Homeopathy and high dilutions in the context of water structure research: the experience in the 9th World Water Forum - 2022

Abstract

Water plays a vital role in adapting natural and human systems in a climate change scenario. Understanding how this fundamental element of life is organized and functioning is essential to gather, disseminate, and advance knowledge about water at the micro and nanostructure level. With developments in the different research areas, the International Panel on Water Structure – IPWS was created during the 8^th World Water Forum (WWF) of Brasília in 2018. Just as the Toronto Conference in 1986 was a milestone for the climate agenda to spark a process of the organization by the scientific community of what became the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - IPCC, the 8th World Water Forum held in Brasilia in 2018 became a milestone in the agenda of the micro and nanostructure of water. The IPWS connects leading researchers who develop research on water structure and related fields of knowledge and their most diverse applications from an interdisciplinary perspective. Since 2018, CIRAT – International Center on Water and Transdisciplinarity has been responsible for the executive secretary of the IPWS. In 2020 a partnership between CIRAT and WATER – a Multidisciplinary Research Journal has begun, intending to organize a special edition on Water and Transdisciplinarity to be launched during the 9^th WWF, in Dakar, on March 24^th, 2022. The whole project was organized by Prof. Leoni Bonamin, from Universidade Paulista, with the support of the Editor-in-Chief of this journal, Prof. Gerald Pollack, from Washington University at Seattle. This special edition aimed to disclose advanced knowledge about water at different structural levels, leading to a new understanding of water in response to the challenges of our century. The focus was on the cross-over of information with technical quality and bold thinking, as shown in Figure 1 below. Homeopathy was included among the themes. It was a multi-step process aiming to offer readers a sample of how frontier science can signal a very different and much more exciting future to the following generations than we usually expect. The objective was to gather scientific quality and allow the authors to propose and discuss hypotheses based on the literature. For this, the manuscripts were initially received, after personal invitations sent to more than 200 researchers in the field, whose contributions were evaluated in a pre-selection based on the scope of WATER. They then went through a thorough two-step peer review process. In the first stage, ad-hoc reviewers were invited to give their opinions. In the second stage, members of the Editorial Board carried out a new detailed analysis of the content to ensure maximum scientific understanding, allowing the authors to be bold in their projects while careful with the methodology. From the Board's organization to the design of the editorial flow and peer review, the entire process was carried out voluntarily by all the actors involved. Thus, the whole editorial process was philanthropic, there were no costs for the authors, and all articles were published as open access. Authors from five countries participated in this project: Brazil, India, Italy, Russia, and the United States. Given the multidisciplinary nature of this special edition, the sequence of articles was organized following a well-defined logic: from the broadest to the most specific topics, culminating in innovative proposals with the possibility of immediate application. For this, different sessions were organized according to the topics: "Opinion Article," "Hypotheses," "Water Structure," "High Dilutions," "Water and Environment," and "New Devices." Four of twelve articles reported results on high dilutions, including its physicochemical properties and the implications on biological systems, such as plants and aquatic animals [1-4]. This initiative inspired all to envision the possibility of offering practical solutions to old problems involving different ways of water management, which could reduce social gaps and improve the quality of life fairly and universally. The Issue will be available online from April 30^th, 2022.