This book review is reprinted from The Homoeopath with permission from Nick Churchill of The Society of Homoeopaths.
The Memory of Water - Homoeopathy and the Battle of Ideas in
the New Science
by Michel Schiff
Reviewed by Robert Bridge
1995, 166 pages,
hardback
This is a book, as they say, of two halves: the first half details the experiments carried out by Jacques Benveniste since 1983 and the second half examines the critical response to this research by the scientific orthodoxy and initiates a wider discussion on the alarming fate of innovative thought in general.
In 1983 Benveniste was approached by a researcher named Poitevin and asked to assist with a research project investigating the biological action of potentised substances. After initial skepticism, Benveniste agreed and constructed an experiment involving anti-immunoglobulin E (algE), an agent known to inhibit the capacity of basophils to absorb a staining dye. By 1985 Benveniste had begun to obtain experimental results which showed that algE continued to exert an effect when employed at potencies beyond Avogadro's limit and thus was clearly not acting on a simple molecular level. In 1988 Benveniste submitted a synopsis of his findings to Nature who published his paper with an editorial caveat that all but dismissed his work outright and urged extreme caution to its readers. Then, five days later, Nature dispatched a team to Benveniste's laboratories to carry out an independent validation of his work. The team consisted of James Maddox, the editor of Nature, accompanied by a scientific fraud-buster and a stage magician, a statement of intellectual mockery equivalent to sending the Serious Fraud Office and Paul Daniels into the Wellcome Foundation to check out their latest AIDS research. Their conclusions were as expected. By refusing to acquaint themselves with Benveniste's research protocol and by placing quite exorbitant demands of time and scrutiny on Benveniste's staff, they managed to obtain results that appeared to them to invalidate his findings, although ironically their findings were later shown to do much to substantiate Benveniste's original conclusions. A month later Nature published a triumphant and braying article which refuted Benveniste's assertions and the scientific community breathed a hefty sigh of relief.
Although Benveniste continued and extended this original research, he had by this time become involved in a project even less palatable to scientific taste. He had been shown a machine, presumably some kind of radionics box, by a homoeopath called Attias, had dismantled it, reckoned that the significant components were simply two electromagnetic coils and an amplifier, made his own version and had begun to produce electromagnetic copies of algE and other substances which also could be seen to exert biological effects on basophil cells and other recipients. This was simply too much for the mainstream French scientific community who pulled out all the stops, blacklisted his co-workers, issued escalating threats to Benveniste himself and finally, in 1994, withdrew all his funding and thereby forced him to close his laboratory.
As a commentator Michel Schiff has impeccable credentials, an atomic physicist and behavioural psychologist by trade and an observer of Benveniste's work since 1992. He is meticulous at delineating the very numerous devices by which the scientific community seeks to protect itself against the threat of the new. In particular he highlights the frightening autonomy of the academic bastions and major journals as arbiters of truth, interested only in information that will leave the established pillars of wisdom intact, demolishing truly innovative and rule-breaking work with accusations of poor scientific procedure and fraud and so- called arguments such as "if this was true we would have known it already". Schiff has ready eye for humbug and hypocrisy and attacks his quarry with a relish that is positively carnivorous using both the Benveniste episode and plentiful historical example to substantiate his observations.
I must confess that I found this book more fascinating for the story that it tells than for the manner of its telling; and two main areas of grievance deserve mention. Firstly, in a book which deals to a large extent with egos it is hardly surprising that Schiff himself intrudes into the drama with regularity but the increasingly frequent cameo appearances become irritating and ultimately self-demeaning. It may be pertinent to have details of the experiments that Schiff himself carried out, of some interest to have a transcript of a longish letter that Schiff wrote to one of the hostile scientists and of less certain interest to have a copy of an advertisement that Schiff nearly placed in a scientific journal. But it is tiresome to have numerous references to Schiff's other literary works, tacky to have a hefty quotation from one of them used as the focus of the book's conclusion and positively banal to be told that a given speech by Benveniste was delivered at a seminar that Schiff had helped to organise. Schiff's achievement in writing this book at all, at possessing the breadth of knowledge to handle the very disparate disciplines and weave them into a coherent and highly readable whole, is testament enough without resorting to such transparent self-advertisement.
The other grievance concerns Schiff's handling of the technical material, a problem for any book of this sort which aims to present a highly specialised subject to as broad an audience as possible, retaining accessibility without sacrificing important detail. Schiff manages this by consigning the weightier data to a series of appendices, necessitating a good deal of page-turning for anyone prepared to go the whole distance but leaving the main text relatively uncluttered. If anything Schiff seems unduly apologetic about the demands that the text makes and seems to feel obliged to lighten proceedings with frequent anecdotes, analogies and historical examples that become distracting and even confusing to the main argument. At times this process of simplification renders the argument elliptical, even incoherent, leaving the uninformed reader at Schiff's mercy. For example, early on in the book, Schiff introduces the Theory of Coherent Domains, the brainchild of two Italian scientists, a theory which suggests that molecules might behave as families rather than individuals and concludes with a list of values that had been obtained for a number of scientific constants. The text gives no hint of how the theory might have been used to obtain these results nor indeed any explanation of what the actual constants signify and whether we should regard the obtained values as statistically good, bad or indifferent. I am ashamed to say that I have not the faintest notion what van der Waals' Second Coefficient is, nor whether an obtained value of 4.4 as compared to an observed value of 5.0 is cause for celebration or gnashing of teeth. Schiff gives us no help at all on this one. This may seem like a marginal gripe but this example, and numerous others, are strangely ironic in the context of this book. The message is that there are those that know and those that don't, that Schiff belongs to the former and we belong to the latter, and the latter should accept what the former have to tell them without demur. This is intellectual rank-pulling of the first degree, a device of which Schiff is rightly highly critical when employed by scientists to deflect criticism of their ideas and maintain their authority and thus an odd component of the fabric of the book itself. I found myself wondering whether Schiff was operating some form of selective censorship in order to give best light to his own ideas and concluded that he probably was.
Elsewhere there is much of particular interest to homoeopaths. This book offers the first comprehensive resume of Benveniste's work to date, itself the first scientifically rigorous attempt to demonstrate the action of potentised substances. There are several references to the Second Curve, the observation that the samples used did not exhibit a uniform effect across a wide range of potencies and that certain bands of potencies were patently more active than others, an observation which has profound implications in our understanding and use of existing remedies. I found it disappointing that there was no coherent description of homoeopathy and even more disappointing that the samples were referred to throughout as high dilutions with only one passing mention of succession. No attempt is made to consider its likely importance in the preparation process. The choice of X and C to distinguish, respectively, samples and controls in the double-blind tests will confuse some readers until it becomes clear that X30 signifies the 30th decimal potentisation of the active sample and C30 is the 30th decimal potentisation of the dummy contro. When Schiff refers to the potency of homoeopathic remedies he is making a statement about their capacity to exert an effect rather than their method of preparation; and I guess that not all readers will concur with Schiff's assertion that "France is [also] the country where homoeopathic medicine is most developed".
Despite its faults this book should be read as a fascinating account and examination of the techniques of censorship, of the methods employed to maintain the status quo and ridicule the new and provocative. As homoeopaths it is tempting to bask in a kind of inverse smugness at seeing the mainstream scientific community at last having their shenanigans exposed and we can feel rightfully indignant that outsiders in general and homoeopaths in particular are subject to this level of censorship. But I found this book disquieting as I read more and more and realised that as homoeopaths we need look no further than our own backyard to find the selfsame intolerance of new ideas, the lionising of tradition above innovation, the same rebuff and scorn towards individuals and groups whose ideas we do not understand. It seems especially pertinent to be writing this review in the wake of Greg Bedayn's guest editorial in the last issue of the journal a statement of belief more dogmatic and reactionary than anything that Benveniste thankfully had to contend with, an epistle from the bunker. This book is a timely reminder that we have no monopoly on truth or knowledge, that we can only observe with honesty and humility and report on what we see without prejudice or concern for favour. I recommend this book wholeheartedly.
THE HOMOEOPATH
Number 62, Summer 1996.