Why we have to teleport disbelief http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20927951.900-why-we-have-to-teleport-disbelief.html
AS THE old saying goes, it's good to have an open mind but not so open that your brains fall out. This week we report claims about the way that DNA behaves that are so astonishing that many minds have already snapped shut. The experiments (see "Scorn over claim of teleported DNA") make three claims that will stretch most people's credulity: under certain conditions, DNA can project copies of itself onto electromagnetic waves; these same waves can be picked up by pure water and, through quantum effects, create a "nanostructure" in the shape of the original DNA; and if enzymes which replicate DNA are present in a "receiving" solution, they can recreate the original DNA from the teleported "nanostructure", as if DNA was really there. This scenario inevitably conjures up echoes of the "water memory" experiments in 1988 by the late Jacques Benveniste (New Scientist, 14 July 1988, p 39). Back then, Benveniste reported that antibodies could leave a ghostly "memory" in water that made the water behave as if the antibodies were still there, even in solutions so dilute that no antibody molecules were left. Eventually, his findings were dismissed, as was he. The main researcher behind the new DNA experiments is a recent Nobel prizewinner, Luc Montagnier. But science should be no respecter of persons, and the researchers we contacted for comment rightly said his results should be ignored unless and until they have been repeated by independent groups.
