| Dear Friends, As you may remember, we ran our Germination Experiment on July 7. We tested whether intention can help barley seeds to sprouts earlier and grow into a healthier plant with less disease. After we sent intention to one, randomly chosen set of seeds, the University of Arizona lab team planted our target seeds plus three sets of control seeds. Over two weeks, they measured whether the target seeds germinated first and also whether they were healthier than the controls. The results, you recall, seemed disappointing. Preliminary analysis seemed to show no difference between the target seeds and the controls. At that point, Iıd run the experiment twice first at a Liberty League conference in Australia, before an audience of 500, and then on the internet, with about the same size audience scattered around the world. Intention "contamination" Dr. Schwartz hypothesized that one problem could be intention ?contaminationı both the target and the controls in these first experiments had been planted in the same dirt. Furthermore, as they were not shielded from each other, there also could have been ?biophotonı contamination. In other words, the seeds sent intention could have communicated that intention to the control seeds. However, when our initial analysis proved disappointing, Dr. Schwartz suggested that we reanalyze the data, using a non-parametric statistical test, and then try the experiment again, this time with a more specific intention, and with all the seed samples isolated from each other, so they cannot "share information" as it were. We decided to test this seemingly fantastical suggestion at my next event a workshop I held at Omega in Rhinebeck, New York. We changed the protocol slightly. In our original experiment, we tried to replicate a study carried out by British researcher Serena Roney-Dougal, where a healer sent intention to lettuce seeds, which grew earlier and consistently enjoyed better health (J of Parapsychology, fall, 2003 Consequently, we matched our intention closely to hers: "My intention is for these seeds to enjoy enhanced germination, greater growth and greater health." For the Omega event, we used as our intention: "My intention is for all the seeds in our target group to sprout at least three inches by the fourth day of growing." New statistical analysis Dr. Schwartz then spent several hours analyzing all three sets of seeds through non-parametric statistics. Ordinary statistics are analyzed using the mean (or average) and standard deviations the size of the span of possible deviations from that mean. In this case, there was no ?normalı, or mean plants just grow at all sorts of levels. Dr. Schwartz used two statistics to analyze the combination of Experiments 1 and 2, and two statistics to analyze Experiment 3 on its own. Hereıs what he discovered: * For each of the of the three experiments, the germinated intention seedlings were longer than the control seedlings. Dr. Schwartz produced a graph produced of the data shows the intention seeds consistently grew larger than the controls. T *The third study using (1) a longer growth time (six hours), (2) a focused intention (4 inch growth instruction) and (3) separate seed group growing conditions (to reduce possible energy and intention cross-contamination), generated significantly larger seed growth overall (in both intention and control seeds) than the other two. * Experiments one and combined show a significant effect, with one of the statistics *Experiment 3 showed a significant effect with both sets of statistics. According to Dr. Schwartz: "I suspect that Run 3 is superior to Runs 1 and 2 for a host of reasons, including (1) more focused intention
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