> ...and you claim water can not have memory. So where is the testable hypothesis in that?
OK, you're right. I need to be more careful in what I'm saying, then.
My claim, specifically, is that science does not have a large enough lack of knowledge about water -- or any other simple chemical -- in the specific areas of chemistry or particle physics, to suggest that there is even an unknown mechanism by which extra-molecular information might be stored in such a chemical, "extra-molecular" here meaning any information which wouldn't otherwise be included naturally as a part of that chemical. Furthermore, I'm saying that, in the absence of such unknowns, and given current knowledge of basic chemistry and physics, such hypothetical information storage would violate the already-accepted principles of those fields.
In other words, I'm placing the burden of proof squarely on the shoulders of the people making the fantastical claim, and I'm justifying that by claiming that we have a large enough body of evidence to support labeling their claim as "fantastical".
Now, if this was the 17th century, and I appeared out of nowhere and proclaimed, "water cannot have memory!" -- then maybe you'd have a point. Instead, there's this wonderfully large body of understanding of chemistry and physics which, while incomplete, is not so incomplete as to leave any room for a method of information storage in basic chemicals without contradicting current knowledge. Thus, "water can not have memory."
If you want to press further on this and challenge my assertion anyway, then I present as evidence the entire body of science. Your move. :-) If you can successfully disprove enough current chemistry or physics to leave the door open for any kind of "memory" in water, then there is probably a large amount of fame and acclaim waiting for you.
(And yes, there is some debate about how gravity works. While general relativity does a neat job of modeling gravity, it is somewhat unsatisfying as an explanation for its mechanism. And also, yes, I would be inclined to say that "anti-gravity is impossible", although with somewhat more reservation, because so far the best explanation for gravity is that it is in fact some kind of side-effect of mass on a space-time environment, so "anti-gravity" would require negative mass, which last time I checked doesn't even make sense -- although I haven't been watching the journals as closely as I used to.)
What if water did have memory? What if water somehow "remembered" everything that had been in it, once upon a time? Water is recycled - your glass of water has been rain, river, ocean, pond scum, cow piss, bug poo and dinosaur blood. Firstly wouldn't we'd have noticed by now if the provenance of a particular piece of water (say, lake water vs. rainwater) made it behave differently? And secondly what measures do homoeopaths take to cancel prior "memories" in the water that they use? Homoeopathy is not only false, it doesn't even make consistent sense in it's own terms.
Maybe it only has memory for one month or something.
I am not arguing for it, though, so don't downvote me just because you don't like Homeopathy - I didn't invent or advocate it.
Edit: According to Wikipedia there seems to be a memory of a fraction of nanoseconds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory (they seem to measure a specific kind of "memory", though). But what for example about waves, are they not also a kind of memory? Some waves last longer than a nanosecond.
Do homoeopathic remedies have a "best before" date? If you wanted to given them "best before" dates, how would you measure when the non-existent potency starts to disappear?
The next time anyone offers a homoeopathic drug, ask them how long the medication is good for. There is no sensible answer to that question, because homoeopathy is gibberish.
"I present as evidence the entire body of science. Your move."
It doesn't work that way, and you know it :-)
It seems the guy from Nature was not as well informed as you, because rather than arguing that it is impossible because of established laws of nature, he actually did the experiments. Weird.
As for gravity, I know there is debate about HOW it works. I meant there is probably no debate that it "works" (by whatever mechanism).
It seems scientists felt the need to invent "dark matter" and other esoteric stuff at times to explain their theories, so I am not sure how established some of our modern theories really are (some weeks ago I think there was an article on HN presenting a theory that would explain away dark matter). It also seems difficult or impossible to prevent particles from affecting each other. So I suppose "no memory" means "all effects are washed out in chaos" or something like that?
Well, I'm going back to bed for a few hours. I think I've presented my point as well as I'm inclined to, and our "debate" is starting to ring all of my diminishing-returns bells.
> It seems the guy from Nature was not as well informed as you, because rather than arguing that it is impossible because of established laws of nature, he actually did the experiments. Weird.
Cute. Do I really need to point out why, or are you just being deliberately snarky? Because the article pretty well covered all of this.
> It seems scientists felt the need to invent "dark matter" and other esoteric stuff at times to explain their theories, so I am not sure how established some of our modern theories really are...
And this is where it suddenly dawned on me that debating this further, instead of going to bed, would be foolish.
Physicists: "Hmm, this is odd. Given our current understanding of gravity, observations supporting an expanding universe, and current mathematical constants, we appear to be missing a huge amount of mass in the universe."
Astronomers: "Hey, don't look at us. We're woefully underfunded, but I'm pretty sure we would've seen a hint of that much stuff by now."
Physicists: "Maybe there's some other kind of exotic form of mass that we haven't seen before?"
Other physicists: "Well, that doesn't really violate any other principles of physics. It's worth a check. Let's see if we can find it."
The under-educated public: "LOL they invented dark matter!"
How about, instead of playing debate-hit-and-run by making weak accusations against science ("they felt the need to invent dark matter") and then immediately hiding behind ignorance ("I am not sure how established some of our modern theories really are"), you actually do some reading and find out? The internet is amazing, you can find an answer to pretty much any question you have on any topic. So I'll just leave this here then: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter
OK, you're right. I need to be more careful in what I'm saying, then.
My claim, specifically, is that science does not have a large enough lack of knowledge about water -- or any other simple chemical -- in the specific areas of chemistry or particle physics, to suggest that there is even an unknown mechanism by which extra-molecular information might be stored in such a chemical, "extra-molecular" here meaning any information which wouldn't otherwise be included naturally as a part of that chemical. Furthermore, I'm saying that, in the absence of such unknowns, and given current knowledge of basic chemistry and physics, such hypothetical information storage would violate the already-accepted principles of those fields.
In other words, I'm placing the burden of proof squarely on the shoulders of the people making the fantastical claim, and I'm justifying that by claiming that we have a large enough body of evidence to support labeling their claim as "fantastical".
Now, if this was the 17th century, and I appeared out of nowhere and proclaimed, "water cannot have memory!" -- then maybe you'd have a point. Instead, there's this wonderfully large body of understanding of chemistry and physics which, while incomplete, is not so incomplete as to leave any room for a method of information storage in basic chemicals without contradicting current knowledge. Thus, "water can not have memory."
If you want to press further on this and challenge my assertion anyway, then I present as evidence the entire body of science. Your move. :-) If you can successfully disprove enough current chemistry or physics to leave the door open for any kind of "memory" in water, then there is probably a large amount of fame and acclaim waiting for you.
(And yes, there is some debate about how gravity works. While general relativity does a neat job of modeling gravity, it is somewhat unsatisfying as an explanation for its mechanism. And also, yes, I would be inclined to say that "anti-gravity is impossible", although with somewhat more reservation, because so far the best explanation for gravity is that it is in fact some kind of side-effect of mass on a space-time environment, so "anti-gravity" would require negative mass, which last time I checked doesn't even make sense -- although I haven't been watching the journals as closely as I used to.)