Observer-centered Description of Misinterpreted Results in Biology

Benveniste’s experiments have been the subject of an international scientific controversy (known as the case of the “memory of water”). We recently proposed to describe these results in a modeling in which the outcome of an experiment is considered personal property (named cognitive state) of the observer and not an objective property of the observed system. As a consequence, the correlations between “expected” results and observed results in Benveniste’s experiments could be considered the consequence of quantum-like interferences of the possible cognitive states of the experimenters/observers. In the present paper, we evidence that small random fluctuations from the environment together with intersubjective agreement force the “expected” results and the observed results experienced by the observers into a noncommuting relationship. The modeling also suggests that experimental systems with enough compliance (e.g., biological systems) are more suitable to evidence quantum-like correlations. No hypothesis related to “memory of water” or other elusive modifications of water structure is necessary. In conclusion, a quantum-like interpretation of Benveniste’s experiments offers a logical framework for these experiments that have remained paradoxical to now. This quantum-like modeling could be adapted to other areas of research for which there are issues of reproducibility of results by other research teams and/or suspicion of nontrivial experimenter effect.