Quantum Homeopathy? Oh, come on! It’s tough just being homeopathy.
Review of the International Journal of Quantum Chemistry, Vol 110, 252–256 (2010) © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
“The Biophysical Basis of Benveniste Experiments: Entropy, Structure, and Information in Water”
ALLAN WIDOM,1 YOGENDRA SRIVASTAVA,2 VINCENZO VALENZI3
1Physics Department, Northeastern University, Boston, MA
2Dipartimento di Fisica and INFN, Universita Degli Studi di Perugia, Perugia, Italy
3Centro di Biofisica Clinica-Scuola di Medicina del Mare Universita` di Roma “La Sapienza,” Rome, Italy
Received 22 October 2008; accepted 16 January 2009
Published online 19 May 2009 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).
DOI 10.1002/qua.22140 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qua.22140/pdf
by Dr. John Benneth
This article promises a discussion of the physical nature of biological information storage and retrieval in “ordered quantum electromagnetic domains of water.”
The first problem is that the authors aren’t explaining, in classical terms, what they mean by “ordered quantum electromagnetic domains of water.” and by what means are they identified?.
Widom states, “It is possible to float a small ferromagnetic needle over and above the surface of pure water. The magnetic needle floatation trick is most often demonstrated with perfect diamagnetic low temperature type one superconductors. The analogous floating of a magnetic needle above the water surface is due to the partial diamagnetic expulsion of Faraday magnetic field lines from pure water ordered domains. In the
fringing magnetic field of a bitter magnet one may” float a “bag of water” of the size of a frog and in fact one can float a frog.
One can float a frog? On what? This statement is followed by an equation, presumably for floating a frog:
“For a single water domain of radius R and volume V 4R3/3 containing N coherent electrons, the diamagnetic polarizability may be estimated in terms of the electronic mean
square radius as . .”
What Widom doesn’t state is that we can also float a paper clip, razor blade or unmagnitised needle on the surface of water. No! He first has to float a frog! Classical science says that paper clips, razor blades, and needles don’t float because of water tension, they float because water surface tension, which is explained by the lateral extension or bending of hydrogen bonds, the attractions between water molecules.
But wait a minute! What am I saying? I’m a homeopath! I’m not supposed to know anything about science!
Is that why Widom makes no mention of current observations and insights of homeopathic physics from the material sciences, the current known physical aspects of homeopathic remedies which can be detected by instrumentation?
Alright stop. Perhaps there’s something about this subject that makes me smarmy. Or perhaps it attracts smarmy people. I don’t know. Before we can understand anything here we need to put it into what I am tempted to say is a reasonable context. But erase that. I don’t like it. There is no reasonable context regarding Benveniste. It is emotionally disturbed. In a word, painful.
The editors of the experiment to which Widom obliquely refers to are not so circumscript or oblique about Davenas, or the experiment Dr. Benveniste gets blamed for. WHat use dto be the world’s most prestigious science magazine, Nature, had this to say of Davenas:
“the principle of restraint which applies is simply that, when an unexpected observation requires that a substantial part of our intellectual heritage should be thrown away, it is prudent to ask more carefully than usual whether the observation may be incorrect.”
Pardon me while I gag. Intellectual heritage. God, what a bunch of overpaid dummies. In other words, they are saying that in the highest levels of the scientific stratosphere, they don’t get it. One moment I’m being told that it’s a placebo, the next moment they’re threatening to burn all the high school psychology books with Randi’s picture in them. What they are saying is that they believe there is no KNOWN (to them) classical theory for the biological action of homeopathic remedies.
(Now I think that’s a fair statement, don’t you? I doubt any of my most vocal, most obstreperous critics would disagree with that.)
If only politics could be so simple.
However, lest you need awakening after missing something important, hear me when I say I am contentious over that part of the statement made by Nature (and they can’t rightly be blamed for it) for when the authors of a piece like Davenas and one like Widom that follows it do not make an attempt to present their work as anything but idiopathic, they are grabbing at the brass ring, such as Nobel prize, or the James Randi Excellence in Pederasty Award, at the risk of falling off the carousel.
Do they award the Nobel Prize for Stupidity? If they do then I nominate Professor Sir John Beddington, Chief Blowhard of the Realm, for that.
Look, Nature magazine has assumed, without correction by the authors, that there is no classical definition or identification of the chemical makeup of the homeopathic remedy, when in fact there is.
When in fact there is . .
WHEN IN FACT THERE IS
No, see, when in a disagreement with a man who is in need of education, it is best to take him gently by the hand, lead him to a private spot under a tree, and then kill him. BuT this is beyond my mien, my scope, my reputation precedes it, there are millions of them, and I have no new clear weapons.
So let me explain this to you in English, in simple terms, as if it were your secondary language: No books have to be rewritten, no books have to be burned. Men of letters may keep them. Well, some of them. Not any difficult letters, like Z. You can keep Z, for Zztupid. And science does not have to be tipped on its head, for science has already explained it. All science has to do is stand up. The explanation for homeopathy lies in the annals of classical science.
That’s right. We need no quantum explanations. We need no Lagrangians. We don’t need any secret handshakes or meetings on the square, by the plum or on the level. What I am saying is this: Before we can have a coherent quantum discussion of the mechanics of the homeopathic remedy, we have to set down what we know classically of the unique physical features of water, which are sometimes obfuscated when brought up in the context of homeopathy.
Yes, and this is where it gets painful. As soon as pseudoscientists such as Michael Shermer, James Randi, Simon Singh, Ben Goldacre, David Colquhoun, John Beddington, Steven Novella, Edzard Ernst, etc. hear the words “quanta” or “quantum effects,” they immediately dive into pejorative hyperbole and pessimism, start revving up their engines, blowing headgaskets, just as they do when they hear the word “homeopathy.” To them it is synonymous with quackery, as is anything quantum. So an article like Widom has a double whammy on it.
Iamhere to remove that curse . . well, as you may have noted, I’m not here to defend it. In fact, I’m rather suspicious of it myself.
Perhaps I need to brush up on my quantum mechanics. Problem, is my Wu Li Masters dance card’s kind a full. After I get through validating homeopathy I’m scheduled to destroy Einstein.
So let me try to cut his short. It might not seem I’ve cut it short, but I have. It’s huge subject, even without the all the endless whining by Ben Goldacre about his boring day job. Anyone with a mind for inquiry can find whatever it is they’re saying at Randi’s circle jerk quickly dispelled upon a quick inspection ofthe literature, and here is where the fun begins.
When classical terms are presented, these critics who have been so loud-mouthed on their favorite subject of derision tend to go silent, because they suddenly are facing classical terms that refer to observable phenomena that are fairly well to really well known, things you can see for yourself, or at least researchable online, such as hydrogen bonding, intermolecular forces, solvation cages, kosmotropes, hormesis, water surface tension, bubbles, water bridges, clathrate hydrates, supramolecular chemistry, etc.
So then, why aren’t we first asking, vis a vis, what are the observable effects and physical distinctions of the homeopathic remedy, if any at all? Why am I first reading a quantum explanation for homeopathy when I could be reading a classical one?
Perhaps Widom is a straw man, a plant, a shill working for the black propagandists. But there I go again.
The Chief Science Advisor to the government of the United Kingdom this week denounced homeopathy as declared in the Guardian newspaper that “there is no scientific basis for homeopathy beyond the placebo effect and that there are serious concerns about its efficacy.”
Oh dang, here I’ve been curing people for cancer all these years only to find out it just been coincidence.
Maybe we should play along. Maybe we should conspire not to hurt the poor man’s feelings. And really, why should we sell it to people who don’t want it? What’s Darwinian about that? That’s not very scientific of us, either. No wonder we’re homeopaths. If we were scientists we wouldn’t be trying to save the people who are doing us the most harm. The people who think it’s a placebo are always first ones that need to be culled out of the herd by natural selction. So maybe we should simply go along with the notion that these substances have no specificity.
Who has asked that question? Did Widom ask it? I didn’t read it there. Saw nothing about he specificity of the sub at omic field, or clathrates either, for that matter. Did Benveniste ask it? What did Benveiste have to say about the physics of the substance he was testing? Nothing . .notheeen!
What Widom promises, Widom does not deliver. Another skeptomaniac hoax. There is no discussion of the classical physics because Benveiste presented his data idiopathically as well, and this is how Widom views it.
Look. To make headway through a calm sea you have to make waves. And just because you’re making waves, does not mean you’re making headway.
You got that? Making headway isn’t enough either. The boat has to be pointed in the right direction!
Terms used by Roy in “Structure of Liquid Water, Novel Insights from the Material Sciences and their Relevance to Homeopathy” are not novel. No. These terms can be dated within two centuries of analysis, beginning with Davy referring to liquid aqueous structures (LAS) as hydrates, to Mendeleev seeing them in his vodka . .what are now, among other things, called clathrates.
Anomalous liquid aqueous structuring has been observed for centuries and intermolecular forces that create the hydrogen bond between H2O molecules have been known since Johannes Diderik van der Waals won the Nobel prize for his observations of the contiguous phase transition of matter in 1910 and the eponymous interactions between molecules he described. This shows the idiopathy of Widom’s discussion. The context is not stated. Widom lists only 15 references when dozens could apply, and only one is for Benveniste. What? There is no mention either of Luc Montagnier’s work, which serves to build on Benveniste’s physical work in not only identifying the size of LAS, but also their electromagnetic indices.
Note that the title of Davenas, “Human basophile degranulation triggered by very dilute antiserum against IgE,” is absent in Widom’s bibliography. Whoops! They simply list the author’s names. This may have simply been an oversight, but it is a key one. Davenas is a biochemical experiment, not a physical one. It does not represent the real discovery of Benveniste’s work, which are the electromagnetic features of the homeopathic nosode used in the basophil experiments. They’re not talking about that, are they? In context of work prior and subsequent, Davenas is prosaic. It was the fourth replication, which there are now at least 25 since the test was first introduced by Murietta in 1984.
Widom promises a discussion of physical properties. Yet it makes no mention of the NMR studies, such as those by Demangeat, and Widom is apparently oblivious to other physical indices noted in homeopathic solvents.
Or is he?
There is no mention of theory for the composition of homeopathic remedies, the major one (which this author of this blog supports) being that they are crystal analogs usually of internal influences, but sometimes also of external radiation; from either specific material kosmotropes triturated from material sources, or from imponderabilia, such as X-Rays. These influences may be the nucleators for solvation cages, or clathrates, and it is proposed that from these polymer structures extend contiguous fields throughout the solvent.
The domain of the contiguous field expanding from the clathrate increases 100 times with each 1:100 dilution,. The succussion phase of processing introduces atmosphere into the solvent and creates new nuclei, what are commonly referred to in other contexts as gas hydrates.
Presumably there are quantum effects that can be ascribed to liquid aqueous structuring (LAS). Montagnier in his work, “Electromagnetic Signals Are Produced by Aqueous Nanostructures Derived from Bacterial DNA Sequences” reports on only two of 10 indices I have found for homeopathic remedies.
Widom, in producing what claims to be a quantum physics report on the work of Benveniste, presents little if any of Benvensite’s relevant work and no report on the known physics of the solvent. We can only presume then, and we are sorry to say it, that Widom is romancing the dilute.
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