What with all the fuss over the Large Hadron Collider being about to suck us all into a black hole or blow up the world or something, it's easy to forget that it's not just cutting-edge, incredibly cool physics research that can be dangerous. Even seemingly benign New Age woo can go awry and end up killing hundreds - at least judging by the results of the fascinatingly flaky Peace Intention Experiment, an update of the famous Transcendental Mediation crime reduction studies.
The Peace Intention Experiment, or as I call it the PIE (in the sky?), is the latest project from Lynn McTaggart, New Age author and alternative health guru. McTaggart's previous research has investigated whether human intention can make plants grow better and whether it can "change the structure of water". This time around, she set her sights higher - the goal was nothing less than saving lives by stopping violent conflict. But the method was very similar to that used previously: McTaggart invited her fans to think really hard about something for ten minutes or so, all at the same time (coordinated via the internet). McTaggart claims that her previous studies have already proved that the collective mind of thousands of internet users can influence events thousands of miles away, sometimes even backwards in time. Then again, it's not hard to get positive results if you perform enough statistical tests.
