Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

by Paul A. Offit

In 2010, two years after he won the Nobel Prize, Montagnier—like Linus Pauling and Peter Duesberg before him—made a series of embarrassing public declarations. First, Montagnier said that DNA molecules could be teleported from one test tube to another (presumably, in a manner similar to the way people were teleported in the television series Star Trek). Then, Montagnier claimed that homeopathy made sense. Homeopathy is based on the now disproved belief that if you dilute a substance to the point that not a single molecule remains, the water in which it was diluted will remember that the substance was there. “I can’t say homeopathy is right in everything,” said Montagnier. “What I can say now is that high dilutions are right. High dilutions of something are not nothing. They are water structures which mimic the original molecules.” (Given that there is a limited amount of water on Earth, you don’t want it to remember where it’s been.) Finally, Montagnier joined the long list of those claiming a cure for autism. Montagnier said that when he took the blood of patients with autism—and diluted it to the point that not a single molecule of the original blood remained—he could detect electromagnetic waves indicating the presence of bacterial DNA. Autism, it appeared, was a bacterial infection. And it wasn’t just autism that was caused by bacteria. Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and chronic fatigue syndrome were bacterial infect...

Yeah, you can see whatever you want when there's nothing actually there.