Talk:Plant perception (paranormal)
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An entry from Plant perception (paranormal) appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on November 29, 2006. |
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[edit] This article is so full of crap...
...that it's funny as hell. The article is written beautifully, but the content... my God. :)
-G
[edit] Experimental Disproof
Ok so the experiments affirming plant perception were dubious. Have there been experiments to disprove it?
The Mythbusters did an experiment in season 4, episode 8 (or 61 of the whole series). The myth was "busted" on primary perception in plants. rlee1185 22:19, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Mythbusters' scientific rigour is seriously questionable. Not that I even lend credence to this theory, but seriously, if plants "have feelings", should the mythbusters be at all surprised if their results were negative when geographic proximity to the plant was decreased? Who says the supposed ability of the plants to sense these things works over infinite ranges? An assumption on the part of the Mythbusters. Furthermore, the "Eggs into water" part of the experiment was great television, but nothing more than science "theater". Once again, if they were trying to disprove the notion that "all life is interconnected", why on earth did they think the plant would provide a positive result when somewhere else in the room they dropped shop-bought eggs (dead already, by even the most cursory of examinations) into a vat of boiling water? Once again, a tremendous assumption. I was dissapointed to see that they did not investigate the small positive results they got and simply ruled them out as 'interference'. I would rather that they have proven that interference - if it was so certain it should not have been too hard to locate the source of such interference. If anything, their "science theater" merely added to the intrigue or curiosity of people believing in this myth. Just one of a litany of examples where the Mythbusters' entertainment value trumps their scientific rigor. --117.102.152.98 05:27, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Trivial point
Not worth including in the article on its own merits, but I recall an episode of MythBusters dealing with this topic. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 15:34, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Why is this on the Main Page?
Wow. So this article was worthy of mention on the main page?! Really?!! A long, pseudoscientific discussion followed by four disdainfully muttered sentences hesitantly acknowledging the mere existence of an opposing view? Hmm. At the risk of betraying a personal bias on the subject... this is pretty stupid. Xezlec 01:17, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps its appearance on the main page will eventually lead to this being a somewhat legitimate article about a view, with maybe a little bit to back it up, that is nonetheless widely regarded as quackery. For the time being, though, I have to question the authority of a 31-year-old Readers Digest article as a valid source... Gmalivuk 03:45, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Wow
I'm just suprised by this, now I think about all those plants I've hurt! Thanks for creating this article, though! I'm quite fascinated with it. -Moozipan from Viva Pinata Wiki
[edit] A great article on a great topic
I have always pondered the idea-but I went on mowing my grass and clipping my plants until I read this! I would just like to say a big ups to everyone who has edited this article. I belive it's a nice, decent-length article (not so long it's confusing) on a great topic. :-) Bennyboyz3000 (talk)
[edit] Huh?
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- Bose repeated his tests on metals, administering poisons to tin, zinc, and platinum, and obtained astonishing responses which, when plotted on a graph, appeared precisely like those of poisoned animals and plants.
Ummm...okaaaaaaaaaaaaaay...hmmm...I'm not really sure what to say other than "WTF?" He poisoned metals? And they responded? With what? Death throes? This is craziness... -Grammaticus Repairo 05:47, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
His measurements had to do with fatigue curves from subjecting the metal to electical current. The patterns were just like those of a muscle in an animal. The story goes that he showed the graph to a friend and asked him what it was, and the friend said quite confidently that it was the fatigue response of a muscle. But it was actually metal. Then when the metal was treated with a poison, the curves dropped off just like a muscle would.
Goldenmean1618 08:39, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Inaccuraccies in the article
I've actually replicated some of Backster's studies for myself and found it works. When i get some more time I'll update the page wth some more information. Though the phenomena sounds farfetched, there's some good evidence out there, better than is presented here.
There are also some inaccuraccies, like the claim that plants do not have nervous systems, which in the source for the point is actually refuted--it says there are nervous systems in plants, which has been recognized more and more in recent years.
Goldenmean1618 08:34, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Noting that plants do not have a limbic system doesn't refute that plants couldn't have emotional capabilities. Such a point takes a narrow stance that emotion could only be processed or created by identical structures. Just imagine that we met intelligent aliens that seemed to experience emotions, but they didn't have a limbic system.
Here are some modern papers dealing with plant nervous systems and aspects of plant intelligence such as self/other recognition. This is from generally mainstream plant science:
Trewavas, A. 2003. Aspects of Plant Intelligence. Annals of Botany. 92:1-20.
Dziubinska, H., Trebacz, K., and Zawadzki, T. 2001. Transmission route for action potentials and variation potentials in Helianthus annuus L. Journal of Plant Physiology. 158: 1167-1172.
Baluska, F., Volkmann, D., Menzel, D. 2005. Plant synapses: actin-based domains for cell-to-cell communication. Trends in Plant Science. Vol. 10(3): 107-111.
The argument about polygraphs being just for people doesn't hold any water either. Anyone who knows about how a GSR device works knows that it's just emitting a small current and measuring the change in resistance. It doesn't matter that it wasn't tested for plants, as it's just measuring electrical resistance, there's nothing special about it being specially for skin. The point to make here is that though an electrical response from a plant may look just like that from a human, it doesn't necessarily imply that the plant is experiencing emotion. It's misleading to say, though, that the device doesn't work on plants, because all it does is read electrical changes.
Also, as for the polygraph argument, Backster later used an EEG amplifier to measure electrical changes in the plant, and got the same results. This is a superior instrument because it is passive, in that it doesn't introduce any electrical charge to what is being measured, unlike a galvanometer.
Many of the failed experiments didn't observe the controls that Backster used, of course setting them up for failure. Because those trying to replicate the experiments didn't think those particular controls were important, they didn't find the results. But those observing the controls have been able to find the phenomenon, like Alexander Dubrov in Russia, and myself in experiments at UC Berkeley.
Also, as for the plants only responding when attuned, it's not that the plants must be attuned to respond at all, but the argument is that the plants tend to attune to a certain person, and then respond selectively to that person, possibly not responding to phenomena in the immediate environment. And the "rescue" is not ad hoc--this was an important part of Backster's findings. He found that his plants would respond to him even when he was miles apart from them, finding electrical changes in the plants happened at the same time he was engaged in emotional experiences such as arguments.
Goldenmean1618 09:43, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Replicating Backster's studies
It is difficult to replicate Backster's studies, as they seek to test an untestable hypothesis. Assuming a causal relationship between human thoughts and plant response presumes that correlation denotes causation. Although there may be some good "evidence" that plants percieve human thoughts, there are no scientifically legitimate experiments to support the hypothesis.
Colleennathan 00:17, 4 December 20006 (UTC)
Do you mean that none are possible, or none have been done? You can also say the same thing about any study and causation, especially anything dealing with consciousness. We can never really know if it's causal or correlational, but if we see that time after time, certain situations produce certain results, we begin to assume it's probably causal. If you normally become happy when interacting with a loved one or your child, do you say it's just correlational, that you would have been happy during that time anyway? Maybe, but after it happens often enough, maybe you think that just being with that person makes you happy. Or maybe throwing that ball at the window caused it to break, or maybe it would have broken anyway at that time, and it was just a correlation. The truth is, we can never be certain of causation. There could always be some other variable acting that we don't know about that is the true cause.
What my experiments showed was that compared to baseline conditions, plants undergo electrical changes approximately 6-7 times more often when humans are interacting (with a p value around 10^-20). It's just as large a difference as when music is playing in the room, which seems not to induce any electrical changes. Also, I went through various controls and found it not to be related to things like motion, heat, or noise level. And when people are interacting with more extreme emotions than normal, it's something like 20-30 times more likely to have electrical changes compared to baseline, though coding situations for emotion involves possible bias on the part of the encoder, and thus not as much weight should be given to that data, though it is stronger numerically.
The whole phenomenon also gets at a weakness in the standard scientific model in dealing with consciousness, which is that spontaneity is important. Repeating the same stimuli over and over may be effective for testing non-conscious phenomena, but when dealing with consciousness, repetition may not yield similar results. For instance, if someone tells you a joke and you laugh the first time, but not subsequent times, it doesn't mean the joke isn't funny, it's just that it is not something that can be studied with strict repetition. The same thing seems to be the case for Bacskster's studies. Looking at human interaction and emotion in general, but not specific repeated stimuli, yields results, from what I've found. This doesn't mean that the experiments are not repeatable, it's just that repeatability has to be looked at from a different level--not the level of specific stimuli, for instance saying the same thing, but at a more general level in that plants will respond reliably when genuine, spontaneous human interaction, and apparently especially emotional interchange, occurs.
Goldenmean1618 09:19, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, Backster's experiments have had some repeatability that show correlation between plant response and human thoughts or emotions as well as the harm of other living organisms. However, this level of repeatability does not, statistically, show a relationship. In 1975, three scientists (K.A. Horowitz, D.C. Lewis, and E.L. Gasteiger) published an article in Science with their results when repeating Backster's investigation of plant response to the killing of brine shrimp in boiling water. In this investigation, the researchers took into consideration control factors such as grounding the plants to reduce electrical interference and rinsing the plants to remove dust particles. Three of five pipettes contained brine shrimp while the remaining two only had water. These acted as a control becuase the pipettes were delivered to the boiling water at random. In addition, this investigaton used a total of 60 brine shrimp deliveries to boiling water while Backster's investigation had 13. While this experiment did show a few positive correlations, they did not occur at a rate great enough to be considered statistically viable. These experimental conditions were more rigorous and did not produce the same results. --Colleennathan 19:33, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
According to what Backster had found, these types of experiments require different types of controls than most experiments. Because those attempting to replicate the experiment did not recreate the conditions, it's not really failing to replicate because they didn't have the correct conditions in place. As for controls, for instance, Backster found that plants become attuned to humans preferentially, and that after becoming attunded to a certain human, will ignore other things, such as, in this case brine shrimp in the nearby environment. When Backster used plants he had personally dealt with, he found the electrical activity in the plant during the attempted brine shrimp experiment was correlated to his conversation at the time. In order to get plants that actually responded to the brine shrimp, he had someone else bring the plants in the lab and Backster and others involved with the experiment dealt with the plants as little as possible beforehand. Even rinsing the leaves seemed to be enough to establish a connection with the plant. Plus, according to Backster, who is, as perhaps the article needs to mention, one of the top lie detector experts in the world, the dust on the leaves shouldn't matter that much. Backster's experiment also had similar random water deliveries.
The thing is, these conditions might have been more rigorously controlled according to the standards of a traditional plant electrophysiology study, but, according to Backster's findings, it lacked some crucial controls, and was thus not rigorously controlled at all. Thus, the types of controls really depend on what you are studying. With a curious phenomenon such as this, it doesn't make sense to expect that it has the exact same controls as standard rep phenomena.
Goldenmean1618 22:37, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Mythbusters
Regarding the Mythbusters show, with EEG amplifiers, sometimes they have filters to try to clean up the signal, but the primary perception phenomena in question sometimes occur in those ranges that the filters affect. So it's important not to use any filters. That may be why the egg drop attempt yielded no results. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Goldenmean1618 (talk • contribs) 22:48, 6 December 2006 (UTC). Goldenmean1618 22:48, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Not to mention they were trying to prove that "all life is interconnected", and unless an egg contains a viable embryo, a store bought egg is no different to an inanimate object. I was a little surprised that the egg-heads at Mythbusters didn't think this one through, but then, their lack of attention to detail is fairly well known. --117.102.152.98 05:33, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
[edit] important sources
Other books that should be mentioned are Tompkins and Bird's "The Secret Life of Plants" which introduced the world to Backster's studies, and also started the houseplant craze of the 70s!
Tompkins P, Bird C. 1973. The Secret Life of Plants. New York: Harper & Row.
Also, Backster wrote a book himself a few years ago, called Primary Perception:
Backster, C. 2003. Primary Perception. California: White Rose Millenium Press.
Later this month I can add info from these sources to the main page.
Goldenmean1618 22:54, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Content Flag and Proposal
I'm going to flag this article regarding its content and make a heading change.
Would the authors of this page entertain a proposal for an effort to shift its focus away from debating merits of the hoodoo pseudoscience to a serious review of information available on plant perception and behavior as mediated by hormones, kinins and growth factors? I see a few sparse mentions which could be expanded. Trilobitealive 01:09, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
Certainly including that information as well could be interesting, but I think "This is hoodoo science" is paralogic. So, I favor including both traditional scientific explanations as well as those offered by Backster and other researchers with similar assumptions. B. Mistler 21:01, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
- No, I said pseudoscience. Plant perception needs a redirection from emphasis of discussion about Bakster's work to become credible. You might want to access this critical article from a library computer as subscription is required to read it. (The link reflects my having accessed it today from a home computer). Galston, Arthur W. (1974). "Commentary: The Unscientific Method. By Ignoring Accepted Rules of Evidence, the Authors of a Popularized Book on Plants Reach Many False Conclusions". BioScience Vol. 24, No. 7 (July): 415-416. doi:. I'll try to find you some more accessible sources, but the signal to noise ratio on Google is very low for this particular subject. Regards. Trilobitealive 21:08, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Statement of intent to move page
Perhaps a way of salvaging this article would be to move the content relating to paranormal perceptions to an entirely separate article, called Plant perception (paranormal)? The way it is today I wouldn't know how to begin to build an article discussing the normal mechanisms of plant perception without either moving or deleting material.Trilobitealive 22:34, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
I've posted this on the village pump miscellaneous page and gotten instructions for page moving. I am planning to move this article to a new title which better reflects its paranormal content then come back and stub an article here which addresses the physiologic mechanisms of plant perception.Trilobitealive 15:39, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
Possible alternative titles also include Plant perception (emotion), Plant perception (controversies), Plant perception in popular media and Plant perception (pseudoscience) as well as Plant perception (paranormal). Others or preferences among these would be appreciated.Trilobitealive 19:12, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Further discussion on proposed page move
I have put up a stub article Plant perception (physiology) which deals with the mundane subject of plant perception via normal physiologic means and as studied by mundane methods. I am proposing to move Plant perception to a new article entitled Plant perception (paranormal) and to change the Plant perception page to a disambiguation page. This would also require some small tweaking of the introduction of this article, something like ...In the study of the paranormal, Plant perception (paranormal) is...
I do not consider this to be a content fork, as the two articles are actually two entirely different subjects which share a degree of common subject matter. I did not originally recognize that the present article is so completely unrelated to classic plant physiology when I first stumbled upon it but when one compares the lexicons and histories of the two that fact becomes obvious.Trilobitealive 05:13, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Page move progress
The page has been moved and flags and link problems will be sorted out. A disambiguation page will be written and posted on the old page. Regards to all Trilobitealive 14:48, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Source for Bognor Regis story?
Can anyone find any other source mentioning the Bognor Regis experiments? I don't really know the subject area, but I couldn't find it mentioned in any of the linked sources, nor in a brief library search of a few of the references. Pit-trout 04:12, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Plant pain
Does anyone know if there is a discussion on Wiki about whether or not plants feel pain? This is a topic of discussion on many boards and I would like for it to be easy to find info concerning this. Any thoughts?--Hraefen Talk 22:54, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Requie new tag
Instead of POV tagging this one needs POS tagging.
It is drivel, an appologia to a loony. Take for example the idiotic dismissal of the mythbusters examination 'Backster would not have approved of their methods', of course not, whackjobs don't approve of doing properly controlled experiments.
The mythbusters experiments that showed a response were baddly flawed. They never did a control to look at what happens when you let off a Co2 extinguisher without a plant near. All the results here can be explained by the fact that the stimulus would affect the amount of Co2 in the atmosphere. You do not have to beleive in the paranormal or that plants have emotions to expect a result due to changes in CO2 or temperature. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.30.1.69 (talk) 18:45, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Styrofoam cups?
Didn't someone do these same experiments with Styrofoam (or paper) cups and get the same results? Showing that Styrofoam (or paper) cups also feel pain? Ewlyahoocom (talk) 21:35, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
