Water memory
Encyclopedia
Water memory is the claimed ability of water
to retain a "memory" of substances previously dissolved in it to arbitrary dilution. No scientific evidence supports this claim. Shaking the water at each stage of a serial dilution
is claimed to be necessary for an effect to occur. The concept was proposed by Jacques Benveniste
to explain the purported therapeutic powers of homeopathic
remedies, which are prepared by diluting solutions to such a high degree that not even a single molecule of the original substance remains in most final preparations. Benveniste sought to prove this basic tenet of homeopathy by conducting an experiment to be published "independently of homeopathic interests" in a major journal.
While some studies, including Benveniste's, have reported such an effect, double-blind
replications of the experiments involved have failed to reproduce the result. The concept is not consistent with accepted scientific laws and is not accepted by the scientific community
. Liquid water does not maintain ordered networks of molecules for longer times than a small fraction of a nanosecond
.
's team at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research
(INSERM) diluted a solution of human antibodies to such a degree that there was virtually no possibility that a single molecule remained. Nonetheless, they reported, human basophils responded to the solutions just as though they had encountered the original antibody (part of the allergic reaction). The effect was reported only when the solution was shaken violently during dilution. Benveniste stated: "It's like agitating a car key in the river, going miles downstream, extracting a few drops of water, and then starting one's car with the water."
At the time, Benveniste offered no theoretical explanation for the effect.
Benveniste submitted the research to the prominent science journal Nature
for publication. There was concern on the part of Nature's editorial oversight board that the material, if published, would lend credibility to homeopathic practitioners even if the effects were not replicable. There was equal concern that the research was simply wrong, given the changes that it would demand of the known laws of physics and chemistry. The editor of Nature, John Maddox
, stated that, "Our minds were not so much closed as unready to change our whole view of how science is constructed." Rejecting the paper on any objective grounds was deemed unsupportable, as there were no methodological flaws apparent at the time.
In the end, a compromise was reached. The paper was published in Nature Vol. 333 on 30 June 1988, but it was accompanied with an editorial by Maddox that noted "There are good and particular reasons why prudent people should, for the time being, suspend judgment" and described some of the fundamental laws of chemistry and physics which it would violate, if shown to be true. Additionally, Maddox demanded that the experiments be re-run under the supervision of a hand-picked group of what became known as "ghostbusters", including Maddox, famed magician-cum-paranormal researcher James Randi
, and Walter Stewart, a physicist
and freelance debunker at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
In the first series of supervised experiments, the original experimental procedure was followed as it had been when the paper was first submitted for publication. The experiments were successful, matching the published data quite closely. However, Maddox noted that during the procedure the experimenters were aware of which test tubes originally contained the antibodies and which did not. A second experimental series was started with Maddox and his team in charge of the double-blinding; notebooks were photographed, the lab videotaped, and vials juggled and secretly coded. Randi went so far as to wrap the labels in tinfoil, seal them in an envelope, and then stick them on the ceiling so Benveniste and his colleagues could not read them. No memory effect was observed in the blinded experiments.
Nature published a follow-up report in the next issue: "We conclude 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." Nevertheless, there was no suggestion of fraud; Maddox and his team initially speculated that someone in the lab "was playing a trick on Benveniste," but later concluded, "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 for by the French homeopathic company Boiron
.
In a response letter published in the same issue of the journal, Benveniste lashed out at Maddox and complained about the "ordeal" he endured at the hands of the Nature team, comparing it to "Salem witchhunts or McCarthy
-like prosecutions." In both the Nature response and a following Quirks and Quarks
episode, Benveniste especially complained about Stewart, who he stated acted as if they were all frauds and treated them with disdain, complaining about his "typical know-it-all attitude". In his Nature letter, Benveniste also implied that Randi was attempting to hoodwink the experimental run by doing magic tricks, "distracting the technician in charge of its supervision!" He was more apologetic on Quirks and Quarks, re-phrasing his mention of Randi to imply that he had kept the team amused with his tricks and that his presence was generally welcomed. He also pointed out that although it was true two of his team-members were being paid for by a homeopathic company, the same company had paid for Maddox's team's hotel bill.
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 the possibility that the results would be unduly promoted by the homeopathy community demanded an immediate re-test. In failing, 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 when the test then 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. For all of the arguing over the retests, it has done nothing to stop what Maddox worried about; even in the light of their failure they are still used to claim that the experiments "prove" that homeopathy works. One of Benveniste's co-authors on the Nature paper, Francis Beauvais, later stated that while unblinded experimental trials usually yielded "correct" results (i.e. ultradiluted samples were biologically active, controls were not), "the results of blinded samples were almost always at random and did not fit the expected results: some 'controls' were active and some 'active' samples were without effect on the biological system."
or polywater
controversies many scientists started replications immediately, because the underlying theories didn't go directly against scientific fundamental principles and could be accommodated with a few tweaks to those principles. 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 his theories.
After the Nature controversy, Benveniste gained the public support of Brian Josephson
, a Nobel laureate
physicist with a reputation for openness to paranormal claims. Experiments continued along the same basic lines, culminating with a 1997 paper claiming the effect could be transmitted over phone lines. This was followed by two additional papers in 1999
and another on remote-transmission in 2000 by which time it was claimed that it could also be sent over the Internet
.
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 diluted water over the Internet. The APS accepted the challenge and offered to cover the costs of the test. When he heard of this, Randi also offered to throw in the long-standing $1 million prize for any positive demonstration of the paranormal, to which Benveniste replied: "Fine to us." in his DigiBio NewsLetter. However, 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.
An independent test of the 2000 remote-transmission experiment was carried out in the USA 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, however, 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." The experiment is notable for the way it attempted to avoid the confrontational nature of the earlier Maddox test.
Third-party attempts at replication of the Benveniste experiment 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, and an independent study published in Experientia
in 1992 showed no effect. An international team led by Professor Madeleine Ennis
of Queen's University of Belfast
claimed in 1999 to have replicated the Benveniste results. Randi then forwarded the $1 million challenge to the BBC
Horizon program to prove the "water memory" theory following Ennis' experimental procedure. In response, experiments were conducted with the Vice-President of the Royal Society
, Professor John Enderby, overseeing the proceedings. The challenge ended with no memory effect observed by the Horizon team. For a piece on homeopathy, the ABC program 20/20 also attempted, unsuccessfully, to reproduce Ennis's results.
Research published in 2005 on hydrogen bond network dynamics in water showed that "liquid water essentially loses the memory of persistent correlations in its structure" within fifty millionths of a nanosecond.
Water
Water is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state . Water also exists in a...
to retain a "memory" of substances previously dissolved in it to arbitrary dilution. No scientific evidence supports this claim. Shaking the water at each stage of a serial dilution
Serial dilution
A serial dilution is the stepwise dilution of a substance in solution. Usually the dilution factor at each step is constant, resulting in a geometric progression of the concentration in a logarithmic fashion. A ten-fold serial dilution could be 1 M, 0.1 M, 0.01 M, 0.001 M.....
is claimed to be necessary for an effect to occur. The concept was proposed by Jacques Benveniste
Jacques Benveniste
Jacques Benveniste was a French immunologist. In 1979 he published a well-known paper on the structure of platelet-activating factor and its relationship with histamine...
to explain the purported therapeutic powers of homeopathic
Homeopathy
Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine in which practitioners claim to treat patients using highly diluted preparations that are believed to cause healthy people to exhibit symptoms that are similar to those exhibited by the patient...
remedies, which are prepared by diluting solutions to such a high degree that not even a single molecule of the original substance remains in most final preparations. Benveniste sought to prove this basic tenet of homeopathy by conducting an experiment to be published "independently of homeopathic interests" in a major journal.
While some studies, including Benveniste's, have reported such an effect, double-blind
Double-blind
A blind or blinded experiment is a scientific experiment where some of the people involved are prevented from knowing certain information that might lead to conscious or subconscious bias on their part, invalidating the results....
replications of the experiments involved have failed to reproduce the result. The concept is not consistent with accepted scientific laws and is not accepted by the scientific community
Scientific community
The scientific community consists of the total body of scientists, its relationships and interactions. It is normally divided into "sub-communities" each working on a particular field within science. Objectivity is expected to be achieved by the scientific method...
. Liquid water does not maintain ordered networks of molecules for longer times than a small fraction of a nanosecond
Nanosecond
A nanosecond is one billionth of a second . One nanosecond is to one second as one second is to 31.7 years.The word nanosecond is formed by the prefix nano and the unit second. Its symbol is ns....
.
The Nature controversy
In the original study, French immunologist Jacques BenvenisteJacques Benveniste
Jacques Benveniste was a French immunologist. In 1979 he published a well-known paper on the structure of platelet-activating factor and its relationship with histamine...
's team at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research
Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale
Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale is a French biomedical and public health research institution.- Medical research organisation :...
(INSERM) diluted a solution of human antibodies to such a degree that there was virtually no possibility that a single molecule remained. Nonetheless, they reported, human basophils responded to the solutions just as though they had encountered the original antibody (part of the allergic reaction). The effect was reported only when the solution was shaken violently during dilution. Benveniste stated: "It's like agitating a car key in the river, going miles downstream, extracting a few drops of water, and then starting one's car with the water."
At the time, Benveniste offered no theoretical explanation for the effect.
Benveniste submitted the research to the prominent science journal Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
for publication. There was concern on the part of Nature's editorial oversight board that the material, if published, would lend credibility to homeopathic practitioners even if the effects were not replicable. There was equal concern that the research was simply wrong, given the changes that it would demand of the known laws of physics and chemistry. The editor of Nature, John Maddox
John Maddox
Sir John Royden Maddox, FRS was a British science writer. He was an editor of Nature for 22 years, from 1966–1973 and 1980-1995.-Career:...
, stated that, "Our minds were not so much closed as unready to change our whole view of how science is constructed." Rejecting the paper on any objective grounds was deemed unsupportable, as there were no methodological flaws apparent at the time.
In the end, a compromise was reached. The paper was published in Nature Vol. 333 on 30 June 1988, but it was accompanied with an editorial by Maddox that noted "There are good and particular reasons why prudent people should, for the time being, suspend judgment" and described some of the fundamental laws of chemistry and physics which it would violate, if shown to be true. Additionally, Maddox demanded that the experiments be re-run under the supervision of a hand-picked group of what became known as "ghostbusters", including Maddox, famed magician-cum-paranormal researcher James Randi
James Randi
James Randi is a Canadian-American stage magician and scientific skeptic best known as a challenger of paranormal claims and pseudoscience. Randi is the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation...
, and Walter Stewart, a physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
and freelance debunker at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
In the first series of supervised experiments, the original experimental procedure was followed as it had been when the paper was first submitted for publication. The experiments were successful, matching the published data quite closely. However, Maddox noted that during the procedure the experimenters were aware of which test tubes originally contained the antibodies and which did not. A second experimental series was started with Maddox and his team in charge of the double-blinding; notebooks were photographed, the lab videotaped, and vials juggled and secretly coded. Randi went so far as to wrap the labels in tinfoil, seal them in an envelope, and then stick them on the ceiling so Benveniste and his colleagues could not read them. No memory effect was observed in the blinded experiments.
Nature published a follow-up report in the next issue: "We conclude 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." Nevertheless, there was no suggestion of fraud; Maddox and his team initially speculated that someone in the lab "was playing a trick on Benveniste," but later concluded, "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 for by the French homeopathic company Boiron
Boiron
Boiron is a manufacturer of homeopathic products, headquartered in France and with an operating presence in 59 countries worldwide. It is the largest manufacturer of homeopathic products in the world. In 2004, it employed a workforce of 2,779 and had a turnover of € 313 million...
.
In a response letter published in the same issue of the journal, Benveniste lashed out at Maddox and complained about the "ordeal" he endured at the hands of the Nature team, comparing it to "Salem witchhunts or McCarthy
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
-like prosecutions." In both the Nature response and a following Quirks and Quarks
Quirks and Quarks
Quirks & Quarks is a Canadian weekly science news program heard over CBC Radio One of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ....
episode, Benveniste especially complained about Stewart, who he stated acted as if they were all frauds and treated them with disdain, complaining about his "typical know-it-all attitude". In his Nature letter, Benveniste also implied that Randi was attempting to hoodwink the experimental run by doing magic tricks, "distracting the technician in charge of its supervision!" He was more apologetic on Quirks and Quarks, re-phrasing his mention of Randi to imply that he had kept the team amused with his tricks and that his presence was generally welcomed. He also pointed out that although it was true two of his team-members were being paid for by a homeopathic company, the same company had paid for Maddox's team's hotel bill.
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 the possibility that the results would be unduly promoted by the homeopathy community demanded an immediate re-test. In failing, the tests demonstrated that the initial results were likely due to the experimenter effect
Observer-expectancy effect
The observer-expectancy effect is a form of reactivity, in which a researcher's cognitive bias causes them to unconsciously influence the participants of an experiment...
. 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 when the test then 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. For all of the arguing over the retests, it has done nothing to stop what Maddox worried about; even in the light of their failure they are still used to claim that the experiments "prove" that homeopathy works. One of Benveniste's co-authors on the Nature paper, Francis Beauvais, later stated that while unblinded experimental trials usually yielded "correct" results (i.e. ultradiluted samples were biologically active, controls were not), "the results of blinded samples were almost always at random and did not fit the expected results: some 'controls' were active and some 'active' samples were without effect on the biological system."
Subsequent research
In the cold fusionCold fusion
Cold fusion, also called low-energy nuclear reaction , refers to the hypothesis that nuclear fusion might explain the results of a group of experiments conducted at ordinary temperatures . Both the experimental results and the hypothesis are disputed...
or polywater
Polywater
Polywater was a hypothetical polymerized form of water that was the subject of much scientific controversy during the late 1960s. By 1969 the popular press had taken notice, and by 1970 doubts about its authenticity were being circulated. By 1973 it was found to be illusory...
controversies many scientists started replications immediately, because the underlying theories didn't go directly against scientific fundamental principles and could be accommodated with a few tweaks to those principles. 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 his theories.
After the Nature controversy, Benveniste gained the public support of Brian Josephson
Brian David Josephson
Brian David Josephson, FRS is a Welsh physicist. He became a Nobel Prize laureate in 1973 for the prediction of the eponymous Josephson effect....
, a Nobel laureate
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
physicist with a reputation for openness to paranormal claims. Experiments continued along the same basic lines, culminating with a 1997 paper claiming the effect could be transmitted over phone lines. This was followed by two additional papers in 1999
and another on remote-transmission in 2000 by which time it was claimed that it could also be sent over the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
.
Time magazine reported in 1999 that, in response to skepticism from physicist Robert Park
Robert L. Park
Robert Lee Park , also known as Bob Park, is an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park and a former Director of Public Information at the Washington office of the American Physical Society...
, Josephson had challenged the American Physical Society
American Physical Society
The American Physical Society is the world's second largest organization of physicists, behind the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. The Society publishes more than a dozen scientific journals, including the world renowned Physical Review and Physical Review Letters, and organizes more than 20...
(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 diluted water over the Internet. The APS accepted the challenge and offered to cover the costs of the test. When he heard of this, Randi also offered to throw in the long-standing $1 million prize for any positive demonstration of the paranormal, to which Benveniste replied: "Fine to us." in his DigiBio NewsLetter. However, 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.
An independent test of the 2000 remote-transmission experiment was carried out in the USA by a team funded by the United States Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...
. 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, however, 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." The experiment is notable for the way it attempted to avoid the confrontational nature of the earlier Maddox test.
Third-party attempts at replication of the Benveniste experiment 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, and an independent study published in Experientia
Experientia
Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences is a peer-reviewed scientific journal for cellular and molecular life sciences. From 1945 to 1994 it was published under the name Experientia .-Other titles:...
in 1992 showed no effect. An international team led by Professor Madeleine Ennis
Madeleine Ennis
Madeleine Ennis is a pharmacologist and researcher at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She generated controversy by publishing results that seemed to show that ultra-dilute solutions of histamine, diluted to the levels used in homeopathic remedies, could affect cells just as the...
of Queen's University of Belfast
Queen's University of Belfast
Queen's University Belfast is a public research university in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The university's official title, per its charter, is the Queen's University of Belfast. It is often referred to simply as Queen's, or by the abbreviation QUB...
claimed in 1999 to have replicated the Benveniste results. Randi then forwarded the $1 million challenge to the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
Horizon program to prove the "water memory" theory following Ennis' experimental procedure. In response, experiments were conducted with the Vice-President of the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
, Professor John Enderby, overseeing the proceedings. The challenge ended with no memory effect observed by the Horizon team. For a piece on homeopathy, the ABC program 20/20 also attempted, unsuccessfully, to reproduce Ennis's results.
Research published in 2005 on hydrogen bond network dynamics in water showed that "liquid water essentially loses the memory of persistent correlations in its structure" within fifty millionths of a nanosecond.
See also
- List of experimental errors and frauds in physics
- List of topics characterized as pseudoscience
- Pathological sciencePathological sciencePathological science is the process in science in which "people are tricked into false results ... by subjective effects, wishful thinking or threshold interactions". The term was first used by Irving Langmuir, Nobel Prize-winning chemist, during a 1953 colloquium at the Knolls Research Laboratory...
- PseudosciencePseudosciencePseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...
- Scientific misconductScientific misconductScientific misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in professional scientific research. A Lancet review on Handling of Scientific Misconduct in Scandinavian countries provides the following sample definitions: *Danish definition: "Intention or...