Science: The Water That Lost Its Memory

A controversial scientific finding is debunked

SCIENCE FRICTION, acidly quipped one Paris newspaper. Across the English Channel in London, Britain's New Scientist magazine howled, NATURE SENDS IN THE GHOST BUSTERS TO SOLVE RIDDLE OF THE ANTIBODIES. After a month of heated controversy and speculation, the curtain fell last week, at least for now, on one of the strangest tales of scientific controversy in recent memory. The story became public on June 30, when the prestigious British science journal Nature published a report, hedged with "editorial reservation," on a phenomenon that defied the laws of physics and molecular biology: water apparently retained a "memory" of some molecules it...

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