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Niels Hoven

Gerald Pollack’s water theories

I was invited to attend Gerald Pollack’s talk Water, Energy and Life: Fresh Views From The Water’s Edge at the University of Washington yesterday. It was the 32nd annual UW faculty address and as I was already on campus for steel drum practice, I dropped by.

It was an interesting talk with some compelling evidence under certain very common conditions, water behaves like a gel. In fact, if Pollack is correct, it’s possible that most of the water in the universe is in a gel form, rather than a solid, liquid, or gas.

Obviously, if true, this would be revolutionary research, which may be part of the reason I have reservations about the talk. Most of the people who saw the lecture with me were skeptical as well. Without the weight of an academic institution behind it, the research sounds straight up pseudosciency. But his results have been published in peer-reviewed journals and independently confirmed.

The biggest question for me is if this is really a paradigm shift in how we think about water, why isn’t anyone at the more prestigious universities looking into it? A number of people suggested that academia is slow to embrace new ideas, but my experience at Berkeley was the opposite – professors get really excited at the opportunity to jump on new research topics.

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  • epi

    Hi, fascinating stuff for sure.

    > Most of the people who saw the lecture with me were skeptical as well. Without the weight of an academic institution behind it, the research sounds straight up pseudosciency.

    Logical fallacy: bandwagon, appeal to authority.

  • Thoughts

    I have spoken with multiple professors about this topic, looking to begin research in the area myself. However, due to past scams in the area, from polywater to water memory, the area of water research has been discredited and now if anyone connects their name to water research, if spells the end of their publishing career. As professors at universities are pushed to publish, you can imagine how this might pose a problem. In fact, a professor has told me that if they were 10-15 years farther in their career, they might even consider helping me, however, as they were not, they cannot. Indeed, professors are excited to research new things, although I am certain that it also helps that the things which they research do not threaten to spell the end of their career. Do not be so quick to discredit the evidence. After all, it has already been verified multiple times.