French immunologist Jacques Benveniste (March 12, 1935 - October 3, 2004) gained international notoriety in 1988 when he published a paper in the prestigious scientific journal Nature that claimed to have found valid evidence for homeopathy. He claimed that a homeopathically diluted solution of antibodies could activate white blood cells without relying on a chemical reaction, via a proposed mechanism he called water memory. March 12 is the 71st day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (72nd in Leap years). ... 1935 (MCMXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... October 3 is the 276th day of the year (277th in Leap years). ... 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... For the scientific journal named Science, see Science (journal). ... Nature is one of the oldest and most reputable scientific journals, first published on 4 November 1869. ... The neutrality and factual accuracy of this article are disputed. ... Schematic of antibody binding to an antigen An antibody is a protein used by the immune system to identify and neutralize foreign objects like bacteria and viruses. ... White Blood Cells is also the name of a White Stripes album. ... Water memory is a concept, basic to homeopathy, which holds that water is capable of containing memory of particles dissolved in it. ...

However, a follow-up investigation of Benveniste's laboratory by a team including Nature editor Dr. John Maddox and professional "pseudo-science debunker" James Randi, with the cooperation of Benveniste's own team, failed to replicate the results. Subsequent investigations have yielded mixed, mostly negative results. Benveniste's reputation was damaged, but he refused to retract his controversial article. He began to fund his research himself as his external sources of funding were withdrawn, and in 1997 he founded the company DigiBio to further his research. Sir John Royden Maddox (born November 27, 1925 in Penllergaer, Swansea), a trained chemist and physicist, is a prominent science writer. ... James Randi James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge, August 7, 1928 in Toronto, Canada), more often known as The Amazing Randi, is a stage magician, a skeptic, and an opponent of pseudoscience. ...

Benveniste has been awarded two Ig Nobel Prizes. The 1991 Ig Nobel in Chemistry describes Jacques Benveniste as being a "prolific prosyletizer and dedicated correspondent of Nature, for his persistent belief that water, H₂O, is an intelligent liquid, and for demonstrating to his satisfaction that water is able to remember events long after all trace of those events has vanished." He also received the 1998 Ig Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his homeopathic discovery that not only does water have memory, but that the information can be transmitted over telephone lines and the Internet." The Ig Nobel Prizes are a parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year in early fall — around the time the recipients of the genuine Nobel Prizes are announced — for ten achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. ... 1991 (MCMXCI) is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Chemistry (derived from the Arabic word kimia, alchemy, where al is Arabic for the) is the science that deals with the properties of organic and inorganic substances and their interactions with other organic and inorganic substances. ... 1998 (MCMXCVIII) is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ...

Benveniste died in Paris at the age of 69 after heart surgery. He was twice married and had five children. The Eiffel Tower has become a symbol of Paris throughout the world. ...

Nature publication and investigation

Unusual conditions

Nature agreed to publish Benveniste's article in June 1988 with several conditions, and printed an editorial titled "When to believe the unbelievable" in the same issue of the journal. The first condition was that Benveniste obtain confirmation of his results from other labs. The second, in response to an invitation from Benveniste, was that a team be allowed to investigate his lab. Not since a 1974 article on Uri Geller had Nature imposed the third condition, that a skeptical disclaimer be attached to the article: Uri Geller Uri Geller (born December 20, 1946 in Tel Aviv, Israel) is a famous but controversial alleged psychic and television personality. ...

"Editorial reservation: Readers of this article may share the incredulity of the many referees. . . There is no physical basis for such an activity. . . Nature has therefore arranged for independent investigators to observe repetitions of the experiments."

Peer review (known as refereeing in some academic fields) is a scholarly process used in the publication of manuscripts and in the awarding of funding for research. ...

A critical investigation

A week after publication of the article, Nature sent a team of three investigators to Benveniste's lab to attempt to replicate his results under controlled conditions. The team consisted of Nature editor and physicist Sir John Maddox, American scientific fraud investigator and chemist Walter Stewart, and skeptic and former magician James Randi. Sir John Royden Maddox (born November 27, 1925 in Penllergaer, Swansea), a trained chemist and physicist, is a prominent science writer. ... Scientific skepticism or rational skepticism (UK spelling, scepticism) sometimes referred to as skeptical inquiry, is a scientific, or practical, epistemological position (or paradigm) in which one questions the veracity of claims unless they can be scientifically verified. ... James Randi James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge, August 7, 1928 in Toronto, Canada), more often known as The Amazing Randi, is a stage magician, a skeptic, and an opponent of pseudoscience. ...

The team pored over the laboratory’s records and oversaw seven attempts to replicate Benveniste’s study. Three of the first four attempts turned out somewhat favorable to Benveniste, however the Nature team was not satisfied with the rigor of the methodology. Benveniste invited them to design a double blind procedure, which they did, and conducted three more attempts. Before fully revealing the results, the team asked if there were any complaints about the procedure, but none were brought up. These stricter attempts turned out negative for Benveniste. In response to Benveniste’s refusal to withdraw his claims, the team published in the July 1988 edition of Nature the following critiques of Benveniste’s original study: Double-blind describes an especially stringent way of conducting an experiment, usually on human subjects, in attempt to eliminate subjective bias on the part of both experimental subjects and the experimenters. ...

1. Benveniste’s experiments were "statistically ill-controlled", and the lab displayed unfamiliarity with the concept of sampling error. The method of taking control values was not reliable, and "no substantial effort has been made to exclude systematic error, including observer bias"
2. "interpretation has been clouded by the exclusion of measurements in conflict with the claim". In particular, blood that failed to degranulate was "recorded but not included in analyses prepared for publication". In addition, the experiment sometimes completely failed to work for "periods of several months".
3. There was insufficient "avoidance of contamination", and, to a large extent, "the source of blood for the experiments is not controlled".
4. "the salaries of two of Dr Benveniste's coauthors of the published article are paid for under a contract between INSERM 200 and the French company Boiron et Cie."
5. "The phenomenon described is not reproducible". "We believe that experimental data have been uncritically assessed and their imperfections inadequately reported."

In statistics, when analyzing collected data, the samples observed differ in such things as means and standard deviations from the population from which the sample is taken. ... Systematic errors are biases in measurement which lead to measured values being systematically too high or too low. ... Observer bias is error introduced into measurement when observers overemphasize behaviors they expect to find and fail to notice behaviors they do not expect. ... The neutrality of this article is disputed. ...

Benveniste fights back

In the same issue of the journal Nature, and in subsequent commentary, Benveniste derided the Nature team’s "mockery of scientific inquiry" and warned other scientists not to permit such investigations into their own labs. He claimed that such "Salem witchhunts or McCarthy-like prosecutions will kill science." Some of his criticisms included: 1876 illustration of the courtroom; the central figure is usually Mary Walcott The Salem witch trials of Colonial America resulted in a number of convictions and executions for witchcraft in 1692 in Massachusetts, the result of a period of factional infighting and Puritan witch hysteria which led to the deaths... McCarthyism took place during a period of intense suspicion in the United States primarily from 1950 to 1954, when the U.S. government was actively countering American Communist Party subversion, its leadership, and others suspected of being Communists or Communist sympathizers. ...

1. "Lip service is paid to our honesty; yet accusation of cheating was rampant". For example, the Nature team implied that the lab’s partial funding from the homeopathy industry was cause for concern, but this was a double standard since industry funding - both homeopathic and non-homeopathic - of research is commonplace.
2. The team of non-biologists displayed "amateurism", failed to "get to grips with our biological system", created an atmosphere of "constant suspicion", and their member James Randi played tricks and pulled stunts such as taping information to the ceiling to prevent tampering.
3. The team arrived without a prior plan, and based on one week of work "would blot out five years of our work and that of five other laboratories".
4. The blinded attempts likely failed due to "eratic controls", the excessive work-load, and the team’s experimental design.
5. Benveniste totally rejected the team's allegations of unfamiliarity with sampling error, and of the unreliability of his control values.

Attempts to replicate Benveniste's results

Ovelgonne et al

A group of Dutch researchers reported their failure to duplicate the results in Experientia in 1992:

"In fact, in our hands no effect of extreme dilutions was shown at all. We conclude that the effect of extreme dilutions of anti-IgE, reported by Davenas et al., needs further clarification and that in this process the reproducibility of results between experimenters should be carefully determined."

Hirst et al

A group of English researchers reported a similar experience in Nature in 1993:

"Following as closely as possible the methods of the original study, we can find no evidence for any periodic or polynomial change of degranulation as a function of anti-IgE dilution."

However, Benveniste in a 1994 letter to Nature argued that the study neglected to faithfully follow his methods. The study has also been criticized on the grounds that its results were more favourable to Benveniste's claims than the study authors acknowledged in their conclusion.[1][2]

Josephson and the APS

Benveniste gained the public support of Brian Josephson, a Nobel physicist with a reputation for openness to paranormal claims. Time magazine reported in 1999 that, in response to scepticism from physicist Robert Park, Josephson had challenged the American Physical Society (APS) to oversee a replication by Benveniste, using "a randomized double-blind test", of his claimed ability to transfer the characteristics of homeopathically diluted water over the Internet. Benveniste replied "fine by us" to Randi’s offer to throw in the $1 million challenge prize-money if the test succeeded.[3] The APS accepted and offered to cover the costs of the test, however Benveniste and Josephson did not follow up on their challenge. Brian David Josephson (born Cardiff, Wales, UK, January 4, 1940) is a British physicist whose discovery of the Josephson effect as a 22-year-old graduate student won him the 1973 Nobel Prize for Physics, which he shared with Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... Robert L. Park is a professor of physics at the University of Maryland, College Park. ... The American Physical Society was founded in 1899 and is the worlds largest organization of physicists. ...

[Please explain why Benveniste and Josephson did not follow up on the challenge. That doesn't make sense.]

BBC Horizon

In 2002 BBC Horizon broadcast its failed attempt to win James Randi's $1 million prize for proof that a highly diluted substance could still have an effect. Prominent spokespersons on both sides of the debate were interviewed, including Benveniste. The program has been criticized, variously, for erroneously claiming to "repeat Ennis’s" methods,[4][5][6] for not being sufficiently critical of homeopathy,[7] and for using a small sample. Horizon is a long-running BBC popular science and history documentary programme, notable for coining the term supervolcano. ...

Ennis et al

An article published in Infamation Research in 2004 brought new media attention to the issue with this claim:

"it has been shown that high dilutions of histamine may indeed exert an effect on basophil activity. . . We are however unable to explain our findings and are reporting them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon."

Following up on a study they had published in 1999 in the same journal, the researchers concluded that an effect did exist. Some of the researchers had not been involved in homeopathic research before, while others had, such as former Benveniste collaborator Philippe Belon, Research Director at the homeopathic company Boiron. It was Madeleine Ennis who received the most attention in the media. She led the activities at the British lab and claimed to have begun her research as a skeptic.

INSERM

The July 1989 edition of Nature reported that INSERM placed Benveniste on probation following a routine evaluation of his lab. Although INSERM found that his laboratory activities overall were exemplary, it expressed severe discomfort with his high dilution studies, and criticized him for "an insufficiently critical analysis of the results he reported, the cavalier character of the interpretations he made of them, and the abusive use of his scientific authority vis-à-vis his informing of the public".

Benveniste and homeopathy

Most scientists believe neither that credible evidence exists to supports claims that homeopathic remedies actually work, nor that a plausible mechanism exists to explain how homeopathy could work. Indeed, skeptics often dismiss homeopathy off-hand, citing the fact that that biological reactions require the presence of chemicals, whereas homeopathic remedies are so diluted that they are equivalent to pure water. Homeopaths respond that this is a straw man argument, since they have long acknowledged the absence of chemicals in their products. Homeopaths have instead based their claims on some other yet-to-be-discovered mechanism. The term straw man or man of straw can have many different meanings. ...

Benveniste’s 1988 article gained such notoriety in large part because it hinted at a potential mechanism that could be used by proponents of homeopathy to explain how homeopathy might work. This is the idea that water may somehow retain a memory of a substance that it no longer contains.

To a conventional scientist, pure water is pure water, regardless of whether it once contained a substance in the past. Benveniste flouted this orthodoxy by claiming that water that once contained antibodies but had had them removed could affect a basophil just as if the water still contained antibodies. Most scientists remain unconvinced, but many homeopaths have embraced the idea.

Mostly neglected in the debate so far is an analysis of whether Benveniste’s controversial findings truly conform to homeopathy. His claims do support one major premise of homeopathy, that substances have stronger effects the more highly they are diluted, but contradict the other major premise – that the effect of highly diluted substances is the opposite of their effect when not diluted. Benveniste claimed that his highly diluted substance would have the same effect .[8]

References

• BBC Horizon (2002) Homeopathy: The Test, first broadcast November 26, 2002. Summary and transcript. Rebroadcast on ABC Catalyst in 2003.[9]
• Belon, P., J. Cumps, M. Ennis, P.F. Mannaioni, M. Roberfroid, J. Sainte-Laudy, & F.A. Wiegant (2004) "Histamine dilutions modulate basophil activation", Inflammation Research, 53(5):181-8. Reference:[10]
• Belon, P., J. Cumps, M. Ennis, P.F. Mannaioni, M. Roberfroid, J. Sainte-Laudy, & F.A. Wiegant (1999) "Inhibition of human basophil degranulation by successive histamine dilutions: results of a European multi-centre trial", Inflammation Research, 48(13):17-8. Reference:[11]
• Benveniste, Jacques (2005) Ma vérité sur la 'mémoire de l'eau', Albin Michel. ISBN 2226158774
• Benveniste, J. & Didier Guillonnet (1999) "III - Demonstration challenge, etc.", DigiBio NewsLetter 1999.2. Full text
• Benveniste, J., P. Jurgens, W. Hsueh & J. Aissa (1997) "Transatlantic Transfer of Digitized Antigen Signal by Telephone Link", Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology - Program and abstracts of papers to be presented during scientific sessions AAAAI/AAI.CIS Joint Meeting February 21-26, 1997. Poster, Abstract
• Benveniste, J., B. Ducot & A. Spira (1994) "Memory of water revisited", Nature, Letter to the Editor, 370(6488):322. Reference:[12]
• Benveniste, J. (1988) "Dr Jacques Benveniste replies", News and views, Nature, 334:291. Full text
• Burridge, Jim (1992) "A Repeat of the 'Benveniste' Experiment: Statistical Analysis", Research Report 100, Department of Statistical Science, University College London, England. (early version of Hirst et al)
• Coles, Peter (1989) "Benveniste under review", news article, Nature, 340:89.
• Davenas, E., F. Beauvais, J. Arnara, M. Oberbaum, B. Robinzon, A. Miadonna, A. Tedeschi, B. Pomeranz, P. Fortner, P. Belon, J. Sainte-Laudy, B. Poitevin & J. Benveniste (1988) "Human basophil degranulation triggered by very dilute antiserum against IgE", Nature, 333(6176):816-18. Full text (source 1)(2)(3)(4)
• Fisher, Peter (1999) "The End of the Benveniste Affair?", British Homeopathic Journal, 88(4). Full text
• Hirst, S.J., N.A. Hayes, J. Burridge, F.L. Pearce & J.C. Foreman (1993) "Human basophil degranulation is not triggered by very dilute antiserum against human IgE", Nature, 366(6455):527. Abstract
• Jaroff, Leon (1999) "Homeopathic E-Mail: Can the 'memory' of molecules be transmitted via the Internet?", Time, May 17. Full text
• Lignon, Yves (1999) "L’Homéopathie et la mémoire de l’eau", Les dossiers scientifiques de l'étrange, Chapter 21, Michel Lafon Publishing. ISBN 2840984822. Full text in French
• Maddox, John, James Randi & Walter W. Stewart (1988) "‘High-dilution’ experiments a delusion", News and views, Nature, 334:287-90. Full text
• Maddox, John (1988) "Waves caused by extreme dilution", News and views, Nature, 335(6193):760-3.
• Maddox, John (1988) "When to believe the unbelievable", Nature, 333:787.
• Milgrom, Lionel (1999) "The memory of molecules", The Independent, March 19. Full text
• Ovelgonne, J.H., A.W. Bol, W.C. Hop & R. van Wijk (1992) "Mechanical agitation of very dilute antiserum against IgE has no effect on basophil straining properties", Experientia, 48(5):504-8. Abstract
• Park, Bob (1999) "The Challenge: Homeopathy Via the Internet", What’s New, May 14. Full text (source 1)(2)
• Randi, James. Commentary. January 26, 2001 "a Nobel Laureate reneges"[13]. September 5, 2003 "Benveniste and Josephson on Abandoning Science"[14].
• Targ, Russel & Harold Puthoff (1974) "Information transfer under conditions of sensory shielding", Nature, 251:602-7. Abstract
• Vithoulkas, George (2003) The controversy with the BBC program Horizon. Full text
• Walker, Martin (1993) "Dr Jacques Benveniste: The Case of the Missing Energy", Chapter in Dirty Medicine, Slingshot Publications, London. Chapter full text (source 1) (2)

George Vithoulkas (born 1932 in Athens, Greece) has been an international teacher of classical homeopathy for over 30 years. ...

See also

• Pathological science
• Protoscience
• Junk science
• Scientific misconduct

Pathological science is a neologism to pejoratively describe the pursuit of pseudoscientific claims as like a pathology, or Such claims are said to be distinguished from pseudoscience (itself a pejorative) in that they have a larger and more dogmatic following, and are asserted to be based in self-deception amongst... --203. ... Junk or bunk science is a pejorative term used to derogate purportedly scientific data, research, analyses or claims which are driven by perceived political, financial or other questionable motives. ... Scientific misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in professional scientific research. ...

External links

• Association Jacques Benveniste pour la Recherche, including a detailed resume
• DigiBio, Benveniste's company
• Guardian article about Prof. Madeleine Ennis
• Obituary from the Guardian, 2004
• Selected publications by Benveniste