What the Bleep makes its UK debut soon and gets slated by my old New Scientist mucker Marcus Chown.
One thing the movie claims (among many other ludicrous things) is that loving thoughts make for beautifully symmetric crystals whereas asymmetric and ugly crystals form from polluted water, or water that has been “subjected to” unhappy thoughts.
It’s obviously pseudoscientific claptrap, linking spirituality, consciousness, and quantum mechanics, but crystallographer Rick Bagshaw of the University of Toronto admits that “the more you swear at uncrystallized samples, the worse the outcome.” So, his negative empirical evidence almost backs up the film!
Of course, a deficit of crystallisation is the last thing a crystallographer needs, so Bagshaw has adopted “a more loving tone” for the sake of crystal growth.
I’m going to keep a check on Bagshaw’s publication frequency to see whether bigging up his crystals leads to bigger crystals.