Imprinting

Phllip Ball reviews a special number of the journal Homeopathy (published by Elsevier, a competitor) devoted to papers on “the memory of water.” He keeps the expected snarkiness in check, for the most part.

The procedures and protocols on display here are often unusual, if not bizarre, because it seems the one thing you must not do on any account is the simplest experiment that would probe any alleged ‘memory’ effect: to look for the persistent activity of a single, well-defined agent in a simple reaction—say an enzyme or an inorganic catalyst—as dilution clears the solution of any active ingredient.