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Water memory was more serious. If true, it meant that water was somehow able to retain a memory of substances that had been dissolved in it. Physicists and biologists would have to drastically alter their view of matter, and pharmacologists would have to rethink conventional drug treatment. Moreover, homeopathic medicine, a fringe practice in the U.S. that is widespread in France, would get a boost. Homeopaths believe that extremely dilute solutions of some potentially harmful drugs, vigorously shaken -- a common homeopathic technique -- can treat disease.
The investigation had all the earmarks of an all-out assault on presumed chicanery. "To be frank," said Maddox, "we began by thinking that someone was playing a trick on Benveniste. Our minds were not so much closed as unready to change our whole view of how science is constructed." Notebooks were photographed, researchers videotaped, and vials juggled and secretly coded. Incredibly, the codes were wrapped in tinfoil, sealed in an envelope and stuck on the ceiling so Benveniste and his colleagues could not read them.
Even Randi was watched because of his "reputation for sleight of hand." During one crucial test, the lab suddenly rocked with laughter: Randi was enlivening things with magic tricks. "Only the constant implication that we had something to hide prevented me from stopping this masquerade," said Benveniste.
The investigators' final report debunking Benveniste's research did not imply that there had been fraud. But it did conclude that the experiments were flawed and that no substantial effort had been made to exclude systematic error, including observer bias. Reported Maddox and his team: "We believe the laboratory has fostered and then cherished a delusion about the interpretation of its data." The report expressed dismay that the salaries of two of Benveniste's colleagues had been paid by a French supplier of homeopathic medicines. The Nature investigators admitted, however, that the same firm had paid their hotel bill.
The results of the investigation infuriated Benveniste. He compared the probe to "Salem witch hunts and McCarthy-like prosecutions." Said he: "It may be that all of us are wrong in good faith. This is no crime but science as usual, and only the future knows." Maddox stuck by his final assessment, as well as by his earlier decisions to publish Benveniste's work and send the investigating team to Paris. But he added, "I'm sorry we didn't find something more interesting."