Talk:Plant perception (paranormal)/Archive 1

This article is so full of crap...

...that it's funny as hell. The article is written beautifully, but the content... my God. :)

-G

Experimental Disproof

Ok so the experiments affirming plant perception were dubious. Have there been experiments to disprove it?

Ahh.. this one again, so tired of this sort of question. Please see Russell's Teapot and think on "burden of proof" a bit.RebelBodhi (talk) 20:29, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

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)

Ultimately the validity of this concept is irrelevant whether Baxter's experiments could be replicated or not as his conclusions did not follow from his results. If plants exhibit a physical change correlated with emotions of nearby humans that doesn't in any way that they have any indicate that they have any more feelings or psychic ability than the polygraph machine itself, which also exhibits physical changes correlated with human emotions.

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)

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)

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

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)

Huh?

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)

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)

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)

"According to what Backster had found, these types of experiments require different types of controls than most experiments."

"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."

What specific controls are you refering to? Web wonder (talk) 20:15, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

"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."

Also, Goldenmean 1618, they say they did recreate the conditions, so how do you know they were lying?

"Test conditions conformed to those published by Backster or communicated in personal exchanges."

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/189/4201/478 Web wonder (talk) 21:36, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

There are two major issues with the Horowitz et al. study. The first is that they seem to have had too much contact with the plants before the experiment was run, which may lead the plants to “pay attention” to the people that dealt with them, and not to the brine shrimp dying. Backster has said that he needed to be very careful about this part, otherwise the results would not be obtained. So this is a crucial aspect to control for, and instead of controlling for this, Horowitz et al. thought it necessary to wash the leaves of the plants because that would be more controlled. Perhaps more egregiously, they also watered the plants, which could easily establish a “bond”. This in effect may have created a confound instead of making it a more controlled experiment. It is also unclear how much contact the experimenters had with the plants before it was run. The plants were grown on campus and housed close to the lab beforehand, however.

Additionally, their signal shows lots of activity, but most of the time it does not correspond to the shrimp. It is possible that the plants’ responses are either connected to the experimenters, or they were monitoring other activities going on in nearby laboratories. If there was any plant or animal research in which there was there was killing or harm, the plants may have been “focusing” on that instead of the brine shrimp. If this is a threat response, perhaps there is some way of prioritizing potential threats, and the dying brine shrimp may not be high on the list.

The other possibility with their noisy signal is that they actually didn't have a good connection.

They may have thought they replicated Backster's conditions, but by a reading of their paper, it's clear they didn't. Goldenmean1618 (talk) 00:13, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

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)

The way they described the theory, even dead things had thoughts... that is apparently how they understood the theory to work —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.73.70.113 (talk) 19:26, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

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)

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:10.2307/1296913. Retrieved 2006-12-25. {{cite journal}}: |volume= has extra text (help) 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

problems with the first source

Hey, I'm having trouble getting the citation of the first source at the bottom of the page to link to that source in the same way the citation of the seventh source leads to that source. Putting the link next to the citation is the best I can do, so that's what I've done.

Anyway, I'd like to point out some things about the following quote from the article.

"the belief that [plants] possess advanced affective or cognitive abilities receives only recent support.

Having read much of the first cited for that sentence, it seems like the source defines "intelligence" differently then most people would (most people seem to define it as "knowing a lot of knowledge" or "sentient", wheras the document seems to define it basically as "the ability to change in response to one's environment"), so citing it as support for plants having "cognitive abilities" seems a bit misleading. I also don't see anything in the source to suggest that plants have "affective abilities" a.k.a emotion. Web wonder (talk) 01:11, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Hadn't seen this before I just removed the reference, but I agree. I've read the paper in question before, and it in no way suggests that plants have "affective or cognitive abilities". The type of intelligence that that paper discusses is in plant intelligence and is completely different to this. Smartse (talk) 20:51, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

The Now..

So they don't have nervous systems like ours.. they are plants. Who could expect them to operate the same way as we? If you think about it they are almost polar opposites in lifestyle. They can't remember or talk with words, but does that mean they are not communicating? It is my belief that their "minds" are purely focused on the current moment in time. They respond to light immediately as a stimuli, as well as the music, as well as the death of the brine shrimp. They have no need for memory, nor thoughts. But the realm of emotion is more immediate. When you are insulted the grief or anger is usually instantaneous after the stimuli. You don't have to remember it or think about it to feel it. In this way they are the same as us. Is communication possible? I think it depends on your depth of emotional perception, and level of thinking and living in the newest moments of time. You have to be on the same page as them, or you won't understand what they are saying.

The Future..

Recent Research 2010 done by the Australian CSIRO (AgriculturalResearch Body)identified that a biochemical marker triggered with an introduction of a parasite became present in a crop at the other end of the field from where the parasitic mould was introduced. They repeated this experiment in a controlled environment with wind contantly blowing in the opposite direction and the biochemical reaction still became present elminating pheramone communication. They believe it could be due to communication via the root system or another form that they are currently unaware of.// I believe its due to vibration. Think...Adults cant hear sounds that children can.. so why is it so bizare that a plant can hear vibrations that humans can't.//Whales can hear sounds over thousands of kilometers// Penguins can identify there babys calls amongs thousands of other calls, so why is it so surreal that plants can// mould lichen can organise itself to change form and move. this world is fucken bizare for plants too.. Quantum//the concept is not so different to Shazam. -Jan 2011

More on it

The myth busters said that if it is "not repeatable then it is not science", but my guess is that the plants maybe learnt from the previous thing they saw and then did not respond (just some wild imagination by me).

Although it might be that they have short term memory. And also they should have tried it with different species and especially those that where used originally by Dr. Jagdish Chandra Bose. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 168.167.179.47 (talk) 10:09, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed

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Specifically, this diff [1] contained text copy and pasted from the source, it can not be restored to the article. This diff: [2] on the other hand contains a potential issue; the source is hard to obtain to rule out any issue, it has been removed presumptively as a precaution as part of the cleanup of the blocked sockpuppet GreenUniverse. IRWolfie- (talk) 21:34, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Baxters Results Were a Non-sequitur

The most major issue with Baxter's experiments is that his conclusions did not follow from his results. Even if we assume his results were 100% spot-on accurate the plants were still not doing anything which could not also be done by the polygraph machine itself (ie. responding in a manner correlated with human emotions), and nobody would attribute emotions or psychic abilities to a polygraph machine. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.121.6.113 (talk • contribs) 22:16, June 17, 2013‎

The same thing could be said for any polygraph result, or any neuroimaging result, or any kind of measurement! Given that plants are indeed alive, and show responsiveness to other environmental stimuli, it's not outside of the range of possibility that they could have perceptual capabilities. They are showing electrical changes in response to environmental changes, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are sensitive to those environmental changes, and that's arguably what one could call perception. Goldenmean1618 (talk) 00:17, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

I believe this experiment was the one on the video documentary based on the book The Secret Life of Plants (try youtube or netflix). In this documentary he left the room, and randomly automated the environmental stimuli. The shrimp in the experiment could have given the response (it may have been from another room), but the sensors were hooked to the plant's leaves. - Sidelight12 ^Talk 00:39, 23 September 2013 (UTC)

Improvement of article

I am in the process of improving this article with reliable references, one useful reference has been Galston, Arthur W; Slayman, Clifford L. (1979). The Not-So-Secret Life of Plants: In Which the Historical and Experimental Myths About Emotional Communication Between Animal and Vegetable Are Put to Rest. American Scientist 67 (3): 337-344. If anyone has any suggestions please post here, thanks. HealthyGirl (talk) 00:32, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Scholarly information on Bose can be found in Alexander Volkov (ed). (2014). Plant Electrophysiology: Signaling and Responses, pp. 94-98 or his previously edited volume Plant Electrophysiology: Methods and Cell Electrophysiology (2012) which is cited on the article. It must be noted however, that Bose was not a proponent of any "paranormal" element in plants (see Galston cited above). Bose's work on plants has often been misrepresented by the lunatic fringe, but he did influence later researchers such as the authors of the pseudoscientific book The Secret Life of Plants (1973). HealthyGirl (talk) 03:27, 24 April 2016 (UTC)

Off-topic anti-science rant in summary

Does an article on supernatural theories about plant life really need this paragraph-long anti-science rant in the summary?

A note about science. The fact remains regardless of arguments on either side of "truth" that science as a discipline is simply one way of looking at the Universe, one framework through which mainstream human society chooses to look at natural phenomena. It is by no means the only way, nor the only legitimate way, and in fact it has been proven wrong over and over throughout history. Shamanic practice is thousands of years old and comes from ancient cultures adept at surviving for long periods of time in natural environments; when compared to the United States for example, which is just a couple of hundred years old and has already destroyed much of its natural resource base, different modalities like it for understanding the Universe can be understood as equally if not more valid than modern science. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:83FC:A470:8C1:173D:879B:B15E (talk) 17:05, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Mythbusters [mis]use of EEG and its basis for their conclusions

I am unable to confirm that Cleve Backster ever supports any of his primary perception evidence based on monitoring plants with an EEG machine. I DO find that he claimed evidence from attaching the EEG machine to chicken eggs and yogurt, but from plants, his evidence that I find is from attaching the polygraph to the plant, not the EEG machine. Since the two machines measure distinctly different electrical characteristics, the switch to the EEG machine in Mythbusters poses an unforgivable credibility concern.

Using the polygraph machine, Mythbusters achieved a statistically significant positive response from plants. Given that Backster and other researchers clearly and profoundly state that positive results are never gotten 100% of the time, but merely a statistically significant portion of the time, just as Mythbusters noted from using the polygraph, their final conclusions contradict the evidence they present.

Personally, I am an electronics technician who has several years experience servicing EEG machines for an Omaha, NE-based neurological clinic. That service experience I have does include component-level circuitry troubleshooting and repair. My formal education includes Associate of Science Degree in Electronics Technology and Bachelor of General Studies degree in General Sciences, as well as two other closely related degrees. I challenge any electronics engineer or scientist to find fault with my comments in this section relative to electronics and the use of EEG and polygraph machines.

I offer the following edit to the Mythbusters section here:

Because Mythbusters used the EEG machine to measure the plants reactions in contradiction to Cleve Backster's methodologies, their polygraph evidence actually support Backster's results in that both Mythbusters and Backster show statistically significant evidence of primary perception.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.74.100.210 (talk) 20:18, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

That would be WP:OR. --Hob Gadling (talk) 20:34, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Maybe you are trying to imply that usage of Mythbusters experiments as evidence in this Wikipedia article on Primary Perception is prohibited?— Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.74.100.210 (talk) 22:13, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Do not do that! I responded to your entry above, not to your later writings (below)! By inserting more stuff above my response, you distorted the discussion, making it appear as if I had responded to that.

Regarding your response: I do not know what gives you that idea. Read what WP:OR means. You can draw your conclusions, as you did above, but you cannot put them in Wikipedia articles, unless you publish them somewhere else first. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:55, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, and I'm sorry to do things the wrong way in this posting, due to my lack of understanding how this is supposed to play out.

Anyway, I am hoping to offer observations, not conclusions. I need to know how to do that so that such observations are accepted and refined in a spirit of honest rationality based on the merits of the observations, not based on my mistakes heretofore. I'll wait longer this time for responses...let's say a couple of weeks' wait this time....August 1. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.126.191.153 (talk) 16:55, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Observations by Wikipedia users are also not wanted. Wikipedia tells the reader what WP:reliable sources say about the subject, not what somebody who edited Wikipedia says about the subject. So, if you find a source that says what you want to add to the article, you can add it, quoting the source. Otherwise, you can't. --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:38, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

After more thought towards clarity and conciseness:

In his publishings, Backster reports using the polygraph for Plantae and the ["EEG machine"] for non-Plantae organisms. Mythbusters validated Backster's polygraph-Plantae findings, yet, in a rare moment of anti-scientific irrationality, they refused to believe their instrument when it produced results consistent with Backster's studies. Fabricating [a] pseudo-plausible reason[s] to attribute, against scientific and electronics orthodoxy, resistance measurement results to unidentified electrical phenomena, Mythbusters "continued" their experiment by connecting an [resistance-agnostic] EEG machine to Plantae to justify their final conclusions. Note that an EEG machine is designed to measure electrical voltage signals in the nanovolt or microvolt range at/on the skin generated by underlying neural oscillations which obviously do not exist in Plantae since they have no neurons! Mythbuster's misappropriation of the device that their "busted" conclusion is based on, along with their rejection of valid confirmatory readings from a properly operated polygraph machine, renders their conclusion totally unfounded. Thus, the statement above "Wikipedia tells the reader what WP:reliable sources say about the subject" is a flat out lie because the source is unreliable.

Furthermore, merely checking the very first listed reference shows non-adherence to peer-reviewed sources. That reference is merely a twice-removed second-hand statement by Barry Singer perhaps about a statement by George Ogden Abell about a statement by Arthur W. Galston and Clifford L. Slayman in their book edited by the same George O. Abell and Barry Singer and published by the not even mentioned and non-peer-reviewing publisher Charles Scribner's Sons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.74.100.210 (talk) 20:18, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

174.74.100.210, you obviously misunderstand how Wikipedia works and are lying about sources. Arthur W. Galston was a famous botanist who wrote a paper debunking paranormal plant perception - this paper was printed in a compilation book edited by George Ogden Abell. Galston was qualified to discuss this topic, which he debunked in several of his publications. As for peer-review, not every reference has to be "peer-reviewed" to be valid on Wikipedia, and it is trolling to suggest a book publisher like Charles Scribner's has to be peer-reviewed to be added to Wikipedia. Plants lack a nervous system so they do not feel pain. Physical pain is not a universal phenomenon like new-age quacks seem to suggest. Look at Congenital insensitivity to pain. 5.101.169.146 (talk) 12:33, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

My point is that the whole line of support goes back to a singular source. Scientific method requires more than that. And as far as misunderstanding how Wikipedia works, I'm not ashamed to admit that, but that one weakness should not make Wikipedia experts conclude that I know every other subject (like the the electrical basis for using a GSR vs. EEG, to be pertinent) even less than they do. That plants lack a nervous system is a point that I made in order to get everyone to realize that their use of an EEG machine on plant material is totally inappropriate and forms the entire basis for for Mythbusters' conclusion! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.74.100.210 (talk) 06:58, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

I feel your pain, but take my advice and let it form your opinion of content on this site and don't try to get emotionally involved in the case, Wikipedia is not about finding truth. For everyone who understand what you say it is painfully obvious that using Myth Busters as the article does to argue against the phenomenon is clearly in error. But they are classified as a trusted source so their word are therefore taken at face value by the rules of this site. This case serves as a good example for how trustworthy the information you find on this site is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.22.162.214 (talk) 19:29, 22 November 2018 (UTC)