THE ONE ABOUT MAGIC WATER
On this summer's hottest new drink: H3O2
Every now and again you come across a piece of science reporting so wild that even calling it science reporting is an affront to every hard working scientist, communicator and journalist today.
This is one of those times.
This is the one about one of Australia’s biggest mastheads running a silly little piece on “structured water” — and what we can learn from it.
Here’s what happened.
ON SUNDAY MORNING, I came across a tweet by Stuart Khan, a civil/environmental engineer at the University of New South Wales.
Not sure you need more explanation than that, but let’s focus in on that wonderful headline:
Better than tap? The science behind ‘structured water’
This is a paywalled article at the Sydney Morning Herald, listed in the masthead’s “Lifestyle > Health & wellness” section and, as the piece says right at the top, it features in the Herald’s Sunday lifestyle insert “Sunday Life” (I’ve already written lifestyle too much in this newsletter, sorry)
Usually I wouldn’t dive into these pages looking for science reporting, but this lifestyle article features the word “scientists” in its very first paragraph! And it discusses structured water which is also known as “hexagonal water” or “H3O2” or, to many scientists “utter bullshit” … but let’s get to this piece.
It follows up its first sentence with this absolute ripper of a line:
We’re all familiar with water’s three phases – liquid, ice, and vapour – but some experts are talking about a fourth phase. The new kid on the block, they say, is structured water (also known as vortexed or hexagonal water, exclusion zone or H302), which has a gel-like form and is inside our cells.
Wow! First of all, I hate using the idiom of “new kid on the block” here. Second: What a claim! Surely one of these experts will be referenced in the… oh, yep, here we go. The second paragraph…
In this spot we get commentary from a gentleman named Rob Gourlay, who is listed in the piece as “an expert in biological research and water-structure science.” It’s unclear exactly how Gourlay became an expert in either of these things or if this a very exclusive pool, but his ResearchGate profile shows exactly 4 publications and they’re all about soil (and all from 1994).
What the piece doesn’t say is Rob Gourlay is a “water diviner” or “dowser” or “water warlock” who recently won the award for NSW Dowser of the Year in 2020 (which, yes, is a real thing1)
For the uninitiated, a water diviner isn’t just the bloke from that 2014 Russell Crowe film, but a person who walks around with a couple of sticks or two pieces of wire to try and discover reserves of groundwater. With these wire rods in hand, they stumble around a paddock and wait for them to cross. Then, eureka! Water!
There’s no scientific basis to water divining except vibes, hunny but it’s one of the most pervasive little pieces of pseudoscientific nonsense that periodically rears its magical head. It even tripped up a former head of CSIRO, Larry Marshall, in 2014. He won the Bent Spoon award from the Australian Skeptics for going on radio and publicly endorsing the practice that year.2
What’s interesting is Gourlay also runs a company called MEA Water, which sells a device that turns normal water into “structured water” (or its branding “Magnetised, Energised and Activated”). At that website, which is full of pseudoscientific babble, you can purchase the device and learn about the company but I simply would not do that if I was you.
JFC.
The SMH piece also gets a second expert in… a man named Gerald Pollack, who holds a key position at the University of Washington. Pollack has written about a fourth state of water he calls “exclusion-zone (EZ) water.” However, many have critiqued his papers and his work on EZ water and chemists, in particular, have concluded its largely nonsense.
But what’s most wild about this piece is the author: Joanna Webber. A quick Google will show you that Jo Webber is the name of the “Media Relations Officer” for Phi’on Elements of Life — and what company is that?
Oh… only the company that Rob Gourlay runs to sell his MEA Water device.
I can’t be sure this is the author but it’s a pretty crazy coincidence isn’t it? Hahahah. Ahhhhhhhhhhh.
I’m not sure what is going on at the Sydney Morning Herald and why this isn’t clearly marked as coming from the MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICER of a company where Gourlay is the CHIEF SCIENTIST.
But there is a lesson here!
It shows two things: The idea of expertise can be misused in pieces like this, using science as a cover. It’s important to take a second look at those who are given that tag when you’re reading scientific reporting. Gourlay invokes pseudoscience and Pollack — though he has maintained a position at the University of Washington — has consistently spouted theories about another state of water that haven’t ever been validated by other scientists.
And, damn, check the authors, too. I can’t believe this is published in a newspaper (PRINT) and online without a single word about the author’s background? That is, at best, a silly little error and, at worst, deliberately deceptive.
Don’t forget to hydrate.
Updated Aug. 3: I note the original SMH article has been deleted from the website. I have not seen any correction made. I also just cleaned up some grammar. Thanks for reading!
FYI: I’ll start dropping these newsletters on Monday morning going forward. Settle in with a coffee and toast or whatever morning treat you like. If you enjoy this, please share it with your friends — it’s maybe helpful?!? That’s all I can claim to be.
And if you’re here for the first time, well…
This week’s header image is from Agnes Catlow’s Drops of Water, available on Public Domain Review
Gourlay penned a long piece for the Dowsers Society of NSW at the end of 2021 (PDF) which serves as an explainer of his methods…
You can find all the winners of that award here.