The non-science of Lynne

McTaggart
Filed under: Daily Events, Religion and Philosophy

A friend of mine recommended that I read a book called The Field by Lynne McTaggart, and
referred to the subject matter as thought-provoking, if not life-changing. A cursory
examination of the book on Amazon.com revealed overwhelmingly positive reviews and
similar “life-changing” testimonials. So I obtained The Field for myself, as well as
McTaggart’s more recent book, The Intention Experiment.

The moment I read the back cover of The Field, I knew what I was getting myself into:

Science has recently begun to prove what ancient myth and religion have always espoused:
There may be such a thing as a life force.

Naturally, I become suspicious of a book that demeans and cheapens science by putting
religion on a pedestal, and claiming that “ancient myth” knew something all along that
science is just now discovering.

The idea of “uniting science and spirituality” is nothing new. Whenever a new buzzword gets
coined in science (especially physics), within a month or so, someone will publish a book
relating the buzzword with auras, spirits, energy fields, and how anyone can harness the new
buzzword to improve their health, marriage, and credit rating. The hot topic in this case is the
zero-point field, or more generally, quantum mechanics.

Essentially, both of McTaggart’s books are opinions on various studies and articles published
over the years that, according to McTaggart, show a connection between the will (or
“intention”) of the mind, and physical reality. With the logical agility of an acrobat (albeit a
retarded one), she concludes that, through the effects of quantum mechanics, it’s possible to
influence the world around us using nothing but our intentions, hence the “life-changing”
reviews associated with the books.

To begin, it doesn’t help that McTaggart is an “investigative journalist” (instead of, perhaps, a
physicist?), with no formal training in physics or biology, which are the very subjects she’s
writing about.

Nevertheless, McTaggart digs up an impressive handful of studies whose results are certainly
curious, as long as we interpret the results the way she wants us to. But then, like most other
authors in the genre, she blatantly disregards the vast, overwhelming body of evidence that
proves that people do not have psychic powers, that we cannot move objects with our minds,
and that we cannot change the world through our intention alone.

Even if we suppose that the results cited by McTaggart are in some way anomalous, there’s no
reason to assume that ESP or some other paranormal influence was involved. This kind of
assumption would only be made by someone who is predisposed to believe in such things to
begin with. A competent researcher would instead look for more plausible factors that may
have skewed the results, and inevitably such a factor will eventually be found.
Appeal to Vanity

People like to feel smart. And books like this appeal to this desire. The average casual reader
who is intrigued by quantum physics would love to understand the staggering complexity of
the science surrounding it. If only there was a shortcut to understanding quantum physics at
the same level as the researchers at Cambridge or MIT….

Unfortunately, there is no such shortcut. Anyone who claims to understand quantum

mechanics without any formal training is either misinformed, deluded, or has an agenda.
Quantum physics is an extremely complicated subject. It’s quite possibly the most hard-to-
understand theory in all of science, ever. To even begin to grasp it, one would require several
years of advanced mathematics beyond the undergraduate level, as well as a very firm grasp
of classical physics.

But then, a book like this comes along and suggests that it can make you understand quantum
physics in a paragraph! And not just quantum physics, but how it relates to any number of
completely unrelated topics. It makes the reader exclaim, “Wow, I can understand quantum
physics in a day! Sucks to be the losers who spent so many years actually studying the
subject!”

People also seem to like the fuzzy, addictive feeling of “understanding” or “enlightenment,”
even if the feeling is completely false and unwarranted. Well, books like this do just that —
provide the reader with a feeling of enlightenment without presenting any actual science or
any useful information. The best analogy for this would be mental masturbation — tell the
readers who are likely to believe this stuff exactly what they want to hear, and they’ll eat it up
like candy.

But in the end, after reading this type of book, all the reader “understands” is just a cleverly-
worded regurgitation of the same old pseudo-intellectual nonsense that has no bearing in
reality. It is certainly not quantum mechanics.

Recall Richard Feynman’s famous quote, “If you think you understand quantum theory, you
don’t understand quantum theory.” McTaggart (the investigative journalist) thinks she
understands quantum theory.

Taking Analogies Too Far

Now, to be fair, a lot of scientific concepts, including aspects of quantum theory, can be easily
explained to a layperson using analogies with commonplace objects and phenomena. But any
analogy is liable to be taken a bit too literally.

For example, in electrical engineering it’s a highly useful analogy to compare an electrical
circuit to a system of pipes with water. The flowing water is electrical current, a pump is a
battery, a one-way valve is a diode, a very thin pipe is a resistor, and a tank is a capacitor.
However, if taken too literally, the analogy falls apart. If a pipe cracks, water will leak out of
it; this does not happen in an electrical circuit. Also, the motion of water in a pipe is caused by
the physical pressure of water molecules on each other; in an electrical circuit, the energy is
propagated by fields produced by each electron.
Taking analogies too literally is dangerous, and ultimately paves the way towards
pseudoscience and voodoo. As you may have guessed, McTaggart takes quantum analogies to
the extreme, and beyond.

The biggest error anyone can make in trying to understand quantum mechanics is to make the
extrapolation that, since quantum effects occur on quantum scales, they must also occur on
large scales. They don’t!

For example, in quantum mechanics, the position of a particle is defined by a complex wave
function, the square of which represents a probability density — the “chance” of finding the
particle in a given area of space. A naïve interpretation of this would be that “there’s always a
slight chance of finding any particle at any point in the universe.”

As profound as that may seem, it only applies on a quantum scale. It does not mean that
something as large as a watermelon, or a baseball, or a blood cell can suddenly blink out of
existence and reappear somewhere else in the universe!

Similarly, the concept of quantum superposition refers to the idea that, before a particle is
observed, it exists in a “superposition” of possible states, and only “collapses” to a certain
state once it’s observed. From this, McTaggart makes the generous extrapolation that, since
our mind is “the observer,” we can choose which state something will be in when we observe
it, thereby creating our own reality!

And finally, the zero-point field refers to the nonzero energy of pure vacuum, the existence of
which is a requirement of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. But just because the zero-point
field isn’t fully understood doesn’t mean that it must be the unifying force of all things in the
universe (whatever that means)! And it takes an even greater leap of logic to suggest that our
intentions (patterns of tiny electrical impulses) can have an effect on the zero-point field
anywhere outside of our brain.

Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Pauli, and Planck must all be spinning in their graves — I doubt that
any of them intended for their theories to be so grossly misinterpreted and misapplied. There
is nothing in quantum theory that states that any quantum effects occur on a macroscopic
scale. To state otherwise would be intellectually dishonest.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Here’s where I get a little personal. To an actual scientist, this kind of book is more than just
innocent fun and games — it’s actually insulting; it’s a slap in the face to anyone with the
slightest scientific background. Some say that religion is the enemy of science — well I think
this is way more dangerous than religion. At least religion doesn’t claim to be scientific in
nature. But these “theories” go out of their way to show how they’re “backed up” by science!

So then, what should we tell the thousands of children in the war-torn countries of Africa who
are dying of starvation and disease? Surely they “wish” for food and medicine every minute
of their miserable day; surely they “intend” for a world of love, joy, and prosperity for
themselves, so… where is it? Are they not intending hard enough? How can we, in good
conscience, even entertain such a despicable idea? McTaggart apparently can. The message in
her books is clear: you can intend your world into existence; and if it’s not working, you’re
not intending hard enough.
But did McTaggart “intend” her own prosperity into existence? Of course not! She simply
wrote a bestseller that happens to appeal to the wants, needs, and fears of suckers gullible
enough to believe her.

Here’s a tip: if you have $20 that you don’t need, donate it to a charity of your choice, and let
McTaggart eat a little less caviar for dinner.

All that The Field and The Intention Experiment boils down to is the age-old quest for the
genie in a bottle, or rather the embodiment of human laziness: “you can get whatever you
want by wishing for it.” Sadly, this is not how the world works.

Resources

The articles that McTaggart cites in her “amazing” exposition are either studies done by
people who already believe in this stuff, or simply articles that talk about actual studies and
reinterpret their results as they see fit, much like McTaggart has done, to a second degree.

It’s sufficient to examine just one of McTaggart’s sources to see the quality of data she’s
working with:

F. Sicher, E. Targ et al., “A randomised double-blind study of the effect of distant healing in a
population with advanced AIDS: report of a small scale study,” Western Journal of Medicine,
1998; 168(6): 356-63

This was a study where 40 patients with advanced AIDS were selected, some of them
randomly chosen to receive “remote healing” treatments, while the rest continuing their
course of regular treatment. According to the study, subjects who were “healed … acquired
significantly fewer new AIDS-defining illnesses,” plus other positive effects, although there
were “no significant differences in CD4+ counts” (darn).

Upon reading the abstract of this paper, numerous glaring red flags emerge. The most obvious
of these, I think, is that the healers who performed the “psychic healing” were “located
throughout the United States during the study,” meaning that the healing was completely
uncontrolled.
Furthermore, if the healers and the subjects “never met,” how did the healers know where to
direct their “intention for health and well-being”? Did they direct their intention at a photo of
the subject? And if so, how does “The Field” know to redirect the intention from the photo to
the real person? Wouldn’t this be a line of bullshit that’s even crazier than McTaggart is
willing to push?

Curiously enough, there is a note from the editor of the Western Journal of Medicine (Linda
Hawes Clever) at the top of the paper:

…Does the paper prove that prayer works? No. The authors call for more research, as do we
and the reviewers, for a number of reasons. We note that the study was relatively short and
analysed rather few patients. No treatment-related mechanisms for the effects were posited.
The statistical methods can be criticized….

We can tell from the editor’s tone that she was being charitable by publishing this paper in her
journal, and inserted her note to avoid embarrassment. If studies like this are the “definitive
evidence” that McTaggart uses to support her claims, then her theories don’t have a leg to
stand on.

Return to Reality

On the other end of the spectrum (the rational one), here is a brief list of studies that I have
found that show conclusively that prayer, intentions, and “distant healing” do not work, as
well as papers that show why studies attempting to measure effects from prayer are
fundamentally suspect:

• Abbot NC, et al. Spiritual healing as a therapy for chronic pain: a randomized, clinical
trial. “…there were no statistically significant differences between healing and control
groups…“
• Astin JA, et al. The efficacy of distant healing for human immunodeficiency virus–
results of a randomized trial. This one is especially relevant, since it has Elisabeth
Targ’s name as one of the authors! “Distant healing or prayer from a distance does
not appear to improve selected clinical outcomes in HIV patients…“
• Aviles JM, et al. Intercessory prayer and cardiovascular disease progression in a
coronary care unit population: a randomized controlled trial. “As delivered in this
study, intercessory prayer had no significant effect on medical outcomes after
hospitalization in a coronary care unit.“
• Benson H, et al. Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in
cardiac bypass patients: a multicenter randomized trial of uncertainty and certainty of
receiving intercessory prayer. This study actually showed a reverse effect: “certainty
of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of
complications“!
• Cleland JA, et al. A pragmatic, three-arm randomised controlled trial of spiritual
healing for asthma in primary care. “Spiritual healing does not appear to have any
specific affect [sic] on patient asthma related quality of life.“
• Gaudia G. Searching in the Darkness: About Prayer and Medical Cures. “We scientists
make a great mistake when we agree that there may be value in investigating the
potential of prayer as a cure.“
• Harkness EF, et al. A randomized trial of distant healing for skin warts. “Distant
healing from experienced healers had no effect on the number or size of patients’
warts.“
• Hobbins PG. Compromised ethical principles in randomised clinical trials of distant,
intercessory prayer. “…many studies did not meet basic ethical standards required of
clinical trials of biophysical interventions, making application of their results
ethically problematic…”
• Matthews DA, et al. Effects of intercessory prayer on patients with rheumatoid
arthritis. “Supplemental, distant intercessory prayer offers no additional benefits.“
• Matthews WJ, et al. The effects of intercessory prayer, positive visualization, and
expectancy on the well-being of kidney dialysis patients. “The effects of intercessory
prayer and transpersonal positive visualization cannot be distinguished from the effect
of expectancy.“
• Sloan RP, et al. Science, medicine, and intercessory prayer. “…these studies claim
findings incompatible with current views of the physical universe and
consciousness…“
 • Walker SR, et al. Intercessory prayer in the treatment of alcohol abuse and
dependence: a pilot investigation. “Intercessory prayer did not demonstrate clinical
benefit in the treatment of alcohol abuse…“
• Wirth DP, et al. Complementary healing therapies. Once again, in this study the
opposite effect was observed: the people being “healed” got worse: “Results showed
significance for the treated versus the control group but in the opposite direction from
that expected.“

…but what do I know. After all, I’m not a fancy investigative journalist!