Has another Nobel Laureate gone off the deap end?

[lazybratsche]

@WarmNPrickly

They are taking highly diluted samples of DNA fragments and placing them next to a sample of pure water in a 7 Hz electromagnetic field. They are then running PCR on this “pure water” and successfully amplifying the DNA in the original flask from the “pure water”. That is to say, the complex information from the original flask is being transmitted into the pure water through a 7 Hz em field.

Wow. PCR? That’s probably the best possible technique for generating false positives. For those not familiar with biochemistry, PCR is a very sensitive reaction that can work even with the slightest contamination. If their “pure water” wasn’t actually pure, or there was any cross-contamination at all whatsoever, their result was most likely due to contamination. A single contaminating DNA molecule is sufficient to act as template in a PCR reaction, and it’s easy to accidentally generate contaminating aersols. Without the proper precautions such contamination is actually fairly common. The manuscript makes no mention at all about whether they used such precautions – I’m betting they didn’t.

[billfish678]

@lazybratsche

Without the proper precautions such contamination is actually fairly common. The manuscript makes no mention at all about whether they used such precautions – I’m betting they didn’t.

I keep thinking how hard it would be to make sure you didnt have even one measely DNA molecule lurkinG around somewhere to mess up the process.

And since when did the SDMB become the SD Hoitey Toity Journal of Science?

[BobArrgh]

I’m glad to see others are questioning the basic experiment. I read the original article yesterday or the day before, and the first two thoughts in my head were:

1. Is it possible the pure water vial got contaminated?
2. How many times was the experiment repeated?

[RaftPeople]

@WarmNPrickly

…They are taking highly diluted samples of DNA fragments and placing them next to a sample of pure water in a 7 Hz electromagnetic field. They are then running PCR on this “pure water” and successfully amplifying the DNA in the original flask from the “pure water”…

I didn’t read the paper, and I’m not really anyone with any kind of knowledge on the subject, but, in a summary that I read elsewhere, I was under the impression that it was not “pure water” but rather something that contained the basic building blocks of DNA, just not the DNA specifically. Am I misunderstanding?

[Slightly_mad_scientist]

@RaftPeople

I didn’t read the paper, and I’m not really anyone with any kind of knowledge on the subject, but, in a summary that I read elsewhere, I was under the impression that it was not “pure water” but rather something that contained the basic building blocks of DNA, just not the DNA specifically. Am I misunderstanding?

No, it was pure water. After the experiment they put the nucleotides and everything necessary for the PCR into it.

From the paper:

It was shown clearly that the water nanostructures and their electromagnetic resonance can faithfully perpetuate DNA information.

[WarmNPrickly]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

Oh, I see. So you know Luc Montagnier personally and are concerned about his mental state? :rolleyes:

The o.p. was stated in terms that were prejudicial and semantically undermining e.g. referring to “teleportation” with no actual question about the content or validity of his claims whatsoever. It was a monumentally dishonest way to address valid criticism of the hypothesis forwarded in the paper by attacking the author rather than any questions about the claims.

I would agree that the claims within are extraordinary and the theoretical rationale and experimental verification presented are not at a level adequate to accept the hypothesis as credible and falsifiable. That doesn’t make Montagnier a “scam artist” as labeled by the o.p.

If this is the level of intellectual discourse that is judged suitable for General Questions I’ll withdrawal from the thread and limit myself to forums where invective is not presented as valid criticism.

Stranger

Indeed, you are not required to participate.

[Shmendrik]

@lazybratsche

Wow. PCR? That’s probably the best possible technique for generating false positives. For those not familiar with biochemistry, PCR is a very sensitive reaction that can work even with the slightest contamination. If their “pure water” wasn’t actually pure, or there was any cross-contamination at all whatsoever, their result was most likely due to contamination. A single contaminating DNA molecule is sufficient to act as template in a PCR reaction, and it’s easy to accidentally generate contaminating aersols. Without the proper precautions such contamination is actually fairly common. The manuscript makes no mention at all about whether they used such precautions – I’m betting they didn’t.

Did they use a negative control, such as another vial of water which was several feet away, or a vial right next to the experimental one but somehow shielded?

[lazybratsche]

@Shmendrik

Did they use a negative control, such as another vial of water which was several feet away, or a vial right next to the experimental one but somehow shielded?

They didn’t mention any negative controls. Here everything they have to say about the PCR:

At this point the most critical step was undertaken, namely to investigate the specificity
of the induced water nanostructures by recreating from them the DNA sequence. For this
all the ingredients to synthesize the DNA by polymerase chain reaction (nucleotides, primers,
polymerase) were added to the tube of signalized water. The amplification was performed under
classical conditions (35 cycles) in a thermocycler. The DNA produced was then submitted
to electrophoresis in an agarose gel. The result was that a DNA band of the expected size
of the original LTR fragment was detected. It was further verified that this DNA had a
sequence identical or close to identical to the original DNA sequence of the LTR. In fact, it
was 98 % identical (2 nucleotide difference) out of 104. This experiment was found to be
highly reproducible (12 out of 12) and was also repeated with another DNA sequence from a
bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi, the agent of Lyme disease.

Which is entirely consistent with some sort of contamination – either their water, one of their reagents, or aerosols transferred by their pipettors.

[billfish678]

@lazybratsche

They didn’t mention any negative controls. Here everything they have to say about the PCR:
.

So, the implication is they have no negative controls?

Good freaking grief.

[yorick73]

Maybe it is just the tranlation but the paper reads like it was written by a high school student. Also, where is the Materials and Methods section? Granted some M and M’s are worthless anyway but at least detail what exactly was done in one section…especially for work as strange as this.

[Gary_Robson]

@Stranger_On_A_Train

If this is the level of intellectual discourse that is judged suitable for General Questions I’ll withdrawal from the thread and limit myself to forums where invective is not presented as valid criticism.

[moderating]
I really don’t see anything about this thread as being suitable for GQ, so I am moving it to IMHO.
[/moderating]

[billfish678]

A question/observation.

How hard is it to do this kinda of experiment? For many fields of research I well understand the experiments are very expensive and/or hard to do. Or the data you get is all the data your are going to get anytime soon and you just have to work with what you’ve got.

I have the impression that this is not really the case in this situation. And given the implications of the results…well, lets just say I certainly can’t imagine myself making such an amazing claim with doing some more experiments, mixing things up a bit, and convincing MYSELF that the amazing explanation is the only one…

[lazybratsche]

@billfish678

A question/observation.

How hard is it to do this kinda of experiment? For many fields of research I well understand the experiments are very expensive and/or hard to do. Or the data you get is all the data your are going to get anytime soon and you just have to work with what you’ve got.

PCR is easy for anyone with equipment, which is now ubiquitous in bio labs. The crazy-ass electromagnetic field apparatus sounds like something you’d have to cobble together on your own, but they don’t provide any details about the apparatus in this manuscript. For that they cite their previous papers, which in turn cites another paper by Benveniste and Coll. I haven’t dug up that paper to find the actual apparatus details – frankly I’ve wasted enough of my time trying to figure this nonsense out.

Benveniste was another once-reputable scientist who claimed water has a “memory” which is the mechanism of homeopathic treatment. Of course those experiments have been thoroughly debunked – nobody else could replicate the results, despite trying.

[billfish678]

Thanks.

Thats kinda what I thought. Its sounding worse all the time. Not that it sounded very good to start with.

[Jackmannii]

In answer to the OP, it does appear that Montagnier has gone off the deep end.

In addition to making claims similar to those endorsed by homeopathy enthusiasts, Montagnier has gotten enmeshed with groups promoting autism pseudoscience and HIV denialism:

“Montagnier may not beat Tinbergen’s record for shortest time to descend into pseudoscience after winning the Nobel Prize, but he’s definitely in contention. He only won the Nobel Prize in 2008, and it only took him two years to endorse homepathy-like concepts. He’s also made a name for himself, such as it is, by appearing in the HIV/AIDS denialist film House of Numbers stating that HIV can be cleared naturally through nutrition and supplements”

All of this does not suggest to me a beautiful mind working to expand our understanding of the universe through radical thought-provoking concepts. Instead, he comes across as a deluded woo-meister.

Very sad.

[Jackmannii]

More on “teleporting DNA” here.

[chorpler]

@WarmNPrickly

Sorry. That’s the iPhone autocheck replacing words for me. Vi can’t remember what the intended word was, so just ignore " binaries".

My guess would be “blatant”…

[WarmNPrickly]

It was" bonafide." I guess that’s two words " bona fide". I’m not a word smith, and I’m forced to type everything on an iPhone unless I’m at work these days.

[Derleth]

Here’s an in-depth blog post on the relevant paper and claims.:

Montagnier claims in several papers that the DNA of pathogenic bacteria emits an electromagnetic signal, and further, that if you dilute that DNA homeopathically so that no DNA is actually present, the water continues to emit that same signal. Further, if you put two vials of homeopathically diluted EMS emitting water next to each other, the signal can move from one to another. And further, only bacteria and viruses pathogenic to humans produce this signal; ordinary E. coli does not. It’s madness piled upon madness.

There is no sensible explanation given for this phenomenon, only some wild-eyed speculation that “water molecules can form long polymers of dipoles associated by hydrogen bonds” that may be “self-maintained by the electromagnetic radiations they are emitting”. More madness!

Shades of Blondlot and his mythical n-rays!

The post is also quite critical of the methodology used in the experiment:

They don’t say anywhere what the magnitude of the EMS is. I suspect they don’t know; they just crank up the amp to the max to get a lot of jangly jitter, and don’t bother to calibrate anything.

There are a couple of other indicators that this is pathological science. They’re looking at a minuscule, variable result that is prone to be picking up all kinds of irrelevant signals, yet nowhere in the entire paper can I find the word “blind”. This is the kind of experiment that demands extreme rigor and care, yet the authors don’t even bother to describe the protocols used. That’s a warning sign.

If it was from anyone else, I can only hope such a paper would have been ignored.

I only quoted small, but representative, bits. Read the post for a lot more.