Jacques Benveniste - Homeopathy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2004/oct/21/obituaries.guardianobituaries

Jacques Benveniste

Maverick scientist behind a controversial experiment into the efficacy of homeopathy

• Caroline Richmond
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 October 2004 01.48 BST
• Article history

In 1988, the world's foremost scientific journal, Nature, rocked the scientific world and the media with a paper that appeared to demonstrate that homeopathy worked.

A team of French allergy researchers led by Jacques Benveniste, who has died aged 69, described how an allergy test worked even when the reagent - the substance to be used in the chemical reaction - was so diluted with water that the odds were against a single molecule remaining. Benveniste, a biologist and immunologist, argued that the water used for dilution "remembered" the molecule that had been diluted out of existence.

Nature had printed the article on condition that it could appoint three experts to observe the experiment being replicated. The trio were John (now Sir John) Maddox, editor of Nature; James Randi, a professional magician, and Walter Stewart, an expert on science fraud.

The three spent a week in Benveniste's Paris laboratory. The first day was spent talking; the second, planning; the third preparing blood cells and reagents for the test; and the fourth was devoted to the experiments. At the end of that session, the raw data was wrapped in tinfoil and taped to the ceiling, so that any attempt to tamper with it overnight would be noticed.

The next morning, the tinfoil had been disturbed but not opened, as if an attempt to open it had been abandoned. The data was interpreted by Elisabeth Davenas, who had done the original research, and the results were significant; but when the labels were removed and she analysed the results "blind", they were shown to be random.

It emerged that Benveniste had never performed the experiment himself, but had left it to Davenas, who had a special interest in homeopathy. She told the investigators that the experiment often did not work for months on end. In reality, she was examining very small amounts of data at a time, and discarding data that she felt was insignificant.

After the investigation, Benveniste accused the investigators of McCarthyite witch-hunting. Maddox's view was that Benveniste was self-deluded, extraordinarily credulous, and so ignorant of the scientific methods that he did not understand that small samples of anything will vary according to chance. Randi's defence of the investigation was to argue that if he, Randi, said he kept a goat in his garden, people might be mildly surprised but they would be unlikely to disbelieve him. If, however, he said that he kept a unicorn in his garden, they might want to check how firmly its horn was attached.

The results of the investigation appeared in Nature shortly afterwards. The findings earned the approval of the scientific community, but the opprobrium of homeopaths everywhere. Benveniste, who by now had a cult following, had abandoned his original research and steered his entire labora tory into investigating the idea that water molecules had memory.

Two years later, then aged 55, Benveniste was sacked from his job at France's government-sponsored medical research body, the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (Inserm).

Jacques Benveniste had charisma, wit, charm, and film-star good looks. He was born into a well-to-do family in Paris, and was a racing driver until he was forced to retire after a back injury. His family then steered him into medicine. After qualifying at Paris University, he found that his back injury made stooping over patients difficult and he went into immunology research.

From 1965 to 1969 he worked at CNRS, the French cancer research institute, and from 1969 to 1972 at the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in California. He made a name for himself as one of a team that isolated a blood hormone called platelet-activating factor.

Returning to France, he was appointed head of the Inserm immunology laboratory in Paris. Here he patented an allergy test called the basophil degranulation test. It was hardlyoriginal - he just gave it a commercial application. Most experts regard the test as useless.

Benveniste published 230 scientific papers, many of them in reputable journals. Towards the end of his life he compared himself with Galileo and repeatedly stated that he was in the running for a Nobel Prize. He won not one but two of the satirical Ignobel prizes awarded by a gang of Harvard scientists - the 1991 chemistry prize for showing that water has memory, and the 1998 one for a paper showing that information can be transmitted over telephone lines and the internet.

After seven years in the wilderness, Benveniste set up a company, DigiBio, in 1997, to promulgate his ideas. It was funded by France's largest manufacturer of homeopathic medicines, and by sympathisers. Its website, http://www.digibio.com/ gives its own account of the Nature debacle and appeals for funds from believers and supporters.

Twice married, he is survived by five children.

· Jacques Benveniste, racing driver, immunologist and homeopathic businessman, born March 12 1935; died October 3 2004