Float tanks have been getting a lot of media love recently, which is unsurprising given how beneficial people seem to find them, and how crazy they sound when you’re explaining them for the first time. Most of the press has been very positive, and coverage like the Nightline piece still bring a giant smile to my face whenever I watch them.
Unfortunately, not everyone has taken the time to do the appropriate level of research into floating before writing about it. I learned way back in high school, when a reporter both misquoted me and misspelled my name in a local news article, that just because something has hit the presses, it is not guaranteed to be accurate. Even when reporters have done their basic research and homework, there are times that they are requested, editorially, to make their piece ‘more balanced.’ In the case of float tanks, this usually means talking about the parts of floating that people might find less than savory.
Michael Hutchison even writes about this in the Book of Floating. Back in 1982 he was sent in to write an edgy piece essentially discrediting float tanks. Of course, he fell in love with them instead, and ended up publishing what is one of the seminal works in the float industry.
There are a couple pieces that have come out recently that have made me cringe when I read them. They don’t paint the best picture of floating, and they’ll turn people off from float tanks who might have benefitted tremendously from the experience. It’s hard not to take things like that a little personally when you’re a new business owner, in a strange industry, that’s doing their best to convince people to get naked and hop in a pitch black ‘super-salinated-bathtub’.
However, it’s not negative publicity that makes me cringe when I read articles on floating. That just comes with the territory. What makes me cringe is a disregard for fact-checking and seeming indifference to what I would normally call ‘journalistic rigor,’ but which I guess I will have to simply refer to in the future as ‘rigor,’ since journalism has clearly decided to distance itself from the term. People are misquoted, facts are mis-cited, and information that seems quite relevant is ignored.
We are a small industry, and in no way can we compare with the sufferings of much broader and more controversial groups when it comes to media coverage: still, it’s hard not to be offended when the slings and arrows leveled against you are not for legitimate failings.
Before I get much further, it might help to move away from generalities and take a look at the recent piece that came out in The New York Times on October 17 (which was, incidentally, Float On’s five year anniversary). There are a couple other high-profile pieces we could also dig into, like the Wall Street Journal article that came out this last May, grossly misquoting Justin Feinstein. Pieces like the VICE video from 2013 also get a large (almost laughably so) amount of facts wrong, but somehow it’s more forgivable, since they are an entertainment group rather than a nationally recognized newspaper or journal.
The New York Times
“In hyper-connected era, sensory-deprivation
float tanks rise in popularity.”by JULIE TURKEWITZ
This article does not start off on a positive note:
“NORTHGLENN, Colo. — The capsule was small and dark and the water smelled a bit like a used gym sock, but Caleb Preuss, 28, climbed in anyway, lying supine in a bath of saline.”
The second and third paragraphs sound a little more encouraging:
Once inside, the stabbing back pain that had dogged him for months disappeared almost immediately.
“It’s something you can never experience otherwise,” he said after he climbed out, “unless maybe you’re an astronaut.”
The main thing worth noting at this point is that the conflict has been established: pros vs cons – ‘the benefits of floating’ vs ‘hopping in potentially gross water.’ The rest of the article revisits these two sides of float tanks, letting the reader decide for themselves if they want to brave the murky waters of the tanks for the possibility of physical or mental relief.
There’s very little I love more than education, and empowering an audience with enough information to make intelligent decisions on their own. In this case, though, the conflict is largely invented, and the idea of customers struggling with internal conflicts about sketchy water quality is an anomaly in our industry, not the norm.
This is not to say that float tanks can’t be operated poorly, but bringing this issue to the forefront is focusing inappropriately on the outliers. It’s like talking about thai food, and saying that the chicken is likely to be partially uncooked because a guy in Sacramento, CA went to some Thai place that served unsatisfactory poultry.
Restaurants are ubiquitous enough that our crude human psychology attributes faults in restaurants to operator error, rather than a fundamental problem with international cuisine. With float tanks, however, being rare and unique, some tend to hop to the conclusion that singular issues with tanks must be the norm across all centers.
This is a mental bias that we all have, and I want to stress that it is totally understandable for your average reader to fall prey to this sort of false logic (so much so that there is even a name for it – fundamental attribution error). This is why it’s especially important for journalists, who are trained in spotting this type of bias in their reporting, to steer the reader toward a more appropriate way of looking at the world. I have a degree in experimental psychology from many years ago, and I feel somewhat abashed that, knowing the ways in which our minds tend to misbehave, we still professionally take advantage of these faults instead of acknowledging them.
The article gets better before it gets worse:
In August, the fourth annual Float Conference hosted its largest audience ever. Nearly 500 enthusiasts who had traveled to Portland, Ore., heard from the chief of a new float research lab, snapped selfies with industry superstars and discussed the latest in tank marketing and technology. (Swag included salt samples and rubber duckies.)
Somehow, snapping selfies as one of the three most important portions of the conference seems a little demeaning, but I’ll allow it in the name of style.
“The growth right now is extremely rapid,” said Lee Perry, 83, who, with her husband, Glenn, 74, is widely credited with developing the concept of floating in darkened pods for recreation. “We’ve been in this 40 years now. There’s been fits and starts, but nothing of this speed.”
Also, I have no complaints. To be fair, Glenn and Lee aren’t just credited with developing floating for recreation, they legitimately developed the first commercially produced float tank back in 1974, but who’s going to split hairs? From here, though, it gets a little wild.
Like yoga — which went in and out of fashion and is back with a vengeance — this holistic pastime is drawing new converts who claim the practice can help alleviate depression, anxiety, addiction, jet lag, muscle tension, almost anything. But its return is also garnering critics, who complain of moldy facilities, exaggerated health claims and that sweaty sock stench that seems to plague the interiors of many tanks.
Let’s break this down a little bit. I have no problem with floating being compared with yoga. I actually think there’s ample comparison to be made, from the benefits that come from release of physical tension, to a daily mindful practice, to eastern thought wedging its way into western philosophy. However, to compare both of these things to coming ‘in and out of fashion’ seems to imply more in common with the clothing industry than with each other. There is an implication of both practices being fads that leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
This is not helped by the usage of the word ‘converts’ in the next sentence, which brings to mind religious fanatics and cult followers more than your average floater. And then back to that old conflict of ‘moldy facilities’ and ‘sweaty sock stench’ that seems to ‘plague the interior of many tanks.’ There is also a reference to ‘exaggerated health claims,’ but we’ll just shelve that one for the moment. Let’s explore who these critics of float tank sanitation are, and what they have to say about the quality of float tanks:
“It really just felt like I was lying in a sewer,” one Seattle floater, Annie D., wrote on Yelp. “Yech,” posted another, Julie M., who used a chamber in New York and wrote that she “couldn’t stand the mustiness after about 15 min so left early.”
I’ve included the full review from Yelp below. One thing that stood out to me immediately was that Annie’s comparison to a sewer is about noise, not about anything gross or unsanitary with the water. Also, that this review was pulled from two and a half years ago.
In fact, although many of the negative reviews on the page also reference noise as an issue at this particular float center, the bulk of reviews are still very positive.
The second quote is much more apt – there is a musty odor and the floater realizes that it shouldn’t be there. In fact, she knows this is a problem because she’s researched floating for herself, and she has a friend who floats at a different center that’s well maintained.
Again, this seems like more of an isolated issue than an industry wide problem. This comment was also pulled from over a year ago, and this time it is the only review that was less than 4 stars for the facility.
The owner also leaves a very detailed comment addressing Julie’s concerns, acknowledging what went wrong and how they’re adapting their center for the specific issues that she had there.
So, to back up her claim of moldy facilities and sweaty sock smell, Ms. Turkewitz cites one yelper from 2 years ago who had an issue with sound, and another from a year ago who had nothing bad to say about float tanks in general, except that her experience wasn’t as good as she’s heard about from other centers. Both of these, even based on other Yelp reviews from those centers, are the exception rather than the trend in what people are saying. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but this looks dangerously close to seeking out facts to back up an idea for her story, rather than letting the facts of a situation determine the course of the story.
Then, further down is a quote from Ashkhan taken totally out of context:
Most tanks are cleaned with the aid of a series of filters, but regulation is sporadic. A few states require float studios to follow the rules of pools or spas, said Ashkahn Jahromi, 26, a founder of Float On, a six-tank floating center in Portland and an organizer of the annual Float Conference. But mostly, he added, “It’s the Wild West.”
What he was referring to when he said “It’s the Wild West” was pool and spa regulations, not float tank code. “I was telling her about how pool regulations are different all over the place, and how it kind of made it like the wild west,” Ashkahn says, “which she quoted as me saying that float tank regulations are in the wild west.”
Here is how the article winds down: locker room odor vs acute benefits.
The center is run by Lisa Lopez, 40, a former police officer. She cleans her tanks with three filters and hydrogen peroxide, as is the protocol at other float centers. The center’s website says the water is set between 93.4 and 95 degrees, with the filtering providing “sanitation beyond even that of the water that comes out of your sink, shower or bath faucets.”
Still, a locker-room odor occasionally pervades the tanks, she said, caused by oils and lotions melting off customers’ skin. “It doesn’t mean the tank is dirty,” she said.
Clients include adults with multiple sclerosis and post-traumatic stress disorder. Her youngest floater is 7; her largest is 6-foot-9 and 380 pounds. “Sensory deprivation is something that our bodies and brains need and crave,” Lopez added.
Overall, I don’t think that this is a bad article for the industry. I think that this piece will bring in more people to float than it will turn away. However, if there is a conflict to be found in floating, it is not ‘benefits’ vs ‘gross water.’ Even reading through the same set of Yelp reviews that Julie pulls from for her article, one can get a pretty clear sense of an interesting discussion that could have happened here: ‘incredible experiences’ vs ‘underwhelming experiences.’
Why do some people have so-so experiences in the tank, while others seem to be powerfully affected? Is there any science to back up the ‘claims’ by floating ‘converts’? (There is, but the article doesn’t bring it up at all.) What can the average person expect if they go into a float tank? This last one seems especially relevant, since at its core this article seems to be examining why people float, and what can be expected if one decides to journey to their nearest float center.
An article examining what happens to different people during their float sessions, including the fact that you might not get anything out of the experience, would be my choice for a two-sided float topic. As Annie, the Yelper who was misquoted about ‘floating in a sewer’ said, “Overall, I guess if you truly believe in this stuff and you know you can make yourself relaxed, then go for it. I just can’t.” For people who are curious about the true benefits of the practice, and for people considering getting into the tank, the variation in what you’re likely to experience is a very interesting balanced look at the reality of float tanks. It’s an article I would be incredibly curious to read, and it wouldn’t have to rely on Yelp reviews from years ago to find easy sources to cite.
I feel like this is a natural place for a conclusion, but I’m not allowed to stop yet because the New York Times didn’t stop after releasing their article. Instead, they put out this Facebook post to announce their piece:
Responses to this quote in the comments below were appropriately baffled. Here’s a couple from within the industry:
And another from prospective float customers:
Creating a sanitation sensation for the article was already strange, but choosing to highlight that specific quote is just sloppy, and a gross misrepresentation, not only of floating, but of the author’s original statement. Remember, the sewer quote is referencing improper soundproofing, not the quality of water in the tank.
So, what have we learned from this whole experience? It’s actually a little bit difficult to say. Obviously, we want as much press as possible, so ignoring journalists all together is out of the question. Similarly, we can’t force people to be rigorous in their reporting – that’s up to them and their editors.
I’ll leave you with this: be very careful what you say to reporters. If they call you back after an interview asking for anything negative about floating, don’t bring up any isolated, one-off cases, as they’re likely to be skewed into representing a regular experience in the tanks. Only mention something negative if it happens daily, or weekly. As I mentioned above, I like to talk about how some people don’t seem to experience as many benefits as others. Certainly, that happens every single day at our center.
And next time you write a Yelp review, keep in mind that, years later, a small sentence could be taken out of context, printed in the New York Times, and blasted out to 10 million people on social media.
