Talk:Benveniste affair

Benveniste / Benveniste Affair

I'd like to propose that the present entry be renamed "The Benveniste Affair", on the grounds that it focuses almost entirely on the latter, while carrying virtually none of the biographical material users would expect from an entry with this title. I'd be happy to run up a stub for the bio entry very quickly if this meets with general approval.Robma 18:50, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, so this is actually supposed to be a biography. I was wondering. It does need renaming. –––Martin^phi _{(Talk Ψ Contribs)} 05:33, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

As this person is clearly notable, this page should stay. Some information could be moved between here and water memory, and the biographical section could be extended. However, this person is most notable for his water memory Nature paper and his junk science --DrEightyEight (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 10:27, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't have a citation, but my recollection is that magician Randi actually had proof positive of tampering by one of Benveniste's assistants. I remember reading an article about it at the time in the Skeptical Inquirer. Perhaps someone can confirm or deny.

The author of the article seems to go to great lengths to be fair to Benveniste. Citing four successful attempts before double-blind controls were implemented is somewhat meaningless. Non-scientists often misunderstand that this is basic scientific procedure and without it the results are not much more reliable than astrology.—Preceding unsigned comment added by NoMinorChords (talk • contribs) 14:19, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

The language of this article is unbelievably biased toward the skeptical viewpoint, and, I'm sorry to say, it's not the only one. Someone should go through make the language more neutral. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.135.149.165 (talk) 08:11, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

POV-tagged

This article seems to go into a lot of special pleading - practically to the point of making it a POV-fork of water memory, Benveniste's main obsession. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 02:00, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Replication of the tests.

The problem is here is that they let a stage magician handle the results. He had a million dollars at stake. Do you not think he used sleight of hand to exchange the results with his own prepared results? Seems like the most logical conclusion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.88.125.183 (talk) 17:59, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

Yeah right. It is more "logical" to assume that a liquid substance containing of three atoms has a humongously complex property you usually need a brain for, and that someone needlessly risked his own money, then cheated in order to keep it, than that some guy and his lab made a mistake because they wanted to believe. --Hob Gadling (talk) 16:15, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Heretic

Should this article point out that Benveniste was one of the subjects on the BBC series "Heretic" in 1994? Vorbee (talk) 20:30, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Request edit and change title for Jacques Benveniste (linked to the Jacques Benveniste article in other languages) and not "Benveniste affair"

• Specific text to be added or removed: Change title because this page is supposed to be a biographic page : it should be renammed "Jacques Benveniste". I would like to begin the article by the few biographic lines (this biographic section should be more consequent but I have no time right now, so I think these few lines is better than nothing).
• Reason for the change: because this English page is linked to the French biographic page of Jacques Benveniste. I know that the content of the english page is mostly about the affair (we would like to add some others elements in a while), but it is referred in wikipedia as the Jacques Benveniste page. Therefore, when the name of Jacques Benveniste is cited somewhere in wikipedia, for example in the "Platelet-activating factor" page, the preview of the link displays "Benveniste affair" in a frame, and not "Jacques Benveniste" with a few biographic element, even if the page "Platelet-activating factor" has nothing to do with the water memory affair. You can see the screenshot below. I think this is really problematic. In French we have to different article : one for Jacques Benveniste, and one for "La mémoire de l'eau". This page "Benveniste affair" is linked to the Jacques Benveniste page in French so I think this title is a mistake.
• References supporting change: I have no URL because I do not change the content, I am trying to reorganize the page so that it becomes a "Jacques Benveniste" article. I am indeed from Jacques Benveniste's family but this request has nothing to do with conflict of interest, it is just not normal that "Benvenist affair" appaers each time that Jacques Benveniste is cited somewhere in wikipedia, even if the topic has nothing to do with the memory of water.

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Claire Benveniste (talk) 13:51, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

No, this is not a Biography of Jacques Beniviste, it is an encyclpoedia entry about The "Benveniste affair", a subject which is not biographical. Please read WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS for an explanation of why we do not follow what other language wikipedias do. Please also read WP:COI in order to understand your COI. Thanks. -Roxy the grumpy dog. wooF 14:47, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your answers. I am sorry but I insist because the question is not that the English articles should follow the French one, it is about logic and consequences of the choices for the English article. Does it seem normal to you that no Jacques Benveniste article exists in English wikipedia ? so everytime that you link "Jacques Benveniste" in a wikipedia article, the link is redirected to "Benvenist affair" ? (Have you seen my screenshot about the Platenet-activating factor who has nothing to do with the "affair"?) ? Can you explain to me why the former title "Jacques Benveniste" has been changed to "Benveniste affair"? In addition, an other article "memory of water" exists with a lot of similar content with the Benveniste affair article. If the title has been changed once, why can't it be changed again ? Claire Benveniste (talk) 15:20, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Insisting on something is not a good look for a COI editor. You ask "Does it seem normal to you that no Jacques Benveniste article exists in English wikipedia?" ... and my answer is yes it does because this memory of water nonsense is the only thing that Jacques is notable for, see WP:NOTABILITY The change in the title of the article reflects that. If he had not done all that controversial water memory stuff, he would not be notable enough for a Biography on this project. -Roxy the grumpy dog. wooF 15:35, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Considering just facts : Jacques Benveniste was known by the scientific community BEFORE the memory of water controversy for the discovery of the PAF-acether, the scientific community is absolutely consensual about it. The PAF-acether and the references to Jacques Benveniste's scientific work about it are in all the medecine books about allergology : https://books.google.fr/books?id=HttrAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA237&lpg=PA237&dq=manual+of+allergology+benveniste&source=bl&ots=HXYmoE6Ul3&sig=ACfU3U0pnOM6zMHRXsltwb7FZSThA4QgKQ&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiLtuqX457wAhXtzIUKHfxZB-cQ6AEwBHoECAIQAw#v=onepage&q=benveniste&f=false

https://books.google.fr/books?newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&redir_esc=y&hl=fr&id=i5yzAAAAIAAJ&dq=Benveniste+allergology&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=Benveniste+allergology

https://books.google.fr/books?id=jRb2CAAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PA123&dq=Benveniste+allergology&hl=fr&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Benveniste%20allergology&f=false

Other example, he has an entry in the US National Library of Medicine institutionnal website : "His reputation as an orthodox researcher derives from his 1970 discovery of platelet activating factor (PAF)" : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC534457/

If you don't know these facts, can you explain to me why you are more legitime to anyone else to decide about the title of this article and decide that Jacques Benveniste "would not be notable enough for a Biography on this project" without the memory of water ? Who else can participate to this discussion and juge about our arguments ? Because this seem absolutly not fair to me. Claire Benveniste (talk) 16:01, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Claire Benveniste, in the English-speaking world, Benveniste is known only for this. When an article is written which is about one thing but purports to be about another, we call it a WP:COATRACK. As a biography, it was exactly that. The biographical elements, such as they were, were overwhelmed by discussion of the really stupid thing he did one day. We prefer not to memorialise people for their mistakes, but instead, if the mistake is prominent and well-known, to document it as a separate item.

If you think you have sufficient sources for a separate, well-sourced article on Benveniste, then feel free to write Draft:Jacques Benveniste. The fact that the French Wikipedia has this framed as a biography is not persuasive, though. Each language project has its own policies, norms and guidelines. Guy (help! - typo?) 19:43, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

• Hi Claire. Thank you for contacting me on my talk page. I will reply here so it is more public. I moved this article a little while ago while I was working on the homeopathy one. I did so because, as I think we all agree, it was not written the way a biographical should be. My only other edits here have been to reorganise the article a bit. I agree with many of your points raised here and at my talk page and am glad you have brought them up. I imagine Benveniste would pass our requirements for a stand alone article and a neutral one could be produced. It would require a dedicated section on this affair, linking to this article, but would be arranged in the style of a biography. See Sokal affair/Alan Sokal, He Jiankui affair/He Jiankui, Pusztai affair/Árpád Pusztai etc (JzG will probably know more relevant examples). It might not seem like it, but this would be the best way to organise this. This affair is always going to be notable and having a separate article on it means all the details can go here, while an overview could be left in the biography. This makes sure we don't weigh that article down. Links to Bieveniste will go to his article while links to the water memory experiment will go here. The key will be reliable sources, ideally secondary ones; i.e. news articles, books or papers discussing him (and not just in terms of this experiment). It doesn't matter if these are French sources or other non-English ones. I may be able to help some, although I don't speak French so am not sure how much help I will be on that front. Aircorn (talk) 23:58, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

I would say this (also linked above) is enough to ensure he will survive any deletion debate (even discounting WP:Prof). It has enough material not relating to this incident that a biographical article could be written. Aircorn (talk) 00:10, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

this English page is linked to the French biographic page of Jacques Benveniste Then, should the link between the two be removed? (I do not know how those links are done now.) --Hob Gadling (talk) 11:11, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Status of this request

Hi, I'm currently attempting to work through the backlog at CAT:EDITREQ. Can this request be closed as declined? Pinging Roxy the dog, JzG, Aircorn and Hob Gadling. JBchrch talk 14:50, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

I just replaced {{edit COI}} with {{edit COI|D|T}}. Please let me know if I did it wrong. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:23, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Perfect, thank you very much Guy Macon. JBchrch talk 15:43, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

I don't think it makes much difference, but I ended up creating the Jacques Benveniste article and changing a few links around, so part of it was accepted. Aircorn (talk) 21:40, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

I've been particularly hostile above, and note the new article. I was clearly wrong, wanted watchers here to know, and User:Claire Benveniste. -Roxy the grumpy dog. wooF 01:29, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Add physician, because Jacques Benveniste was a physician

• Specific text to be added or removed: Jacques Benveniste (12 March 1935 – 3 October 2004) was a French immunologist and physician, born in Paris.
• Reason for the change: because he WAS a physician : Interne des hôpitaux de la région de Paris (1959), interne des hôpitaux de Paris (1961-1966), Docteur en médecine à la faculté de médecine de Paris (1967). Chef de clinique à la faculté de médecine de Paris (1967-1969)

I am indeed from Jacques Benveniste's family but this request has nothing to do with conflict of interest or promotion, it is just fact : Jacques Benveniste was a physician, so why this couldn't appear on his biographic section?

• References supporting change: https://histoire.inserm.fr/les-femmes-et-les-hommes/jacques-benveniste/(page)/2

Claire Benveniste (talk) 14:10, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

No, because this is not a biography, but an article about the Benvenisteaffair. See my answer to the request you made above. Thanks. -Roxy the grumpy dog. wooF 14:49, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

If the article mentionned some biographic facts like "Benveniste died in 2004 in Paris following heart surgery", why can't we add that he was a physician ? Thanks, Claire Benveniste (talk) 16:28, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Do you want to remove that sentence? -Roxy the grumpy dog. wooF 16:43, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Claire Benveniste, an immunologist is a type of physician. Guy (help! - typo?) 19:39, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Re "I am indeed from Jacques Benveniste's family but this request has nothing to do with conflict of interest or promotion, it is just fact", there is no "it's OK because I am right" exception to out COI policy. I strongly suggest that you read and follow Wikipedia:Best practices for editors with close associations. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:04, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

 Not done for now: Please establish a consensus with editors engaged in the subject area before using the {{Request edit}} template for this proposed change. Melmann 08:04, 15 June 2021 (UTC)