The Memory of Water: Homoeopathy and the Battle of Ideas in the New Science [Paperback]

Michel Schiff (Author), Schiff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1998

This work tells the story of the persecution of Jacques Benveniste, a French scientist whose career was frustrated when he tried to expand the horizons of traditional science. His research provided an explanation for one of the great mysteries of medical science - the working of homoeopathy. This book explores the witch hunt that was carried out against Beveniste and examines the way that, historically, science has vilified those considered heretics, only to canonize them years later.

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Thorsons Publishers (April 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0722535341
• ISBN-13: 978-0722535349
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,493,675 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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23 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A shocking account of a scientific witchhunt., April 30, 2001

By 

D. Sinclair - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Memory of Water: Homoeopathy and the Battle of Ideas in the New Science (Paperback)

Schiff's account of the 'persecution' of Jacques Benveniste, the French scientist who produced strong experimental evidence that homeopathic dilutions can have significant biological effects, reveals that science, the great project of enlightenment and reason, has mutated into something similar to fundamentalist religion.

This religion of true science has its own high priests, taboos and holy dogmas. The high priests are the editors of scientific journals such as Nature, who self-righteously decide which of nature's phenomena can and cannot be admitted into scientific scripture. Consideration for scientific canonization of a phenomenon usually depends on compatability with dogma and tradition.

Benveniste's research, described in the first half of this book, did not meet this criterion. It challenged the dogma that living system can be reduced to the mechanical interaction of molecules, and it violated a scientific taboo by suggesting that homeopathy, that old heresy on the systematic ridicule of which whole sceptical careers have been built, might be legitimate after all. A historical embarrasement for scientific orthodoxy seemed imminent.

Beneveniste had to be discredited by any means necessary. The second half of Schiff's book is devoted to a detailed discussion of what these means were. Among them are accusations of incompetence and fraud, rumors of mental instability, censorship, ridicule, misinterpretation of statistical data, mock replication of experiments and 'scientific harassment' (a barrage of invalid criticisms and poorly thought through alternative "explanations" that do not explain the observations, combined with escalating demands for more evidence, even though it has already been decided that no amount of evidence will be considered convincing), and ultimately, the withdrawl of funding.

Schiff's account of the lengths that the scientific establishment will go to to defend preconceived notions of how nature ought to work leaves no room for doubt that 'big science' is broken and needs to be fixed. An excellent, highly educational book that is deserving of five stars.

18 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another nail in the coffin of the spirit of discovery, August 15, 2000

By 

Frank Bierbrauer (Cardiff, Wales, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Memory of Water: Homoeopathy and the Battle of Ideas in the New Science (Paperback)

"The Memory of Water" is not so much about homeopathy but rather about the possibility of water having the ability to store information in some way. The research of Jacques Benveniste was set up to look into this question. I hear you say : no problem sounds like a good idea since some people have said that this is possible, specifically those practising hemeopathy (and for that matter electronic acupuncture which is practised with electrodes and vials containing the active substances which are dissolved in water). Further it seems that science being a profession supposedly designed to investigate nature in all its forms should jump at the opportunity. Just the contrary occurred, Benveniste almost lost his job, he lost his funding, his labs were closed down and ridicule followed even though he had a long standing reputation as a diligent and exacting scientist. In other words the message was : don't study things which the greater scientific community considers taboo no matter how much evidence appears to demonstrate some phenomenon or even the benefits which might follow. Into this climate Schiff has written a book explaining the progress of both the research into the memory of water and the consequences suffered by Benveniste's and his co-workers from the scientific establishment.

The book starts by looking into the possibility that molecules can send information electromagnetically through water inside the cell. Certainly not a ridiculous possibility since electric potentials exist within the cell and as such so must electric and magnetic fields, this is not denied by conventional science but the possibility that electromagnetic signalling occurs, is. The book goes on to describe briefly the coherent domains approach developed by Giuliano Preparata and Emilio Del Giudice two eminent physicists who proposed a way for millions of molecules to act coherently and allow EM signalling.

The book then continues with the techniques used to investigate the potency of homeopathic dilutions which have been diluted until not even one molecule of the active substance remains and yet the dilution is still active. Lots of detail is gone into discussing the materials used and their applicability.

Further chapters describe the reactions to the research where some scientists/organisations have used quite vitriolic language to discredit the work, this is concluded by the visitation to Benveniste's lab of James Randi and his "team" of debunkers. The lengths that the establishment will go to to protect its security is astonishing.

I felt that, given the report of Schiff, Benveniste's work was very well conducted with exacting detail and all stops were pulled out to ensure correct procedure, similarly one finds that a person of Benveniste's reputation and well known quality as a scientists should never have been under question. However I woud have liked far more interesting information on the properties of such research, but then the book was written to clear the air surrounding the research and its viability. Benveniste is now working at a research institute set up by benefactors and he is fully investigating the properties of water and its medical applications. A timely book to remind everyone of the consequences of upsetting the status quo.

11 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Timely first-hand account, March 11, 2001

By 

Edward Wall (Atlanta, GA United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Memory of Water: Homoeopathy and the Battle of Ideas in the New Science (Paperback)

"Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-evident" - Arthur Schopenhauer

The book' author Schiff worked in Benveniste's lab and documents successful replication work, as well as attempted replication work by others. The book is not written to support any particular conclusions about possible memory of water so much as to document events ensuing from publication of extraordinary data. The investigators are not drawing hard-and-fast scientific conclusions (no hint of Schopenhauer's third stage) as to the specific nature and mechanism of the apparent discoveries. So, it is not only inappropriate to ridicule those curious about the subject, but it is anti-scientific to be making ad hominem attacks when the investigators are proceeding in an erudite fashion, from what I can see by reading the book.

The situation of the apparently rational laboratory director Benveniste (p. 98 reports Science Citation Index records more than 1000 references to his work in the period 1986 - 1991, five times greater than the average number of citations among those 30 scientists who directed a laboratory belonging to the same section in INSERM as Benveniste) has been and is willing to risk his every career gain to continue the work. It is most unfortunate that easy attacks have been the scientific community's preferred method of response to this remarkable man's unusual claims.

The book is mainly a pleading to allow science to proceed as science ought to proceed, uncertainty and all. Schiff does not claim to know that Benveniste is correct in all his assertions.