Article suivant celui de J. Benveniste, sur la reproductibilité des expériences effectuées
Cet étude réfute l'hypothèse formulée sur la mémoire de l'eau, et devrait ainsi être prise en compte par toute personne citant l'étude de Benveniste de 1988 comme preuve de l'effet de dilution.
Cet article s'inscrit dans la continuité du débat suivant la publication de l'étude de J. Benveniste et ses collaborateurs dans la revue Nature. Il répond en effet à l'avis éditorial achevant ledit article : "Readers of this article may share the incredulity of the many referees who have commented on several versions of it during the past several months. [...] With the kind collaboration of Professor Benveniste, Nature has therefore arranged for independent investigators to observe repetitions of the experiments. A report of this investigation will appear shortly."
We have attempted to reproduce the findings of Benveniste and co-workers, who reported in 1988 that degranulation of human basophil leukocytes is triggered by very dilute (102-10120) antiserum against IgE. The results were contrary to conventional scientific theory and were not satisfactorily explained. 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-lgE dilution. Our results contain a source of variation for which we cannot account, but no aspect of the data is consistent with the previously published claims.
