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Over the past few months a number of people (who don't know each other) have been telling me that I should try a "power of thoughts" experiment that's also known as "the rice experiment." They're confident, that through this experiment, I'll "see the light" of how thought can affect our physical world despite my skepticism.

In searching YouTube, I found a number of videos about this by searching for "rice experiment," such as this one:

  Rice Hado Experiment Masaru Emoto

The experiment

The idea is to set up two jars containing some cooked rice, and then, every day, say only nice and encouraging things to one jar of rice, and insulting and hateful things to the other jar of rice.

enter image description here

After a certain period of time (which seems to vary from months to years), the jar with the "hated" rice should be the only one that goes bad and rots.

  Positive Thinking Power - The Rice Experiment
  More Evidence From Dr Masaru Emoto On The Power Of Thoughts

Slightly more recent experiment
Day 30
Day 55
Day 147

My question

Are there credible studies that prove or disprove this? Any explanation of what might actually be going on here (e.g., why the "hated" jar of rice goes bad earlier) would also be interesting.

Oddthinking
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Randolf Richardson
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    My initial inclination would be to say that ONLY the people who have the "hated" rice go bad first report it, and all the "loved" rice that goes bad isn't mentioned. But that's just my cynicism. – Larian LeQuella Nov 13 '11 at 04:18
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    I love how the *evidence* they show is only the endpoint pictures... – nico Nov 13 '11 at 12:33
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    I just stumbled across this as the first result after searching and the person who posted it is clearly in denial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJkxd5sK67o The person who posted the video is claiming that the Positive rice had barely changed, which is obviously BS because the Positive rice is also filled with black spots, just not as centralized as the Negative rice. People believe what they want to believe. – going Nov 14 '11 at 00:52
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    Do you have to open the jar while speaking to the rice? In which language does the rice listen to you? Is this already used by the military? – user unknown Nov 14 '11 at 08:38
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    as it is an incredible claim, no credible scientist is going to sully his name by studying it :) – jwenting Nov 14 '11 at 11:11
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    How is this a thought experiment? It sounds like a speech experiment. – Flimzy Nov 14 '11 at 15:17
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    Do you spit at the hated rice before you seal the jar? – Jonas Nov 14 '11 at 16:19
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    I can't find the link right now, but a little while ago Rebecca Watson duplicated a similar experiment on vegetables. Tomatoes, I think it was. She was unable to reproduce the effect. – Simon Nov 14 '11 at 18:55
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    I am looking forward to someone shutting this down *hard*, I just don't have the energy for it myself. – Alain Nov 15 '11 at 18:06
  • @Alain: _Gee, that's not very positive! ;-D_ I'm looking forward to that too, actually. I couldn't find any studies about this sort of thing (it doesn't have to be rice, it could be any type of food). – Randolf Richardson Nov 15 '11 at 19:55
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    The entire idea is debunked nicely in this forum by many people using grassroots skepticism: http://sciencefocus.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=1646. The basic point is - there is absolutely no mechanism by which a persons thoughts could modify water or rice rot or anything else, and there are tons of ways to explain why anecdotal experiments claiming they can pop up all over the internet. No respectable scientist would waste their time or money sealing 200 jars of rice in water and yell at half of them each day to just show that the outcome is 50/50. – Alain Nov 15 '11 at 20:09
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    @Alain: I like that as an answer especially because you point out the lack of telekinesis (and I'd like to mark that as the Accepted Answer should you ever post it). – Randolf Richardson Nov 15 '11 at 20:53
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    @RandolfRichardson Alright, I found the energy to shut this down hard :p – Alain Nov 16 '11 at 14:02
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    I propose an alternate testing method, seal the rice with enough antibacterial/antifungals inside it. Then do the words things. Lets see if negative thoughts can cause life to form from nothing in the presence of antiseptic and antifungal solutions. If yes, then we have something to discuss. Otherwise this is mumbo jumbo. – picakhu Nov 16 '11 at 17:54
  • @picakhu: Or, perhaps the jar receiving the "good thoughts" will overcome the effects of the bacteria? But this methodology is flawed because many people actually enjoy eating mushrooms and don't consider them "evil" or "bad." Maybe the bacteria would need to be based on evil mushrooms (e.g., a poisonous sub-species that has no health benefits, although that may still be arbitrary)? **Thanks, to everyone, for your great comments -- you've all made this interesting and enjoyable.** – Randolf Richardson Nov 16 '11 at 18:11
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    If a friend of you who believes in pseudoscience values the empriric method you should take him up on the offer to run the experiment with him. Maybe one of you will learn something. – Christian Nov 16 '11 at 18:19
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    How does one make sure the hate rice doesn't hear messages intended for the love rice? Is rice's sense of hearing better or worse then human's sense of hearing? What about if there is a fight in the room where the rice is stored? – Sam I Am Nov 16 '11 at 19:04
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    No matter the outcome of this experiment, it's always gonna validate the hypothesis. If the love jar goes bad, it's because the bacteria and fungus absorbed the love and grew. If the hate jar stays good it's because the bacteria and fungus absorbed the hate and died. – Zano Nov 17 '11 at 11:00
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    @Flimzy : The title was ambiguous, I changed it because I also misread it: it meant "[power of thought] experiments" ('thought' is a noun) while we read "power of [thought experiments]" ('thought' is an adjective of 'experiment') (the later is totally undisputed, but the article is not about that). – leonbloy Jan 13 '14 at 15:22
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sbzCaEsHfw Here is a more recent one. He showed day 30, day 55, and 147 if you check out his channel. Problem is that you have no clue if he have tampered with them, or kept all of them neutral. Then there is the original that is done on water by a healer(which makes me very skeptic of this). – Wertilq Jan 25 '14 at 10:43
  • Maybe the simplest thing to do would be to conduct the experiment with a few jars using a double blind method and storing them in the same environment? – Reluctant_Linux_User Dec 03 '14 at 18:56
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    @Reluctant_Linux_User Does "double blind" mean that you need to blind the rice to whether it's being hated? http://xkcd.com/1462/ – ChrisW Jan 28 '15 at 14:50
  • That wouldn't be the ChrisW who used to teach me chemistry would it? I was thinking that you should do it whereby the scientist doesn't know which sample has been "loved" and which "hated" and the person who does the "loving" and "hating" doesn't know what the scientist is testing for. – Reluctant_Linux_User Jan 29 '15 at 01:55
  • I have seen similar claims with plants. http://www.smittenby.net/2014/04/15/science-experiment-power-words/ – Andrew Apr 27 '15 at 21:14

1 Answers1

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This article from The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry attempts to replicate Emoto's experiment in a properly scientifically controlled manner (with some small caveats), reaching an obvious non-replication (none of the rice rotted significantly).

enter image description here

In the end, it appears that Dr. Emoto’s assertion that intention can affect soppy rice doesn’t hold water. I can’t help but wonder if the well-meaning re-creators of this experiment on the internet didn’t help their rice along, exposing the neglected or hated rice to more air, changing the jars around to put them in different temperature or humidity conditions, or performing other tricks in an effort to support a well-intended but ultimately self-evident point: that being ignored or belittled hurts.

The article hypothesises that the reason for the rice turning out the way it did was due to improperly controlled experiments carried out by Emoto.

Apparently, Emoto’s experimental protocols are so lacking as to be unrepeatable, and even the most basic attempts at scientific controls are absent.

March Ho
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