Benveniste’s Experiments and the So-Called “Water Memory” Phenomenon: an Example of Serendipity?

Benvenistes experiments known in the lay press as the water memory phenomenon are generally considered to be a closed case. However, the amount of data generated by twenty years of well-conducted experiments prevents closing the file so simply. An issue, which has been little highlighted so far, merits to be emphasized. Indeed, if Benveniste failed to persuade his peers of the value of his experiments, it was mainly because of a stumbling block, namely the difficulty of convincingly proving the causal relationship between the supposed cause (informed water) and the experimental outcomes in different biological models. To progress in the understanding of this phenomenon, we abandon the idea of any role of water in these experiments (water memory and its avatars). In other words, we assume that control and test conditions to be evaluated were physically identical and differed only by their respective designations. We show in this article how simple probabilistic considerations allow to build a model that accounts for all aspects of Benvenistes experiments. In this model based on probability amplitudes, constructive and destructive interferences emerge or not according to the experimental context. The recording of a statistical regularity shapes the intertwined whole constituted by the probability amplitudes of the states of the experimenters cognitive structures and of the experimental system. This model provides an alternative explanation to Benvenistes experiments where water plays no role and where the place of the experimenter is central.