The Memory of Water: Homoeopathy and the Battle of Ideas in the New Science Review

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(More customer reviews)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.

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Tells the story of the persecution of highly respected French scientist Jacques Benveniste.His research provided an explanation for the working of homoeopathy.

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