scientific community for six years?
***sameer***… so you mean that if you say something and no one comes with up with anything against it..then you are wrong..is that so…Is Emoto research the only research in the world which has not been followed by any other research or are there other such researches as well..you should be knowing it more than I do..I just wont buy the argument Raza…Abdus Salam’s example is the Famous example of no-peer review..it is not the only example…I don’t know how many researches have gone without peer reviwing..
HE never says that you only find the crystals when you want to find Raza Key wordthem. He says that he hired photographers based on their…..(cited by wiki)
SO this is how and why he selects people.. and off course that’s what he should do…why? Because not every person has a properly developed aesthetic sense. Not every person is able to find beauty. You can go on and read this thing in Psychology if you don’t trust me.. and secondly he wants to provide a proper environment in which people wont be fighting on the definition of beauty…
Well..from the thing that I read I don’t think that’s what he is saying..Try to read it with an unbiased mind…
Well.. the way I understand it…is that the thought projection thing (that you have named mind power above) is done before taking the photograph… i.e the step 2 on the wikipedia …photography is the step 6 in the procedure defined on wikipedia..
Heres what you quoted before:
since much of the experiment is based on the "consciousness of wanting to find that beauty," then a person with a neutral or disinterested perspective might not ***find*** the crystals at all, he said.
This is with reference to the blind tests, where again the blinding was not during the conditioning, but during the ***finding***. This is the concern about his study, many crystals form, what is the process for finding the crystal your interested in? It is NOT impossible to do blind tests while projecting all the mind power you want to project as the kids did. Its ironic that you disparage the kids experiment clearly as high school stuff, when they have a more rigorous process than this guy who you give credibility as a Phd.
***sameer*** Well.. I never gave credibility to Emoto as PHD…I have never said that Emoto is a PHD and that’s why one should believe in it.. Raza..can you just explain me one thing why are praising the school experiment so much… what is reason..how have you evaluated them that they are true to every word … I just need to know your evaluation criteria …it again seem to me more like that randy moore argument that you withdrew when I told you that the guy is a fraud…ironically..you never talked about him again..
I have wrote enough..and have spent a lot of time on it..now there is something remaing…and that is the reply to your comment called “THE FINAL REPLY” I will write it in someother Farigh time…and It may take me weeks to avail such an oppertunity..so be patient till then…let me complete it all and then we can see what you say..i hope you wont chicken out at that time…
oh, i thought world/word war 1 was over...
u ppl are hopeless and helpless!!
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