1 4 7- 6 -'.-1- - L,xL 1 9 MICHEL SCHIFF THE MEMORY OF WATER HOMOEOPATHY AND 'THE BATTLE OF IDEAS IN THE NEW SCIENCE Thorsons An Imprint of HarperCollinsPnbli~her~ CONTENTS Foreword viii J. Benveniste Introduction 1 Part One: The strange behaviour of ordinary water 5 1 Anomalies of all disciplines, unite! 7 Thonons The puzzle of homoeopathic dilutions An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublubm Biomagnetism: from popular to scientific knowledge 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, How do molecules communicate within a living cell? Hammersmith, London W6 8JB 1160 Battery Street, Coherent domains: new physical and chemical objects? San Francisco, California 941 11-12 13 'I don't want to hear about it' Published byThonons 1995 13579108642 2 Homoeopathic dilutions: shake vigorously without heating 21 0 Albin Michel 1994 An ultrasensitive biological test: the staining of basophils aIgE Michel Schiff asserts the moral right to The scientific study of homoeopathic dilutions be identified as the author of this work Evidence for the potency of some homoeopathic dilutions A catalogue record for this book Quantitative summary of results of high dilution experiments is available from the British Library The scientific status of high dilution experiments ISBN 0 7225 3262 8 3 Agent X travels through walls 31 Typeset by Harper Phototypesetters Limited, Northampton Transmission experiments dismissed as 'black magic' Printed in Great Britain by The early history of transmission experiments HarperCollinsManufaccuring Glasgow An observer becomes a participant All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be A scientific exploration gets paralysed by the burden of proof reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, Description of transmission experiments in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior A personal testimony concerning 10 transmission experi- permission of the publishers. The significance of transmission experiments Part Two: The strange behaviour of ordinary scientists 47 1 Appendixes 123 Introduction 49 i Appendix 1: A forgotten anomaly: water can dissolve glass! 12 3 1 Appendix 2: High dilution experiments presented in Chapter 2 12 5 4 Be quiet, the experts are not worried! 52 Appendix 3n: Lndil-ect transmission experiments using hearts 130 The role of experts in society 1 Appendix 3b: Direct transmission experiments using human neutrophils The tragic story of Ignazius Semmelweis 134 If it were true, scientists would surely know about it Appendix 4: Two documents about contaminated serums 13 7 Unorthodox cancer research: the case of Antonio Priore Appendix 5: An example of institutional censorship: the director of I Unwanted knowledge: an example related to the memory of water INSERM threatens Benveniste for reporting an I experiment 140 5 Direct censorship is only the tip of the iceberg 67 Appendix 6a: An example of the perverse use of statistical arguments 142 Academic discourse on censorship: a blind spot over a blind spot i Appendix 6b: An example of a mock attempt to duplicate Censorship as part of the normal scientific process an experiment 145 The case of the memory of water: examples of direct censorship Appendix 6c: Seven examples of scientific harassment published by The link between censorship in science and the 'golden rule' Nature 147 I; Appendix 6d: Scientific studies of high dilution effects 15 1 6 The perverse use of legitimate technical tools 85 t. : Appendix 7a: Four letters about a suspicion of fraud 153 I: Mock attempts to duplicate an experiment Appendix 7b: Thematic analysis of the articles quoting The perverse use of statistics : Davenas et al, 15 8 Scientific harassment I It is impossible apriori, hence it never happened ! i Notes 163 7 Rumours, slander and sarcasm 96 Scientific rumours Debunking as a substitute for scientific arguments 8 A psychological look at scientific repression 107 Conformity and self-censorship The illusion of objectivity Faith in the intelligibility and regularity of natural phenomena Science and the citizen: the golden rule of scientists Scientific arrogance: the contradiction between knowledge and power Conclusion 120 FOREWORD and printed, the following being exemplary: 'It cannot be since if it were true it would have been found two hundred years ago' . 'It cannot be because it would nullify years, centuries of knowledge' . 'It cannot be because it is not always reproducible' . 'It cannot be because there is no FOREWORD theory behind it', and so on. On this deaf and blind attitude, this boo15 is in fact a textbook. However, as an experimenter, that is, a person who likes to find solu- tions to yet unsolved problems, I would like to express two concerns that are not to be found here. The first is that, when I read in Nature remarks about unusual results requiring 'different editorial standards' (Henry WHENthe editor asked me to write the foreword to the English version Metzger), it seems to me that such an opinion (which unfortunately is of Michel Schiff's book (Un cas de cmre dam la science: L'afaire de la accepted by most scientists) explains by itself the impressive slowing mimoire de I'eau) my first move was to turn down this proposal: there was down of science. Biology still lives according to a nineteenth-century enough of 'Benveniste' in this book. But then the author succeeded in paradigm, and the modern revolution of ~hysicshas seemingly been convincing me that the reader could be interested to know what I had to achieved in the thirties. (For those who volens nolens appear to pay tribute say about how an external observer viewed my work. So I agreed. When to the God Progress, it should suffice to say that there has been no para- the time came to write this introduction, I initially decided to comment digm shift in the time between Mendel's experiment and the cloning of a not on the book but on what was lacking in it. Indeed, when I first read gene via molecular biology techniques; the double helix, as important as the book1 thought I would not be interested by this account of a series of this discovery is, is simply the structural materialization of what was events that I should know better than anyone else. To my surprise this known as chromosomes and genes, and the cloning process is purely was not so. I then realized that not only had I forgotten many of the technological.) Obsessed with 'quality' and big science, the scientific episodes of the saga but also that Michel Schiff has seen, from both his system has built an instrument which indeed insures 'quality' but suictly privileged external point of view and his expertise in the sociology of within the admitted paradigm since, by definition, the judges belong to science, many aspects of the struggle that did not appear to the daily the existing system; when confronted with any data that couid represent participants, including myself. Furthermore he brought to light what we such a change, they react by demanding special laws to deal wid7 special vaguely knew but never clearly formalized, that is, the enormous number results. In fact, should the system be intellectually regulated, a of positive experiments, done blind or in clear, that we had performed completely opposite stance would be taken; that is, fearing the delete- over time on the two main systems that are the basis for the controversy: rious effect of the self-perpetuating reviewing system, we should heartily the high dilution and the transmission experiments. build a counter system that would be lenient to controversial, weak, I found in this book what I expected: a clear diagnosis of the reluctance premature data. One can immediately see the main objection to hs- of the scientific community to change paradigms and an account of how how can this system' be made foolprbof to errors or even fraud? T!,is the so highly celebrated peer-review system (paraphrasing Churchill: objection has in fact no interest whatsoever,' for the simple reason that 'the pire [French for 'worse'], indeed, at the exception of all others') went scientists do not create nature, they only 'dis-cover' it, in other wc Is, berserk when confronted with results that referees could not read, using removing the cover under which nature is provisionally hidden. There is the 'software' they have in hand, that is, the currently prevailing para- no way, and especially since science is now such a large industry with digm. What is also clear is that many authors starting from Kuhn have plenty of means at hand, that false or fraudulent data can stand very long proposed theories to explain such reluctances to shift paradigms. Yet, before being disproved. (En passing, one of the arguments in favour of the when the crisis occurred, it was as if it were the first one in the history of existence of what is lcnown as the memory of water is the fact that, after science and all the lieu communs and errors of judgement were mouthed 10 years, no one has come up with a decent alternative explanation for THE MEMORY OF WATER these data.) If science does not nurture its infant results with the same care as human beings nurture their fragile offspring, if this kind of 'special law' akin to the most autocratic regimes prevails, then one can easily predict that science will not survive this final blow. My second concern, which is especially valid for biology for the simple INTRODUCTION reason that biology deals with the most complex set of systems that is life, is that it is now apparent to most scientists (even if they don't phrase it loudly) that the current process of reductionism, of microanatomy, that is summarized in the statement: 'When we know all the parts we will know how the whole works' is wrong.