illuminating science

So, at long last, here’s my summary of the “What the bleep do we know?!” panel session last week. The deal was that in exchange for pizza from the world famous (okay, I made that up) Pizza Caffe, I would be part of a question and answer session after the Sunday session. For the record, I agreed to this before I saw the movie, but I would still have done it - I felt I owed it to the public to debunk some of these myths!

So, on the panel was Chris, who’d studied theology and had some really interesting things to say, as I’ll mention. There was me, the token physicist, and then there were two others from SLAM, the “Spirituality, Leadership and Management” network. One of them, who I’ll call Deidri, claimed to have previously undergone a “quantum experience” much like Amanda, the main character from the movie. The other was, I think, involved in counselling (through SLAM).

We all got to introduce ourselves The first question from the audience was directed at me, asking about my opinion on the physics in the brain portrayed in the movie. I was a bit flustered, partially from nerves, and partially because the movie didn’t talk about any physics in the brain, just biology. So I didn’t give a particularly good answer, instead commenting on minor things which I knew they’d got incorrect. As I spoke, I realised that eyes were narrowing all around the room and the penny dropped - this was not a statistically normal audience! In fact, nearly everyone there (if not all) were staunch believers in the movie. Uh oh. Guess who’s already on the back foot.

So, I shut up for a little bit, and let other have their say and tried to get a feel for the crowd. At one point, one woman from the audience started talking about how important it was that they take the messages from this movie and make them part of our schools, our government, our policies, etc, etc. I refrained from screaming, and the finger nail punctures on my palms are healing quite well, thank you. I interjected a few small things along the way, putting in the physicist’s perspective.

Finally, they got onto the subject of creating reality (ala the quantum mechanical idea of “collapsing” the wave function, and changing the state of the world by observations). One guy from the audience confirmed that he wholeheartedly believed that man could walk on water if everyone believed strongly enough [Sexism is verbatim!]. My silent was response was that if more people believed they could walk on water, population growth would become a thing of the past.

The clincher came when Deidre said that women who go for mammograms, and the doctors examining them, are looking for cancer cells - and so what do they find? Cancer cells. The implication of this being, we create the cancer cells because we’re looking for them. At this point, I was openly shaking my head with a horrified look on my face, as were others around the room (thank goodness!). I’m willing to consider (or tolerate…) all sorts of mystical mumbo jumbo, but when you started advising people not to have cancer screenings, that’s just plain dangerous and loony. And this is the sort of thing they want to be national policy?!

Fortunately, at this point Chris (the theologian) stepped in, and said, although more eloquently, something along the lines of “Positive thinking is very important, but I don’t think it’s enough. We need to take action as well - like supporting Oxfam, Community Aid Abroad.” He recommended using the movie as motivation to think more about the state of the world and fellow humans, and from there set out to improve things. I thought that was an excellent point, and the most sensible thing I heard all night. Positive thinking might enable us to take action, but it doesn’t do anything by itself!

He also said he wasn’t really qualified to talk about quantum mechanics, which was the opening I needed. Before Deidre could get the microphone, I said:

“I just wanted to clarify something here. I’m not saying anything about the spiritual messages in the movie - I’m not qualified to say they’re right or wrong, and I actually think there were some very interesting discussions there. But what I can tell you is that quantum mechanics isn’t ready to explain those things. At best, it can say the movie wasn’t absolutely impossible.

The big problem is that you’re borrowing words from quantum mechanics like “quantum field”, “measurement” and “the observer”, which have very specific meanings, and trying to them in a “loose” way. Talking about “antigravity magnets” and “zero point energy” and “bio-body suits” - all these terms mean very specific things to a physicist, and they don’t make sense in this context - a physicist will just laugh! What we’ve really got is a communication problem, and we need both sides to learn to understand and appreciate the language of the other, so that we can explore things like the role of quantum mechanics in consciousness, and get some useful dialogues going.”

I was gratified to see people nodding and appreciating what I’d said - this was a point I thought to be very important, and had planned to say before I came, so hopefully, they’ll think at least a little about the truth or otherwise of the movie’s physics. I also had a chance to speak about scientific process - mainly that the “experts” in the movie are very much in the minority, and the idea that emotions can change the type of crystals that water forms. In these experiments, things like “I love you” or “I hate you” are written on test tubes of water, which are frozen and examined under a high powered microscope. Sure enough, the nice messages produce nice crystals, and the nasty message produce horrid ones. While it’s possible that this is a real effect, far more likely is that the experimenters were looking for a certain type of crystal, and found what they sought - it’s called selection bias, and can only be solved with a blind test, where the researcher doesn’t know what’s on each tube (which wasn’t done).

One guy from the audience stood up and said “I agree with you, Joel. The water doesn’t care about our emotions!” I’m ecstatic at this point - I got through to someone! Then he continued: “Water is wonderful in that it doesn’t “judge” us. Water is passive and timeless, and it can’t feel the positive or negative aspects of our emotions - only we decide what’s good and bad.” And so on.

In the end, I don’t think I had a significant impact on most people - everyone knew what they wanted to believe, and weren’t going to be swayed. In some ways, it doesn’t matter - the physics wasn’t the important part for their beliefs (if you want to trust a 35,000 year old spirit, then that’s your choice). But it’s also frustrating - I would have liked to convince them that the physics from the movie was downright wrong, but they wanted to believe it was right, that the establishment was wrong, full of pig-headed, stubborn old scientists who won’t open their mind. But I think a few people, maybe just a couple of them, heard what I was trying to say, and might think critically about the inevitable sequel. And that’s good enough for me - a night well spent.

The most telling point, however, is that they’re organising another session next Tuesday. They’re even flying over the director, and they’re bringing back the SLAM people. But guess who didn’t get an invite? Guess a negative review doesn’t sell tickets… Ah well - no-one ever said being a physicist was a glamorous job!