Season 17, Episode 61: Why Crystal Healing is More Harmful than Helpful
Hey StarTalkians! Episode 61 of season 17 was a rare, chemistry-focused episode featuring guest Kate Biberdorf, along with Neil and Negin. Early in the discussion, they start discussing crystals, and Neil asks for a chemist’s blessing about a point he often makes:
The Chemistry of Life with Kate the Chemist - StarTalk Radio
(from 11:30)
Kate is (understandably) a little wary of criticising crystal healing to avoid offending her friends, but for a few reasons, it’s worth making the point a little more clearly than they did in the podcast.
Testing Crystal Healing
There have been surprisingly few tests of the claims of crystal healing. However, psychology professor Chris French, working with Lynn Williams and (later) Hayley O’ Donnell, conducted two widely-cited but never fully-published tests.
French, writing in The Skeptic, explains that the test involved one real quartz crystal and one identical-looking one made of glass. In the first test, 80 participants held one of these crystals for five minutes, before reporting if they felt any of six “mildly anomalous” sensations. Half of them also read a brief primer on crystals beforehand. The results were clear: it made no difference whether participants were holding a real crystal – most of them felt one of the sensations either way. This was more likely if they were primed.
A second test was conducted a couple of years later with better blinding, and the result was basically the same, except priming didn’t make a difference this time.
There is one published test looking at crystal healing. This worked in a similar way: 138 participants were randomly assigned either a true crystal or a similar-looking placebo, and were instructed to keep it for two weeks. They completed two surveys to track anxiety symptoms before and after intervention. They were also classified as either believers in crystals or non-believers.
The study again found that there was no apparent difference between the real and fake crystal. Regardless of which they got, believers generally felt improvements while non-believers didn’t. The authors concluded that this was likely due to conditioning and the placebo effect.
The Harm of Crystals
A common counter-argument is that crystals are ultimately harmless. However, aside from the risks of crystal healing being used for serious health problems, the industry exploits workers in low-income countries such as Madagascar, including child labour, low pay and dangerous working conditions. For consumers, crystals are “safe,” but the industry is certainly not.