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So people on Tumblr have been reblogging this:
with several excitable laudatory remarks attached. I've seen it go past my dashboard several times, and today I decided to actually look this stuff up. No objection to the song or to Marconi Union - they seem like a perfectly normal bunch of ambient-music dudes - but there's no science behind this.
* The organization which helped the band create the song is The British Academy of Sound Therapy. It appears to consist mostly of Lyz Cooper, an alternative medicine practitioner with no medical credentials. Her other work includes a CD intended to help with "chakra balance":
She claims to have cured herself of ME/chronic fatigue syndrome by listening to specific sounds, which the Academy will presumably share with you if you book a private treatment session, in which they will help your "system to balance itself by releasing the denser energy that can hold the body in an unhealthy state." Okay, then.
* The study of the song's effectiveness was commissioned by a company called Radox Spa. They sell scented bubblebath.
* This study itself, if it ever took place, was ostensibly performed by Mindlab International. This is a marketing agency. They claim to specialize in manipulating consumers by means of something called "Neurometrix²":
I guess it's possible that an organization that would put that sentence on their website might be capable of performing credible research. I don't think it's likely.
They have a few samples of their work on their website:
Actually, let's zoom in on a specific document here:
It's only a one-page abstract, but if you don't want to download it, they conclude that recommendations from acquaintances - such as, say, Tumblr reblogs - are the best form of online exposure.
If they actually did have forty people (not a large sample size, incidentally) listen to this song to see what it did to their brains, they do not appear to have published the results of this experiment.
* Mindlab is owned by a psychologist named David Lewis, whose Wikipedia page sounds somewhat more like a press release than an encyclopedia entry. Going to go out on a limb and say that a marketing professional wrote it. But who?
Lewis's name stopped appearing in the edits for his own article after that revision, but the pattern will be recognizable to anyone who's tried to maintain a Wikipedia article about a person/organization with a marketing staff.
Scientists discover most relaxing tune ever
Sound therapists and Manchester band Marconi Union compiled the song. Scientists played it to 40 women and found it to be more effective at helping them relax than songs by Enya, Mozart and Coldplay. (read more)
with several excitable laudatory remarks attached. I've seen it go past my dashboard several times, and today I decided to actually look this stuff up. No objection to the song or to Marconi Union - they seem like a perfectly normal bunch of ambient-music dudes - but there's no science behind this.
* The organization which helped the band create the song is The British Academy of Sound Therapy. It appears to consist mostly of Lyz Cooper, an alternative medicine practitioner with no medical credentials. Her other work includes a CD intended to help with "chakra balance":
She claims to have cured herself of ME/chronic fatigue syndrome by listening to specific sounds, which the Academy will presumably share with you if you book a private treatment session, in which they will help your "system to balance itself by releasing the denser energy that can hold the body in an unhealthy state." Okay, then.
* The study of the song's effectiveness was commissioned by a company called Radox Spa. They sell scented bubblebath.
* This study itself, if it ever took place, was ostensibly performed by Mindlab International. This is a marketing agency. They claim to specialize in manipulating consumers by means of something called "Neurometrix²":
Our proprietary Neurometrix² technology will allow you to make better informed business decisions, improve sales and enhance brand efficiency.
I guess it's possible that an organization that would put that sentence on their website might be capable of performing credible research. I don't think it's likely.
They have a few samples of their work on their website:
Actually, let's zoom in on a specific document here:
It's only a one-page abstract, but if you don't want to download it, they conclude that recommendations from acquaintances - such as, say, Tumblr reblogs - are the best form of online exposure.
If they actually did have forty people (not a large sample size, incidentally) listen to this song to see what it did to their brains, they do not appear to have published the results of this experiment.
* Mindlab is owned by a psychologist named David Lewis, whose Wikipedia page sounds somewhat more like a press release than an encyclopedia entry. Going to go out on a limb and say that a marketing professional wrote it. But who?
Lewis's name stopped appearing in the edits for his own article after that revision, but the pattern will be recognizable to anyone who's tried to maintain a Wikipedia article about a person/organization with a marketing staff.
