Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t ask much of my watch. It needn’t be fashionable, though I do insist, not unreasonably, that the second hand ticks forward rather than backward. This unfussiness explains why I’ve only ever had four timepieces in my life.

And so the Philip Stein TESLAR intrigues me. At £375, not only does it tell the time but it is also apparently imbued with “a special wellbeing technology”. According to the maker: “Each watch contains two TESLAR chips which combine with the watch’s battery and coil to create a zero point waveform, providing the wearer with ‘a cocoon of calm’.” It’s also supposed to improve sleep, lessen tension and improve concentration, energy levels and wellbeing.

Now 25 “highly stressed” individuals are going to wear the timepiece for a month and have their heart rate monitored. The results will be released on Wednesday, which is, apparently, National Stress Awareness Day. The watchmaker’s MD, Dermot Dennehy, has already made up his mind: “Wearing [it] does help the body resist the negative effects of stress.”

Being a bit rusty on my physics, I looked up zero point waveform. The phrase doesn’t exist, at least not on Google. I also looked up the list of publications sent to me by Philip Stein’s PR company. Only one focuses on whether wearing the watch does the wearer any good. It was published in Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing. I’ve never heard of it.

The other papers relate to Teslar technology developed at the Ukraine Institute of Physics. Teslar chips allegedly align water molecules and suppress their vibrations. This might well be true, although I doubt the molecules were in someone’s wrist at the time.

May I request a Teslar chip to shove up my nose to align the molecules in my epidermis? Then perhaps I can keep a straight face at this lame attempt at pseudoscientific marketing.

The sprint-like pace of science means that Parliament should get its own bioethics committee, according to Phil Willis, chairman of the Commons Science and Technology Select Committee. Willis knows a thing or two about ethical minefields; he has been tiptoeing in them since he chaired a group looking at the draft Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, which will be mentioned in the Queen’s Speech this week. The Bill will consider, among other things, what constitutes an “inter-species embryo”, whether children conceived through assisted reproduction have a “need for a father” and whether sex selection should be permitted for social as well as medical reasons.

Last week Willis acknowledged the contribution of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, but added: “If we [MPs] are to legislate for areas that have significant ethical implications, it’s important that Parliament itself feeds into that ethical debate.”

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