I'll see you sometime later When I'm through with my accumulator

ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Experiments that failed, too many times (#2)

These two researchers are trying to kill a mouse. They are not very good at it.
Here are two other gentlemen with less even success in their mice-mortality-related activities:
According to the provider of the mice [an anonymous and "disinterested professor of biology who was doing conventional cancer research"], they were so highly inbred as to qualify as European royalty,* and had been injected with mammary adenocarcinoma cells (strain H2712) that would kill them within weeks. Mice subjected to Healing Touch from the first author mustered a sufficient immune response to reject the grafts! Yay Healing Touch! So did the control group, however. Evidently the mouse-trap industry has little to fear from the injectable-cancer-cell method of pest control.

Illustrations may be disturbing to sensitive
readers; contain scat and ostentatious jewelry

Bengston & Krinsley's response was to claim credit for curing both sets of mice -- the hands-free as well as the Hands-Laid-On group -- since they had broken experimental protocol by looking at the former group, resulting in a form of collateral benefit through quantum entanglement. That is, the purported 'control group' had really been a DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION Treatment group all along. They did not consider the well-known fact -- pointed out here by commenters DW and MO'B -- that laboratory mice often turn out to be three-dimensional projections of superintelligent multi-dimensional entities, who delight in performing "incredibly elegant psychological experiments on people by, say, running down the maze the wrong way or suddenly not dying of cancer."

The authors therefore repeated the trial, this time training Krinsley and three anonymous skeptics in the mental disciplines and aura-massaging skills of Healing Touch (as you do). Again, both the handled and unhandled mice shrugged off their injections. This was explained by extracting a confession from one volunteer that he or she had repeated the protocol breach by looking at the control group and thereby healing them as well. Between the skeptical assertions in the paper that "I never thought healing powers would happen to me," the amount of anonymity and the frequency with which protocols are transgressed, it reads more and more like a Penthouse Letter to the Editor.
Bengston continued his experiments with a different co-author... this time with "distance healing" radiating from two healers 760 miles away. Both treated and untreated mice survived, though in the new research paradigm -- justified by a lengthier exploration of the quantum-resonance explanation -- this is a GOOD thing. Disappointingly, there were no appearances from a like-minded and not-to-be-outdone pizza delivery girl.

Conventional biologic research dictates that any evidence of successful intervention of the healing-with-intent techniques would be found in the difference between the experimental and control groups. The resonance hypothesis would predict that if the healing techniques were to be successful, then the experimental and control mice would exhibit similarities.

This is where Ernie and Lars Smuntz from Mouse Hunt missed their chance. If they had properly leveraged their mouse-nonfatality situation, they too could now be best-selling authors and experts in Energy Healing.

What puzzles me most about all this Quantum Entanglement is the inconvenient fact that mice are spin-0 entities.*** For quantum coupling to occur one needs spin-½ entities such as Tasmanian Devils [must credit M'OB]. Devils would also be more suitable experimental subjects because (due to lack of genetic diversity) the poor buggers are being wiped out by a transmissable cancer, akin to allografted H2712 adenocarcinoma. Also it would make an AWESOME grant application.

------------------------------------------------

From a disciple of Reich we hear that Bengston was correct about his results but mistaken about the mechanism of his cures, which were in fact brought about by Orgone energy. Reichian experiments at the Oranur Research Laboratory involved the now-familiar C3H/HeJ mice, allografted "with mammary adenocarcinoma (C3HBA) tumor cells", but treating them in an ORAC. Evidently the interior of a highly advanced but irascible perspex-&-flashing-lights supercomputer is a dangerous environment:

In the treated mice, however, bleeding while the animal was in the ORAC was so severe that it was the immediate cause of death of all the mice in this group except for one mouse that died by accident.

The experiment was considered a success (it is intriguing that "bleeding to death" does not count as an accident). Of course it is possible that Reich and his disciples were the ones deceived, not Bengston, and when they think they are concentrating Orgone energy, they are in fact invoking healthful Reiki vibrations without knowing it.

UPDATE: It has been brought to the attention of the Riddled staff that ORAC is in fact short for 'Orgone Accumulator'. We regret the error.

* According to the Jackson Laboratory, C3H/HeJ mice are prone to "blindness by weaning age" and "a high incidence of hepatomas" due to the inbreeding. It is not stated whether the Laying On of Hands cured them of that as well.

** We are informed that "Host survival in the conventional literature was 100% fatality between 14 and 27 days after injection." Regrettably, the 'conventional literature' is not cited. It seems to be limited to a 1966 paper that has been superceded by later mutations in the C3H/HeJ strain.

*** Orbit-sharing spin-coupled Japanese Fermion mice do not count because shut up that's why.