Water memory is the purported ability of water to retain a memory of substances previously dissolved in it even after an arbitrary number of serial dilutions. Water memory defies conventional scientific understanding of physical chemistry knowledge and is not accepted by the scientific community.
Water memory defies conventional scientific understanding of physical chemistry knowledge and is not accepted by the scientific community. In 1988, Jacques Benveniste published a study supporting a water memory effect amid controversy in Nature, accompanied by an editorial by Nature's editor John Maddox urging readers to "suspend judgement" until the results can be replicated. In the years following publication, multiple supervised experiments were run by Benveniste's team, the United States Department of Defense, BBC's Horizon programme, and other researchers, but no team has ever reproduced Benveniste's results in controlled conditions.
Benveniste was a French immunologist who sought to demonstrate the plausibility of homeopathic remedies "independently of homeopathic interests" in a major scientific journal. To that end, Benveniste and his team at Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM, French for National Institute of Health and Medical Research) diluted a solution of human antibodies in water to such a degree that there was virtually no possibility that a single molecule of the antibody remained in the water solution.