Water memory
Water memory is the purported ability of
Water memory is an example of pseudoscience and contradicts the scientific understanding of
Benveniste's study
Nonetheless, they reported, human
Implications
While Benveniste's study demonstrated a mechanism by which homeopathic remedies could operate, the mechanism defied scientific understanding[clarification needed] of physical chemistry.[6][8][9] A paper about hydrogen bond dynamics[10] is mentioned by some secondary sources[11][12] in connection to the implausibility of water memory.
Publication in Nature
Benveniste submitted his research to the prominent
In the end, a compromise was reached. The paper was published in Nature Vol. 333 on 30 June 1988,
Post-publication supervised experiments
Under supervision of Maddox and his team, Benveniste and his team of researchers followed the original study's procedure and produced results similar to those of the first published data. Maddox, however, noted that during the procedure, the experimenters were aware of which test tubes originally contained the antibodies and which did not. Benveniste's team then started a second, blinded experimental series with Maddox and his team in charge of the
Maddox's team published a report on the supervised experiments in the next issue (July 1988) of Nature.[15] Maddox's team concluded "that there is no substantial basis for the claim that anti-IgE at high dilution (by factors as great as 10120) retains its biological effectiveness, and that the hypothesis that water can be imprinted with the memory of past solutes is as unnecessary as it is fanciful." Maddox's team initially speculated that someone in the lab "was playing a trick on Benveniste",[6] but later concluded that, "We believe the laboratory has fostered and then cherished a delusion about the interpretation of its data." Maddox also pointed out that two of Benveniste's researchers were being paid by the French homeopathic company Boiron.[15]
Aftermath
In a response letter published in the same July issue of Nature, Benveniste lashed out at Maddox and complained about the "ordeal" that he had endured at the hands of the Nature team, comparing it to "
Maddox was unapologetic, stating "I'm sorry we didn't find something more interesting." On the same Quirks and Quarks show, he dismissed Benveniste's complaints, stating that, because of the possibility that the results would be unduly promoted by the homeopathy community, an immediate re-test was necessary. The failure of the tests demonstrated that the initial results were likely due to the experimenter effect. He also pointed out that the entire test procedure, that Benveniste later complained about, was one that had been agreed upon in advance by all parties. It was only after the test had failed that Benveniste disputed its appropriateness.
The debate continued in the letters section of Nature for several issues before being ended by the editorial board. It continued in the French press for some time,
Subsequent research
In the cold fusion or polywater controversies, many scientists started replications immediately, because the underlying theories did not go directly against scientific fundamental principles and could be accommodated with a few tweaks to those principles.[19] But Benveniste's experiment went directly against several principles, causing most researchers to outright reject the results as errors or fabrication, with only a few researchers willing to perform replications or experiments that could validate or reject his hypotheses.[19]
After the Nature controversy, Benveniste gained the public support of
Time magazine reported in 1999 that, in response to skepticism from physicist Robert Park, Josephson had challenged the American Physical Society (APS) to oversee a replication by Benveniste. This challenge was to be "a randomized double-blind test", of his claimed ability to transfer the characteristics of homeopathically altered solutions over the Internet:[24]
[Benveniste's] latest theory, and the cause of the current flap, is that the "memory" of water in a homeopathic solution has an electromagnetic "signature." This signature, he says, can be captured by a copper coil, digitized and transmitted by wire—or, for extra flourish, over the Internet—to a container of ordinary water, converting it to a homeopathic solution.
The APS accepted the challenge and offered to cover the costs of the test. When he heard of this, Randi offered to throw in the long-standing $1 million prize for any positive demonstration of the paranormal, to which Benveniste replied: "Fine to us."[25] In his DigiBio NewsLetter. Randi later noted that Benveniste and Josephson did not follow up on their challenge, mocking their silence on the topic as if they were missing persons.[26]
An independent test of the 2000 remote-transmission experiment was carried out in the US by a team funded by the United States Department of Defense. Using the same experimental devices and setup as the Benveniste team, they failed to find any effect when running the experiment. Several "positive" results were noted, but only when a particular one of Benveniste's researchers was running the equipment. "We did not observe systematic influences such as pipetting differences, contamination, or violations in blinding or randomization that would explain these effects from the Benveniste investigator. However, our observations do not exclude these possibilities."
Benveniste admitted to having noticed this himself. "He stated that certain individuals consistently get digital effects and other individuals get no effects or block those effects."[27]
Third-party attempts at replication of the Benveniste experiment to date have failed to produce positive results that could be independently replicated. In 1993, Nature published a paper describing a number of follow-up experiments that failed to find a similar effect,
Other scientists
In 2003, Louis Rey, a chemist from Lausanne, reported that frozen samples of lithium and sodium chloride solutions prepared according to homeopathic prescriptions showed – after being exposed to radiation – different thermoluminescence peaks compared with pure water. Rey claimed that this suggested that the networks of hydrogen bonds in homeopathic dilutions were different.[34] These results have never been replicated and are not generally accepted - even Benveniste criticised them, pointing out that they were not blinded.[35]
In January 2009,
In 2010, at the age of 78, Montagnier announced that he would take on the leadership of a new research institute at Jiaotong University in Shanghai, where he plans to continue this work. He claims that the findings "are very reproducible and we are waiting for confirmation by other labs", but said, in an interview with Science, "There is a kind of fear around this topic in Europe. I am told that some people have reproduced Benveniste's results, but they are afraid to publish it because of the intellectual terror from people who don't understand it." Montagnier had called Benveniste "a modern
Homeopathic coverage
To most scientists, the "memory of water" is not something that deserves serious consideration; the only evidence is the flawed Benveniste work. By contrast, the notion of "memory of water" has been taken seriously among homeopaths. For them, it seemed to explain how some of their remedies might work. An overview of the issues surrounding the memory of water was the subject of a special issue of Homeopathy. In an editorial, the editor of Homeopathy,
See also
- Hexagonal water
- DNA teleportation
- List of experimental errors and frauds in physics
- List of topics characterized as pseudoscience
- Pathological science
- Pseudoscience
- Scientific misconduct
- Masaru Emoto
- Homeopathic dilutions
References
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- ^ Bellamy, Jann (8 August 2013). "Integrative Medicine Invades the U.S. Military: Part Three". Science-Based Medicine. Retrieved 1 October 2017.
- ^ a b "Homeopathy: The test. Transcript". BBC Two. 26 November 2003. Retrieved 4 March 2007.
- S2CID 71759962.
- ^ a b c d e John Langone (8 August 1988). "The Water That Lost Its Memory". Time Magazine. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007. Retrieved 5 June 2007.
- ISBN 978-1-326-45874-4 (Chapter 1, page 15).[self-published source]
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- ^ Novella, Steven (May–June 2011), "The Memory of Water: The Science of Medicine", Skeptical Inquirer, 35 (3)
- ^ Robert Sheaffer (January–February 1998), "E-mailed Antigens and Iridium's Iridescence", Skeptical Inquirer, vol. 22, no. 1, column "Psychic Vibrations"
- ^ James Randi in interview for BBC Horizon: "Science & Nature - Horizon - Homeopathy: The Test". BBC. 10 December 2003. Retrieved 28 April 2021.
- ^ S2CID 9579433.
- S2CID 4362490. Archived from the original on 18 October 2009.)
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- ^ ISBN 978-0-520-23008-8
- ^ Brian Josephson, molecule memories, New Scientist letters, 1 November 1997
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- ^ Benveniste, J; Aissa, J; Guillonnet, D. "The molecular signal is not functional in the absence of "informed" water". FASEB Journal. 13 (4): A163.
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- ^ Leon Jaroff, Homeopathic E-Mail, Time Magazine, 9 May 1999
- ^ Jacques Benveniste and Didier Guillonnet, DigiBio - NewsLetter 1999.2, "Demonstration challenge, etc." section
- ^ James Randi, Computer problems, a Nobel Laureate reneges, more magnetic shoes, the metric system, and ..., Commentary, 26 January 2001
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- ^ Ennis, Madeleine. "E-mail from Professor Ennis on the specific differences in her study and the studies by ABC News (20/20) and the BBC". homeopathic.com. Retrieved 4 December 2018.
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- ^ Icy claim that water has memory New Scientist 11 June 2003
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- ^ Martin Chaplin, ed. (2007), The Memory of Water Homeopathy 96:141-230
- Copies of the articles in this special issue are freely available on a private website, along with discussion. Homeopathy Journal Club hosted by Bad Science, a blog by Ben Goldacre