Why I am Nominating Luc Montagnier for an IgNobel Prize
Luc Montagnier is an interesting and strange character. Last year he was a shared winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine. A remarkable achievement. However, his latest research can only really be described as quite bizarre and some of his statements, are desperately and deadly worrying. So much so, that I think Montagnier ought to be the first recipient of both a Nobel and IgNobel prize. Let me explain.
In the past few weeks we have seen the announcements for the winners of the 2009 Nobel Prizes for Science. They are the highest accolade achievable by a scientist and are given to honour outstanding contributions to their field. Last year, French scientist Luc Montagnier shared the award for medicine for his part in the discovery of the HIV virus – something that has undoubtedly resulted in many lives being saved.
A few days before, we also saw announcements for the winners of the 2009 IgNobel Prizes. Lesser known, these prizes honour research that ‘cannot or should not be replicated’. The idea of the prizes is to ‘make people laugh and then make people think’. Previous winners have included decidedly odd but sensible papers on the side effects of sword swallowing and the the word "the" — and of the many ways it causes problems for anyone who tries to put things into alphabetical order, to the completely batty papers, such as for the ‘discovery’ that “not only does water have memory, but that the information can be transmitted over telephone lines and the Internet”, from homeopathic researcher Jacques Benveniste.
In January of this year, Montagnier published quite a remarkable paper entitled, “Electromagnetic Signals Are Produced by Aqueous Nanostructures Derived from Bacterial DNA Sequences” in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Sciences: Computational Life Sciences. The headline makes a bold claim: that diluted DNA from pathogenic bacterial and viral species is able to emit specific radio waves. Furthermore, there are claims that these radio waves might be associated with ‘nanostructures’ in the solution that might be able to recreate the pathogen. These radio waves do not appear to be emitted by ‘probiotic “good” bacteria’. After diluting solutions to the point to where no DNA could remain, it is claimed these ‘nanostructures’ somehow emit radio waves and recreate the pathogens. Luc Montagnier makes startling claims that,
In patients infected with HIV, EMS can be detected mostly in patients treated by antiretroviral therapy and having a very low viral load in their plasma. Such nanostructures persisting in the plasma may contribute to the viral reservoir which escapes the antiviral treatment, assuming that they carry genetic information of the virus.
The claims in the paper are simply unbelievable: that by serially diluting and agitating solutions of infectious agents, ‘nano’ structures can be set up in water that can emit specific radio frequencies and that even after filtration that should remove all traces of biological molecules, the pathogens can be cultured and detected, somehow by recreation.
At least, I think that is what is being claimed. The paper, it is fair to comment, lacks any rigour. It is a sequence of ad hoc assertions, hypotheses and post hoc rationalisations. Important experimental steps are described dismissively in a sentence and little attempt is made to describe the detail of the work.
There are many problems with the paper, not least that it is pretty much self-published in a journal without rigorous peer-review (it took two days from ‘receipt’ of the paper to publishing) and the journal was set up and edited by Montagnier himself.
I am not sure where to begin. But let me start with one massive problem that should have resulted in the paper ending up in the compost bin of science. It appears to fly in the face of one the greatest traditions of post-enlightenment thinking in that it seeks to reintroduce an anthropocentric view of the universe. The great early strides in scientific thought removed human beings from their special place in the universe. Primitive views placed us at the centre of creation with all things placed around us for our care. We were special. Gradually, we learned that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, and neither even was the Sun. We learned that we were not separate from creation, but part of a continuum of biological existence that joined all living things together. Our minds did not make us different from the rocks as we could see that biological processes differed merely in complexity and scale from the more mundane chemical and physical processes around us.
So, Montagnier is proposing that these electromagnetic signals are only given off by pathogenic organisms. This assertion cries out the question – pathogenic to whom? Are we to believe that these DNA signals are only given off by infectious agents to humans? That would be a most staggering claim. What about infectious agents for other species? Do they not get handy radio signals too? And what if a particular human has specific immunity to a virus? Does the DNA sequence somehow know that it much switch off its broadcasts?
Bonkers.
This is to leave aside how DNA could actually transmit radio waves. The generation of such a signal would require an oscillating current at the right frequency. How this could be achieved by a sequence of DNA is unanswered – probably because it is physically absurd.
The experimental apparatus itself looks decidedly amateurish with a the central detection mechanism appearing to be a coil of wire plugged into the soundcard of a PC via a device claimed to be invented by another infamous Frenchman, J Benveniste (previous IgNobel winner). Few details are given about this device.
It would appear, at first glance, to be a device designed to pick up background radio emissions. Indeed, the signals appears to be strong around the frequencies emitted by mains equipment and the paper does indeed mention that these signals disappear when attempts are removed to reduce background noise (such as by switching off other equipment). However, rather than conclude that the device is merely picking up noise, the paper asserts that the background noise is required to induce ‘resonance phenomena’. Your chin should be beginning to itch here. It does indeed look as if the experimental result are the result of digging around in the noise and finding signals at the limit of detection – a classical hallmark of pathological science where an unblinded researcher keeps probing noise until they convince themselves they are seeing signals. (see N-rays for a parallel, ‘discovered’ by yet another Frenchman, the physicist René-Prosper Blondlot.)
The paper takes even stranger twists when we look at the background to the paper. The Telegraph reported that Montagnier was in a legal battle with inventor Bruno Robert over the rights to the device that can detect the fantastical radio waves. Both Montagnier and Robert submitted patent applications for the same device:
The Telegraph makes no mention that the device is clearly crackpot. It is worth reading the patent examiner’s scathing assessment of the application, who concludes,
The invention is based on phenomena which contradict the fundamental principle of physics and of chemistry, i.e. the existence of biological or effect without an active molecule and no explanation or theoretical basis makes it impossible at the current time to explain the results obtained.
The story takes another breathtaking turn when it is realised that the device pictured above is identical to the one used by Jacques Benveniste to ‘digitise’ homeopathic signals and send them by email. IgNobel prize winning stuff. This research was replicated using the same device at the request of the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and no signal was detected.
It would appear that neither Montagnier or Robert were the inventor, but instead, the late, great, discredited Benveniste – homeopathic apologist and experimenter into nonsense. So, the French appear to fighting over the legacy of their greatest pseudo-scientist. Montagnier is clearly dabbling in the black arts of homeopathy and the homeopaths are crowing about it. My old friend Dana Ullman, whose academic thoroughness I took apart when he declared homeopathy had saved Charles Darwin, is jumping for joy over Montagnier’s research. He is not the most self critical thinker around. Harriet Hall demolishes his claims.
So, no doubt Montagnier deserves an IgNobel prize. His research makes us laugh. His apparatus has already earned the prize when the prize is clearly for research that ‘should not be repeated’. The IgNobel committee need to ram the message home.
But the award should be also for research that then makes is think. And what I see makes me think that Montagnier could lead to seriously bad consequences.
Not content with merely trying to perpetuate the discarded nonsense of previous homeopathic quacks, he appears to picks up the ideology of the homeopathic mindset. Montagnier appears in the AIDS denialist film House of Numbers saying that HIV can be ‘cleared naturally’ by nutritional means. All it requires is to have a ‘good immune system’. I see no evidence to support such claims. Now, many scientists were misrepresented in this disingenuous film, but it looks hard to see how Montagnier was. These views are not without terrible potential consequences. Such views lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people who are dependent on governments to provide a decent level of care for people with HIV.
Montagnier’s status as a Nobel Prize winner lends a level of credence to these views that they do not deserve. His authority will be used by those who wish to exploit the vulnerable with quack cures. This is life and death stuff. Nobel prizes are the greatest scientific honour, but they also create false authorities and science, unique in human endeavours, does not need authorities. It runs on evidence, reason and critical thinking. And that is dangerously missing from Montagnier’s work.
Nobel Prize winners often feel a sense that they are freed to dream thoughts that others cannot. That is, on balance, a good thing. Science can make huge strides when people are able to think the unthinkable. But all Nobel unthinkable thoughts need not be true. In fact, very few will be. We need to be on our guard against those that exploit the false authority of the Nobel Laureate and examine all scientific claims with equal dispassion.
Related posts:
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Of course, if you were really trying to pick up very weak electromagnetic signals you would presumably have to shield the equipment very thoroughly from RF and other electrical interference – so by analogy with, say, electrophysiology you would expect a large Faraday cage over the whole kaboodle, earthing all metal bits to a common point and thence to the amplifier etc etc.
Do you perhaps think that it may seem illogical in this day and age and it may seem quackery but back in the day when there were pioneers who could not prove a lot or were trying to prove things that everyone else refused to believe.
Many top scientists that we believe today and were EVENTUALLY proved to be correct were outcast by their peers in their time.
Er, once upon a time we believed the world to be flat. You can say perhaps this guy also thinks the worl is flat but is it so hard to believe that some things are not yet explained and that oerhaps he should be left alone to do further research to completely prove his theory. No theory should be disproven so early in case something good comes of it.
Think of this, everything is made up of atoms and there is quantum theory. Is it so far off?
How do you explain the existence of all of us and wher we came from how is it all possible? When you were conceived where didyou come from and where do you go after this?
Man only just set foot on the moon in 1969! For crying out loud that was not that long ago. Kids were playing pac man and pong a few decades ago. The internet did not exist pre 1950.
If his theory were to be proved correct and you were just like one of the peers of one of the many pioneering scientists would you be willing to swallow your pride?
So many advances have been made in many medical fields. If you think him to be a ‘quack’ then let him be to continue his research and if he can prove it you will be patting him on the back. Have an open mind.
Don’t forget there are a million unexplained mysteries. Stop shaking your head and start solving one rather than criticising the guy.
Dear Dr Guest
I am afraid that giving up critcism is not an option. It is only by applying critical appraisal to ideas can we find out which are the good ideas and which ones are wrong.
It is true that many good ideas were initially shunned by other scientists. It is also true that many bad ideas were also shunned. Being shunned is not a predictor of being right.
So, the only way to tell if Montagnier is correct is to carefully examine the claims – by being thoughtful and critical. And it does not look good for him.
You appear not to want to take part in that critique. In my experience, that leaves you open to believing what you wish to be true rather than what is actually true.
If Montagnier and others can start producing strong evidence to back up what he says, I will embrace it wholeheartedly. Until then. I will keep my guards up against error.
Wow. I don't know what to say. I am waiting for the always amusing and always delusional Dana to slip in here, half drunk, with his usual gibberish.
But he is also the scrupulous Dana, him and Mess. Montagnier. No doubt these fellows know what is what. They just don't care. And, I am sure, are not to be led off their path. That's just how greed and ambition work when they go hand in hand.
They should be ashamed of themselves. But since they won't admit their failures (I know Dana has been told over and over again why his "beliefs" are simply idiotic nonsense. Nobody can be so incredibly dim witted), I am glad that there are scores of skeptics keeping an eye out. Let's not forget that these people are ultimately highly dangerous in reverse proportion to the diluted snake oil they so eagerly peddle.
Thanks for a great post, twittered, facebooked, Google Readered and spread throughout.
My interpretation of Montagnier's comments in House of Numbers was that simple exposure to HIV doesn't guarantee infection – the virus can be prevented from taking hold. As far as I know, this is true (of HIV and most other viruses), and indeed the basis of PEP. I don't think he was suggesting that someone who had seroconverted could shake it off if they had a bit of vitamin C.
When I read the paper a couple of weeks back the things that most struck me was that the journal was brand new, and the Montagnier paper – which appear in the first or possibly second issue – had been "referee-d", as you noted, in a day or two (which almost certainly means not referee-d at all). Harriet Hall has also done a post on the paper at the Science Based Medicine blog (no link as the site seems to be down) and notes inter alia the, er, suspiciously short review period. There are other pointers to this not being a journal to be taken terribly seriously which Hall discusses.
A classic problem with new scientific journals is how to fill your first few issues. The usual solution to this in scientific publishing is:
"The Editors and Their Mates Scrape Their Various Barrels".
This plus the turnaround time suggest "Vanity paper" – which is precisely what the paper itself screams.
Tom
Look at the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLabpKFfDNI
I am not so sure his views are just about preventing the virus taking hold.
Oh, hang on!
I know what they are really trying to do!
They are taking this concept
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJYho56INKU
a step further and make it a distant-over-the-interwebs healing device! Whoohooo!
Just a footnote to say one of the problems here is that there does not appear to be a prominent French sceptical movement. Am I wrong? Is there a Paris version of les sceptiques au Le Pub?
I can only find these fellows in a snap:
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zetetique.fr%2F&sl=fr&tl=en&history_state0=
I hope that is zetetic as in 'by enquiry' and not zetectic as in 'flat earther'.
I had forgotten about them, damn you
The youtube video from House of Numbers is obviously not the complete interview. It's difficult to tell whether the individual questions are in the same sequence and without context being cut out. The editing definately attempts to give the impression that Montagnier believes that good nutrition can clear the virus in a few weeks. I strongly doubt this is what he meant. What he did mean is anybodies guess.
Just remember, if you get an email from Luc Montagnier, don't click on the attachment! Warning this attachment may contain electromagnetic signals of HIV!
I hope you are right, Chris.
Great critique. But isn't it showing anthropocentric rather than anthropomorphic reasoning?
Yes – slip! – changed.
As someone with more than a passing familiarity with Faraday cages, shielded rooms and the tendency of very fine tips with mega-ohm resistances to act as radio antennas I agree with Dr Aust that that setup is guaranteed to detect radio waves, from thin air.
Breathe deeply folks and you shall be healed!
This also got waved around on the talk page of Wikipedia's homoeopathy article a few weeks back.
It's the Nobel disease. Other victims:
Linus Pauling
Louis J. Ignarro
Nikolaas Tinbergen
It's Radionics. No two ways about it. And I'm surprised that no-one has served that up as a critique. Radionics has been tested time and time again and has been shown to be useless in diagnosis and treatment. I can really see that Montagnier's "experiment" is any different to certain Radionics that have gone before.
I find it a bit odd that the homeopaths are excited but the Radionics bods aren't shouting.
@Orac. And there's also Brian Josephson …
Interesting post, but jeepers: how hard is it to read your post back (out loud for best result) and fix all those silly typos and incomplete sentences, before posting it for a large audience?
Sloppy language like this really detracts from the point you're trying to make.
Speaking of 'lacking any rigour'!
i agree the the HON comments dont say anything besides that exposure does not equal infection. the editing and then the qackish interpretations seem to make it say something else. doesn seeem that montagnier cas commented on it anywhere?
"…Just a footnote to say one of the problems here is that there does not appear to be a prominent French sceptical movement. Am I wrong? Is there a Paris version of les sceptiques au Le Pub?…"
http://www.pseudo-sciences.org/
@Orac
How about we add Roger Penrose for 'quantum' consciousness?
Warhelmet:
I was going to suggest we christen this "Nobel Quantum Radionics", but I'm worried that the next thing I will see is the phrase on a website selling something.
Actually if the diagram of the way the apparatus is set up is correct then the PC sound card should get absolutely nothing at all. The detector coil is plugged into the OUTPUT of the amplifier and the PC into the INPUT. Amplifers are unidirectional beasts and it is connected the wrong way round. Is that also true of the original Beneveniste apparatus?
There's also the Nobel laureate who Lionel Milgrom "continually run[s his] ideas passed", although it is possible that it is one of the ones already mentioned, I suppose.
To add to the new journal's credentials, the very first paper it published (after a hard peer-review process of three days), says in the Abstract:
It is well known that equilibrium in a thermodynamic system results from a competition or balance between lowering the energy and increasing the entropy [...]. This is remarkably similar to the Taoist concept of yin, a downward influence, and yang, an upward influence, where harmony is established by balancing yin and yang.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/t3136g4024583118/fulltext.pdf
To me this sounds like wooooooo…
Ullman and folks like him are religious fanatics whose overheated rhetoric eventually becomes dangerous.
And let's not forget HIV denialist (and alien abductee) Kerry Mullis, Nobel Laureate for inventing the PCR . . .used to detect HIV antibodies. The irony, it burns!
Why the hostility? Because it is so foreign to today's science? Same attitude that scientists have held for centuries. Today, spectral profiles are taken of liquids to see what is in them. What is so different from a UV signature and a radio signature of a molecule? X-ray crystallography is a very similar concept.
You clearly have no idea about physics to be asking such questions.
Perhaps he does not, but it would be better to enlighten him than to dismiss him. The answer lies in that he tries to say that his device can map out a pathogen from radio waves generated when a solution of DNA has been diluted to the point that none is left. Contrast that with the principles behind the mentioned techniques, which happen to require that the matter in question actually be there and not removed.
It may be better to enlighten him. But I find engaging in lengthy explanations to people who post comments as 'Anonymous' as an exercise in frustration and futility. See my comments policy and the note at the start of the comments box.
Well Black Duck, just as single atoms may act as coordination centers for much larger ionic structures in liquids, it is certainly possible that small numbers of pathogenic molecules may act as coordination centers for water molecules. Would these have different EMF signatures depending on the different molecule? They certainly would. Even water itself can have different EMF signatures depending on the coordination of the molecules in the same volume. I wouldn't dismiss this device at all, even if it may be an early stage model of an EMF signature detector.
Sincerely,
"idiot"
Well come on then "idiot" anonymous. What do you mean by "pathogenic molecules" and "EMF signatures"?
I am calling your bluff to see if you have the slightest clue about what you talk. Be prepared for some detailed questioning to see if you are not simply talking out of your homeopathic hole.
Black Duck in Britain: Are you so obtuse? Who ever mentioned homeopathy?
If you take a soup of molecules, and subject it to a spectrum of frequencies, it will resonate and excite at various amplitudes throughout that spectrum. A unique phonograph so to speak. It's not homeopathy, Mr. Black Duck.
First of all anonymous. Give yourself a pseudonym or you really are an idiot.
Secondly, homeopathy? Read my article.
Thirdly, what do you expect the radio spectrum would look like for DNA?
Fourthly, (if you are the same idiot anonymous), what do you mean ny 'pathogenic molecules'.
I have a particular interest in the history and philosophy of science and the way in which scientific issues are discussed, particularly the subject of climate change, and I am trying to understand to what extent the traditional scientific method is or is not the deciding factor in public and scientific policy. One aspect tbat I have noticed is coming to the fore in attacks on science is emotion, which of course runs counter to the nature of the scientific process, which is objective and unemotional, and indeed self-critical rather than aggressive. But the strange thing is that on looking further, I also notice the same kind of emotion being expressed in various public statements by scientists. This has both surprised and interested me, so I'm now trying to probe further to find out more as to what makes stirs them up in this way. I've found that discussions on alternative approaches to medicine seem to be particularly prone to this, and I've been quite interested to come across this site and follow some of the exchanges, for instance in this discussion between you and 'anonymous'. So I wonder if I can ask you both some questions raised by the discussion, which seems to involve aspects of physics in particular? First of all, may I ask each of you if you are physicists, and if so to what level? Second, do either of you plan to follow up the research in this paper by either practical investigation or desktop study? Third, what would you both say would be a definitive experiment to establish and refute the claims in it?
Hello Howie
It surprises me that you find it strange that scientists can talk with emotion! One of the reasons here of course is that this is highly charged area where groups of homeopaths, vitamin pill sellers and cranks want to deny the science of HIV and flog their own magic cures. It has been estimated that some 300,000 people have died unnecessarily in South Africa because government became infatuated with AIDS denialists and quackery. One might indeed get angry about that.
Secondly, the whole point of this article is that we should not be swayed by awards and qualifications when assessing ideas. Science should not depend on the authority of the speaker, but on the strength of the evidence and arguments. The qualifications I hold and the exams I have sat make no difference to my analysis of this Montagnier paper. The arguments either hold or they do not. If my arguments are unsound then it might become interesting to understand how I came to be mistaken – I may be speaking outside of my field of expertise, for example. But you do not need my exam certificates to assess if I am good in my analysis or not.
To ask if I intend to follow up this paper with my own studies is again missing the point. This paper hardly counts as science – it is pseudoscience. Self published, incoherent and nonsensical. Its appeal is to quacks and homeopaths – not science. I cannot see if there are any real testable hypotheses in there at all. The experiment used a proprietary black box of electronics – which is inadequately described. There is nothing here that could be describes as lending itself to replicability by independent parties – an essential requirement of any bold claim.
Just as Benveniste's homeopathy experiments were discredited by replication and proper blinding, I would suggest that it was incumbant on Montagnier to publish in a peer-reviewed journal (not his own), to invite in independent experts to evaluate what he has done and allow observers to ensure that he could repeat whatever claims he is making under properly blinded and controlled conditions. Until such time, further third party work with not be warranted. Montagnier is making some claims – it is up to him to make those claims clear to the world. Until he does, this paper is just fodder for homeopathic quacks to obfuscate with.
Anyway.
[...] Per questo si è pensato di candidare Montagner, dopo il Nobel, al premio igNobel. [...]
[...] recently wrote about the bizarre behaviour and claims of Nobel Laureate Luc Montagnier, the controversial [...]
[...] blogger, prima all’estero e poi in patria, hanno senza sconti evidenziato, con una puntualità di riferimenti ai limiti del [...]
also http://www.union-rationaliste.org is a skeptic organization in France, with quite a number of prominent scientists.
Healthy sceptism is good but downright rejection of hard to believe research findings (yet to be replicated) is not. Surely we should keep an open mind as history has shown over and again that what ’scientists’ thought was impossible at one time has later been shown to be possible. Not everything is easily explained or can be scientifically proven – for example, take something as abstract as distant healing, yet reviews of empirical studies shows its efficacy http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10836918
With all due respect, the study that you mention shows nothing of the sort. It says that, I paraphrase, “we’ve reviewed a number of studies on distant healing, and they had not few methodological problems. We cannot safely draw any conclusion, but at least the majority of the studies we reviewed were positive.”
Sounds to me like a classical case of publication bias.
Well, that’s about as good as it has ever got for homoeopathy as well. See, for example, the four systematic reviews that homoeopaths routinely claim (for example in evidence submitted to the House of Commons Science and technology committee “Evidence Check”) to have positive conclusions. The first one concluded that “the evidence of clinical trials is positive but not sufficient to draw definitive conclusions because most trials are of low methodological quality and because of the unknown role of publication bias” and called for better quality research. Two others (actually different publications of the same research) came to much the same conclusion but added that better quality research was more likely to come to negative conclusions, and the fourth had its conclusion effectively retracted by its authors, who have commented that it “has unfortunately been misused by homoeopaths as evidence that their therapy is proven.”
The original paper is not available any more, except behind a pay wall. Could somebody send it to me? Many thanks.
jdmuys at mac dot com