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COPYRIGHT 2004 Heldref Publications
[Editor's Note: In the following exchange. John Boersma critiques William A. Tiller's piece from the previous issue, "Toward a Society with Strong Hybrid Outer and Inner Technology" (ReVision, Winter 2004), and Tiller offers a response. ReVision hopes to include more such exchanges in the future. If a piece in this journal provokes or inspires you (or both), send a response to rev@heldref.org.]
John Boersma
Experimental Results
For me, the experimental results are the most interesting part of the paper. Tiller's significant results could be fairly easy to attempt to replicate, with a little more information. Perhaps the details of his experiments are available in Tiller's many other publications.
First, although the description of the experiment is a bit vague, it seems that Tiller sits in some meditative state with a device termed an intention imprinted electrical device (lIED). From various references throughout the paper, I believe the lIED is some type of low power radio in a plastic case. However, I am unsure whether there are other electronics besides the radio meant to capture the effects of the meditation. I do not know why this device is not more clearly described, because this seems important. Tiller also fails to clearly explain what he means by meditative state. Perhaps it is a visualization of the desired effect (raising pH level, for example), but again, this is not fully described.
The IIED is then shipped to another location, where it is turned on and placed with some target material or creatures in an electrically isolating chamber. Compared with various control situations, the IIED is claimed to induce changes in the materials, such as increased pH in water or reduced fly larvae development time.
This result, if true, would be a big deal, of course. Tiller's claims are far from vague or subjective, and assuming Tiller's precise methods can be made clear, the experiment can and should be replicated by others in double-blind tests.
A long, hairy history of claims of this type proving to be impossible to confirm unfortunately exists. I do not suggest that this is the case here--but it has happened enough to suggest skepticism. It would be better to have two groups claim the same effect over a period of time.
I say over a period of time because anomalous events also have had a mysterious way of disappearing under scrutiny. The classic example is the ESP experiments of J. B. Rhine in the 1930s. At first, the effect was...
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