JREF Swift Blog

I CAN'T WAIT!

I just heard from Magali Cotard, a French reporter who recently interviewed me on the subject of homeopathy and Dr. Jacques Benveniste, the scientist who so enthusiastically accepted and promoted the quackery when Sir John Maddox, Walter Stewart, and I – for Nature Magazine – investigated his lab at Clamart, France, where Benveniste conducted his research back in 1988. The report of our investigation resulted in a serious reversal for the lab, and for its conclusions.

During that visit, we’d witnessed the regular routine of the personnel when they did their work, noting that it was not done “double blind,” which certainly was called for in such research, and we then initiated this precaution for a controlled set of tests over which we had control. The eventual result was that for the first time in the history of their work, null results were produced. That was no surprise to us, since we’d seen ample evidence of data selection and other errors taking place during their procedures.

One of the precautions that I took to detect any possible attempts at cheating, was to prepare an envelope that contained the secret re-coding we’d applied to the identification of the samples. Normally, this would have simply been locked away, but to the surprise of Maddox and Stewart, I stuck that envelope to the ceiling of the lab, thus apparently making the data available to anyone who might wish to access it in order to “improve” the accuracy of the tests... My colleagues were apprehensive about this possibility, but I was quite confident. You see, I’d discovered that there were only two keys available to the lab, one held by Benveniste himself, and the other at another location; I may not reveal this at present. (The lock was a super-secure Fichet model, one that I believe even I could not have defeated.)

Upon entering the lab on the day when the results would be revealed to the international media – who were eagerly assembled to hear this news – I immediately saw that the envelope had been tampered with, but since I’d sealed it with a tamper-proof tape supplied for my use by 3M labs in the USA, the integrity of the data, I knew, was still intact. Of course, in the intervening 20+ years since, I’ve always wondered who might have attempted to peek at the data, and though I’ve had at least two very eligible candidates for that position, I’d not known.

That is about to change. Ms. Cotard is about to interview me again, after having further pursued her investigation. She now tells me that she has had a confession from the culprit who I foiled, and I’m left hanging until that next interview takes place...!

As soon as I know, SWIFT readers will be informed. And I assure you, I’m champing at the bit, ready to go...!