So many of you commented on our Water into Wine results – both positively and negatively — that I asked psychologist Gary Schwartz, director of the Laboratory of Advancement in Consciousness and Health of the University of Arizona, who designed our experiment, and his lab technician Mark Boccuzzi, to respond to your questions.Your comments are in italics, and his (and mine) in normal type.
I wish the experiment would be done in a different way to avoid as much as possible some outside influences as the temperature around beakers, humidity in the room, etc. If the changes in pH were statistically significant  (5-10 per cent of the inital value) than this would be of lesser importance. Otherwise, beakers should be placed in temperature/humidity-controlled environments and kept exactly under the same conditions for the target and control.
Dr. Schwartz’s response:
“Our experimental design — with pre- and post-intention controls, separate control beakers, and dummy control days — takes into account changes in temperature, humidity, evaporation, etc. Of course, control of the environment is ideal.  However, we are also interested in real-life applications, where such controls do not exist.
What you got is a statistically insignificant result.
Actually, statistical significance is based on number of samples taken and stability of effects.  Our experimental design provides statistical power, even though it is only a single exploratory demonstration of a possible phenomenon.
I would suggest that you repeat this experiment in a better controlled environment and possibly to see of the volume of abeaker would make a difference on results.
Absolutely, says Dr. Schwartz.  That’s one of one of many experiments that should be conducted in the future.
This is just one trial. It is not enough to make any projections
Or to go on to a live experiment on a lake. This looks to me not very scientific.
Dr Schwartz: Our experimental design was very scientific with many built-in control conditions.  The lake experiment, on the other hand, is far less so, although we will be attempting a controlled situation by taking several samples of the lake, creating controls, etc.
What is most needed are replications of our original Water into Wine experimental design – as we did with the Germination Experiment, the Leaf Experiment and the Clean Water Experiment.
Lynne adds:
As you may recall, we ran the Germination Experiment six times, the Leaf Experiment three times and the Clean Water Experiment twice. When you do something once, it’s a simple interesting demonstration.  Only when you get the same result multiple times under identical conditions can you begin to claim that you have credible scientific evidence of merit.
It seems to me that the water you used is an unknown variable i.e., you don’t know what is in it.
Dr. Schwartz:
Yes, and done purposely.  We wanted to use water provided to — and drunk by — a large community. After all, we’re seeking to discover whether our Intention Experiments can affect real life targets.
Our experimental design makes sure that two beakers of the same water are always compared (whatever happens to be in the water).  Future experiments can compare different kinds of water.
I think using liquid with a predetermined stable pH would be
better, to eliminate unknown substances that may effect temperature, reaction time etc.
Dr. Schwartz:
That would make a good future experiment.
To control the experiment even more tightly, each beaker and its meticulously calibrated and matched measuring device should have been ‘isolated’ in an airtight and temperature controlled isolation chamber to prevent temperature variables from making a difference in each beaker as to how much CO2 and other gases might be absorbed by the different beakers. In addition, water samples have to be selected from the same source and equilibrated meticulously in the same type of very clean glass beakers without cleaning agent residues. In my opinion, these are just some additional variables that need to be controlled tightly if they had not already been considered.

Dr. Schwartz:
All of these variables have been tightly controlled, thanks.
You never publish your results.
Lynne:
That’s not true.  Dr. Schwartz presented a paper and compiled the results of our six Germination Experiments at the Society for Scientific Exploration’s 2th Annual Meeting in June 25-28 2008.  The paper was published in meeting’s 2008 proceedings. The link for that abstract is:
http://www.scientificexploration.org/meetings/program_27th_annual.pdf
Our paper was presented on Thursday, June 26, and you’ll find the abstract on p 19 of this PDF. Our results were found to be highly statistically significant, when examined in a variety of ways.
You also can watch a video of Dr. Schwartz’s presentation of our results at that meeting by going to:
http://www.scientificexploration.org/talks/27th_annual/27th_annual_schwartz_intention_seedling.html
This paper demonstrates why it is important to replicate your results. As we explained earlier, a single experiment is nothing more than an interesting demonstration – a violation of our expectations that could be caused by anything.  The results of our Water into Wine Experiment and indeed our Peace Experiment are only interesting oddities at this stage.
When you can achieve the same result using the same experimental design under controlled scientific conditions repeatedly you have something worthy of being called a scientifically validated positive result. With the Germination study, we were able to pool the results, compare seeds sent intention, and days sent intention, with our dummy experiments.  That yielded some firm results.
We have only presented and published the Germination Experiment results because it is the only experiment we’ve conducted six times.  Our other experiments need to be replicated numerous times more.  When we do, we will publish them.
If you have more questions, please write them here and we’ll do our best to answer them.