Deleted the previous comment as it was a clever bit of spam in disguise.

Actually it wasn’t spam, though I`ll keep the clever part.

To keep you happy I will repost without any links

I have a qlink pendant, and am awaiting the order of an ally.

I sought out the qlink initially because I became very sick from being exposed to a tremendous amount of EMF.  Specifically I was working at a place where my office was located adjacent to where 8 high voltage power lines were coming into the building, and we had a company located above us that tested military communication gear (UHV, VHF, Radar, Microwave, SHF, etc...).

Within 3 months of work I began to experience a lot of health problems, anxiety attacks, blood sugar regulation problems, CFS and symptoms of fibromyalgia.

Then one day I was sitting at my desk and blacked out completely.

When I came to I went to the hospital and was told that I had experienced a vasal vagal episode...meaning that my heart went gunga-fuck.

This is when I actually looked into things and figured out what was causing all the trouble.

Turns out that if you are in a strong EMF field it can actually mess with the regulation of your heart rate.

I got a company to come in and measure all the levels (low frequency and high frequency) and they determined that I was sitting in a field greater than 400 mili gauss (the meter only read up to 400).

So I quit working there, and got better but was experiencing very high sensitivity to electronic fields.

So I decided to see what I could find on the interweb to help me out, I landed at a qlink site in Canada, and figured that it was at least worth a try.

I am happy to report that though I am NOT 100% better now, my quality of life is substantially better.

I had previously alluded to the movie “what the bleep do we know, further down the rabbit hole” and the work of William Tiller.

Tiller and his associates had a group of meditation gurus work with a qlink ally and send intention to it to change the pH of water.

And it actually worked.

You can download the research papers from his website.

I think a healthy bit of skepticism is important in life, because there is a lot of snake oil out there, but you are being very naive if you think that what we know today is all there is to know.

An awful lot of claims with nothing to back it up there, “Jim.” I’ve seen the movie What The Bleep Do We Know and found it to be pretty stunningly stupid despite all the techno-babble about quantum mechanics. It struck me as being in a similar vein to all the crap spewed by Deepak Chopra. At best it’s pseudo-science and at worst it’s nonsense.

I’m curious about something: If you’re really as sensitive to EMF fields as you claim you are and one of around 400 milligauss was enough to make you sick then how do you survive at all considering that the Earth’s magnetic field can range from 300 to 650 milligauss on its own? Don’t ever get an MRI then as that’ll expose you to fields ranging from 2000 – 30000 Gauss and probably make your head explode if you’re really that sensitive.

I’m also familiar with the works of William Tiller who seems like he’s never met a woo-woo idea he couldn’t buy into. This part of your comment made me literally laugh out loud:

Tiller and his associates had a group of meditation gurus work with a qlink ally and send intention to it to change the pH of water.

And it actually worked.

Did it now? And what known scientific principles are at play in that process? How does it in any way prove that it’ll protect you from EMF fields?

And, yes, I’ve looked at the supposed studies on the Qlink website as have others and they seem impressive until you actually sit down and take a closer look.

I think a healthy bit of skepticism is important in life, because there is a lot of snake oil out there, but you are being very naive if you think that what we know today is all there is to know.

Ah the old “you’re naive if you think we know all there is to know” line. A favorite of sellers of craptastic products the world over. For someone who thinks healthy skepticism is important in life you sure do seem to be lacking it.

No one is claiming we know today all there is to know — there’d be no reason to have scientists at all if that were the case —that doesn’t mean we should buy into every scientific sounding idea that comes along either. Especially when those concepts violate well established scientific principles or involve wildly divergent phenomena that haven’t been shown to actually exist.

Until you can come up with more than just anecdotes and wild claims, “Jim”, I’ve got no reason to think this product isn’t just a big waste of money that people should avoid.

Though your point is valid about the presence of natural EMF on the earth (and that which comes from the cosmos), you fail to make the distinction between the frequencies of these fields.

There is a tremendous difference between a 400 milligauss field at 60Hz (power line) and one at 7.83Hz (Schumann Resonance Frequency).

Or how about one at 2.4Ghz which happens to be exactly the right frequency to make water molecules spin - and transfer all that energy via friction to cook up your meals in a microwave.

Contrary to what your cell phone provider wants you to hear in the media, it has been proven that cell phones break apart DNA.

The “Truth” is that there are some frequencies that foster positive growth and others that do the exact opposite.

It is true that we have evolved in an environment that has included a lot of EMF, but it has not been until the advent of the technological revolution that many more areas of the Electromagnetic Spectrum began to bombard us.

Perhaps all the qlink does is provide a vehicle for a placebo effect, but it turns out that these “subject-expectancy effects” can have a real and dramatic influence.

Maybe you would like to explain to me how the placebo effect is not real either?

Seems to me that setting an intention results in a “subject-expectancy effect”, which was exactly what Tiller and his subjects did in the experiment mentioned in “what the bleep do we know”.

Jim, you’re a schmuck.

I could spend time pulling up research and refuting your idiotic claims one-by-one, but I’m not going to. Do you know why?

Because you’re a schmuck. One of the famed tin foil hat brigade. A complete and total smeghead.

Have a nice life, stay out of moving traffic and try not think too hard, you’ll melt your brain.

KPG:

On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets

Idiotic claims?

Ummmm yeah, all frequencies are the same right?

Microwaves do not actually spin water molecules?

Thank you for validating my point with your lack of a real response.

I am not going to engage in a personal attack upon yourself, but thank you for displaying your level of maturity.

If you are so sure that setting an intention has zero effect why dont you keep repeating the following affirmation over and over again, with conviction, and see how good you begin to feel:

“I am a total and complete waste of skin, the negativity that I spread out into the world is manifesting as cancer in my body, I feel sicker and sicker by the moment. Everyone in my life is distancing themselves from me, I will never feel loved.”

If what I am saying has no validity than surely this will not take the spring out of your step.

Just to add fuel to the fire I think now would be a great time to bring up the work of Dr. Masaru Emoto, I am sure you have happened upon it before so I`ll save the explanation.

BTW it has been proven that tin foil hats actually amplify EMF, so no I do not wear one.

Jim, your brain doesn’t work properly. Your logic doesn’t track. I’m not going to waste my time point-by-pointing you, because you won’t pay any attention anyway.

However, a few select points…

Jimbo: Contrary to what your cell phone provider wants you to hear in the media, it has been proven that cell phones break apart DNA.

If you’re going to discuss science, you should learn the difference between the words “proven” and “claimed”.

You can follow the claims and the studies by looking here, but if you’re too lazy, I’ll quote the summation for you:

EHSO has seen no credible evidence to date that cell phones cause cancer or brain tumors.  It is illogical to believe that evidence of unusual brain tumors is covered up when there are hundred’s of millions of people using cell phones worldwide. There is a TREMENDOUS amount of junk science and thoroughly ignorant (as in untrained, uneducated) people running around naming themselves as experts and publishing their opinions on the internet. This hype and fear-mongering has only one goal: to puff up the egos and wallets of those propagating nonsense.

Billy Joe Jimbob: Just to add fuel to the fire I think now would be a great time to bring up the work of Dr. Masaru Emoto

Why? He’s a quack with absolutely nothing to back up his ridiculous claims, much like you. The great James Randi has more than dealt with this particular goofball in his newsletter, which you can find here. The bit on Emoto starts about a third down the page.

Slim Jim: Microwaves do not actually spin water molecules?

Uh, yeah, that’s basically how a microwave oven works. What’s your point?

Jimmy The Simp: Perhaps all the qlink does is provide a vehicle for a placebo effect, but it turns out that these “subject-expectancy effects” can have a real and dramatic influence.

Yes, there is a placebo effect. No, it’s not a good reason to buy a watch. What the fuck is wrong with you, anyway? You’ve just said it’s all right for a company to lie to you and sell you something that doesn’t do a fucking thing, as long as it makes you feel better.

Tell you what JimmyJoe, I heard someone tell someone else once that semen can prevent cancer. So get out there and buy yourself some kneepads, okay?

Jim is back to play some more…

Though your point is valid about the presence of natural EMF on the earth (and that which comes from the cosmos), you fail to make the distinction between the frequencies of these fields.

There is a tremendous difference between a 400 milligauss field at 60Hz (power line) and one at 7.83Hz (Schumann Resonance Frequency).

Not really. The only difference is in the oscillation rate, neither is high enough to break molecular bonds nor is either high enough to produce any significant amount of heat.

Or how about one at 2.4Ghz which happens to be exactly the right frequency to make water molecules spin - and transfer all that energy via friction to cook up your meals in a microwave.

Microwave ovens operate at around 2450 MHz. There’s certainly a big difference between 60MHz and 2450MHz, but even that is non-ionizing radiation and less frequency than visible light.

Contrary to what your cell phone provider wants you to hear in the media, it has been proven that cell phones break apart DNA.

I’ll note that you didn’t bother to provide said proof.

The cellular band is in the 835 MHz to 880 MHz, PCS is 1850 to 1990 MHz, and AWS bands are 1710-1755 MHz and 2110-2155 MHz. We’re reaching into the lowest end of microwaves with the AWS band, but still well below visible light which is in the Petahertz (10^¹⁵ Hz) range. Microwaves are not capable of breaking up DNA, you have to move into the range of Ultraviolet (10^¹⁶ Hz) light and higher for that.

You risk causing more DNA damage by sitting out in the sun than by using a cellphone.

It is true that we have evolved in an environment that has included a lot of EMF, but it has not been until the advent of the technological revolution that many more areas of the Electromagnetic Spectrum began to bombard us.

That’s complete bullshit. The sun itself emits electromagnetic radiation across the entire spectrum along with every other star in the Universe. One only need turn a radio to an unused frequency to hear the naturally occurring radio waves of the Universe. True the atmosphere does absorb or scatter some of it, but there’s still plenty that reaches the Earth’s surface. Additionally there are natural sources of the entire spectrum right on the planet.

It’d be correct to say that since the industrial revolution we now have more occasion to be in close proximity to some ranges of the EM spectrum, but to imply that we had no exposure to some ranges prior to that is just nonsense.

Perhaps all the qlink does is provide a vehicle for a placebo effect, but it turns out that these “subject-expectancy effects” can have a real and dramatic influence.

Maybe you would like to explain to me how the placebo effect is not real either?

The placebo effect is real, but it won’t cure cancer and if all it takes is a gimmicky bit of crappy jewelry to make you feel better then you’d do just as well to buy something from your local WalMart.

Seems to me that setting an intention results in a “subject-expectancy effect”, which was exactly what Tiller and his subjects did in the experiment mentioned in “what the bleep do we know”.

Wow. What a revelation: If someone expects to feel better then they’ll end up feeling better. Of course if there was nothing wrong with them in the first place then they probably need a good counselor more than a crappy bit of jewelry.

If you are so sure that setting an intention has zero effect why dont you keep repeating the following affirmation over and over again

Oh boy, now we’re getting into affirmations. Is there any metaphysical woo-woo you don’t buy into Jim?

Just to add fuel to the fire I think now would be a great time to bring up the work of Dr. Masaru Emoto, I am sure you have happened upon it before so I`ll save the explanation.

Yeah I’ve heard of him. The “Dr.” who found that words written on glass jars of water that were frozen would impact how the resulting ice crystals formed; beautiful crystals for positive words and ugly ones for negative words. Pretty funny stuff.

James Randi did a write up on him back in 2003:

Then he really got into the swing of pseudoscience, simplifying matters by just writing words — in any language, of course — on pieces of paper and taping them to a clear glass container to see if anything happened. Positive words like “love” and “thank you” produced beautiful and delicate crystalline patterns, we’re told. He tried “You Make Me Sick. I Will Kill You” and he observed distorted, frightening, muddied patterns. We show here the pattern produced by this last phrase. He even experimented with names like “Gandhi,” “Mother Teresa,” and “Hitler,” and the same kind of results occurred. Wow, again!

And, not to our surprise, Dr. Emoto discovered that the water crystals dutifully form up in response to different ethnic versions of the languages impressed upon them. Here’s the expression “thank you” in both Japanese and English. You can see the distinct variations, can’t you?

Well, if that didn’t convince you that Dr. Emoto might not have both oars in the water, try this, a quotation from him in answer to his thoughts on what the crystals are: “I came to the realization that these crystals are spirits.” Okay. Where’s the door…?

Crystals are spirits, eh Jim? Do you spend your days talking to your beverages before you consume them to be sure you’ll get nothing but Happy Water in your system to help that Qlink do its job better?

Somehow it wouldn’t surprise me if you did.

Happened upon your fine work here, wondering if you can help me out.

Since your obviously one of the few with a LSB (large sized brain), perhaps you can shine some light on some of the following items which some of my colleagues are spending there time and effort on when they could be helping to build better meaner weapons of mass destruction.

Why does homeopathy work?
(Inflammation Research, vol 53, p 181)

Why does the placebo effect work?
(Nature Neuroscience, vol 7, p 587)

There is obviously a good scientific explanation for these “anomalies”, and I am sure you are man enough for the job.

Again thank-you for the work that you do, you are a gift to humanity.

Why does homeopathy work?
(Inflammation Research, vol 53, p 181)

Why does the placebo effect work?
(Nature Neuroscience, vol 7, p 587)

Just a complete shot in the dark (like should happen to you) could homeopathy be a placebo.  I am typing this slowly so you can keep up.

However, if you are completely happy homeopathy works I have some homeopathic wine- a c30 wine at a 1:1000 concentration. please be careful as one thimbleful (5cc) may be equivalent to 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Litres (1,200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons)

Darryl Gupta asks…

Why does homeopathy work?
(Inflammation Research, vol 53, p 181)

It doesn’t.

Why does the placebo effect work?
(Nature Neuroscience, vol 7, p 587)

There’s a lot of different theories, but no one’s nailed that one down yet. Tor Wager’s been working on that one for years.

See wikipedia on placebos. If wikipedia is to be believed, this is interesting:

However, the most recent research indicates that the placebo effect may not be real. In May 2001 the New England Journal of Medicine published a study by researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the Nordic Cochrane Center, Rigshopitalet, in Denmark. They were attempting to determine how powerful the placebo effect actually was. From 727 studies they focused on 114 to test pharmacological, physical and psychological placebos involving 7,500 patients. These studies tested medicine, placebo, and no treatment at all (that is, they merely monitored the patient). Doctors know that about 35% of patients given a placebo will be cured. The conventional wisdom was that the placebo “helps the patient cure themselves.” However, these researchers found that those not given any treatment at all also were cured at about the same rate as the placebo groups, and that this was statistically significant. (They found that placebos DID have a somewhat beneficial effect, but only for pain control.) The authors wrote, “We found little evidence in general that placebos had powerful clinical effects.” Thus, placebos are generally ineffective as a medical treatment, and the study recommended that placebos NOT be prescribed as treatment. Conventional medicine has apparently still not responded to the results of this research as yet.

It’s all in the head, eh. A bit farther down in the article, another good point: In clinical trials, if possible you want to test patients receiving the active ingredient and the placebo in a double-blind study, but you also want the natural history, as in no treatment at all, as a baseline.

It’s up to the supporters of homeopathy to do reproducible clinical trials that are free of procedural errors and show that homeopathic “remedies” perform better than placebos or no treatment and at that, outperform them well outside the statistical margin of error.

Once that hurdle is cleared, it’s up to the supporters to show exactly how homeopathy works. If such an explanation requires rewriting fundamental parts of natural sciences, I’d be rather inclined to look for flaws in the trial rather than rush to rewrite science.

Oh, and Darryl - are you a gift to the subset of humanity we call quacks?

Placebos might psychologically trigger a chemical release, which might alleviate the symptons

Darryl -I think to look at homeopathy you need to look at what chemicals it’s providing to the body (as well as the placebo thing). Natural chemicals tend to be stereochemically pure because biological systems are stereospecific, and for this reason there was a time (before synthetic chemists knew of chirality) when the natural source of the chemical was more effective with fewer side effects. Nowadays we identify and isolate the active ingredient, devise a stereospecific synthesis and produce it in bulk - we can nowadays match nature at medicine if we can find a synthesis - synthetic chemists can use a broader range of chemicals and conditions than nature but often hasn’t the advantage of enzymes + other biomolecules, though there is a movement to incorporate them in, they tend to be relitively difficult and expensive to isolate with any purity (they degrade easily)

KPG - you gave me an idea: Jimbob Squarepants

I think to look at homeopathy you need to look at what chemicals it’s providing to the body

Pure water.

Pure water

Not so sure that’s a good thing.  After all, Di-hydrogen monoxide is produced by coal-burning power plants, and has been found in our lakes and streams, and even in mother’s milk.

Someone once said the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math.  Maybe homeopathy is medicine for people who are bad at math.

Not so sure that’s a good thing.

It can kill you if ingest too much of it.

DoF: Not so sure that’s a good thing.  After all, Di-hydrogen monoxide is produced by coal-burning power plants, and has been found in our lakes and streams, and even in mother’s milk

I’ve heard it’s also a major component of acid rain

I just clicked ‘Darryl Gupta’ and found he has a @harvard.edu address.
I was always under the impression you had to be pretty bright to get there.
I was always under the impression placebo effects were effective.
I was always under the impression homeopathy effects were effective.
Three myths blown out of the water with one shot. 

Once that hurdle is cleared, it’s up to the supporters to show exactly how homeopathy works. If such an explanation requires rewriting fundamental parts of natural sciences, I’d be rather inclined to look for flaws in the trial rather than rush to rewrite science.

Um… why?

If the homeopathic remedies do actually work, they work, whether we understand them or not. It would be better if we knew, but if the sort of normal drug testing was to put them ahead of the pack, it doesn’t actually matter.  There are plenty of things that we don’t know how they work, doesn’t stop them working- sub-atomic physics springs to mind. As a wise man once said to me in his little leaflet of religeous commandments

Thou shalt not attempt to reconcile quantum mechanics with classical physics

If water can memorize the activity of molecules with which it has been in contact, then we’re all in trouble.  Because most of the water we drink, wherever we get it, has been in contact with some nasty stuff at one time or another.

On the other hand, there may be advantages.  A believer in homeopathy should be able to take a small amount of whiskey, mix it in water, take a small amount of that water and mix again, and again many times, and get totally plastered drinking the resulting homeopathic whiskey.  One bottle of the full-strength stuff would last you a lifetime.

Um… why?

You do know how homeopathic “remedies” are supposed to work?

I know the ‘theory’ (in a non scientific usage). However history is full of science that works, but not in the way mankind thought. Pholegston for instance. The hypothesis explained the observations of the time, but was wrong. 

If the Homeopathy works, it will do so independently of what the believed explanation is. This of course is all academic. It doesn’t work.

A believer in homeopathy should be able to take a small amount of whiskey, mix it in water, take a small amount of that water and mix again, and again many times, and get totally plastered drinking the resulting homeopathic whiskey.

No, that would be the homeopathic version of “pass the breathalizer"…