On 21 Jan. 1994 Brent Palmer asked for more information about a professional
polygraph technician conducting experiments on plants to see if they were
capable of sensing pain, being mentioned in a documentary.
This made me remember a chapter in a book I read some 20 years ago, about
these experiments, and see I found it in the bookshelf!
The chapter was written by a Swedish free lance journalist, Jan Fjellander
(in Swedish) who visited the laboratory where these experiments were
conducted.
The professional polygraph technician you want information about is Cleve
Backster. According to Jan Fjellander, Backster had been working some 25
years with research on the application of lie detectors. The 2 Feb. 1966
he was watering his flowers and became curious about the time it would
take the water to go from the roots to the leaves. He used the equipment
he had available, a lie detector and put the electrodes to a leaf of a
Dracaena massangeana. He expected a gradual decrease in resistance as the
water content would rise, and the electrical resistance was lowered.
Instead he got a complex curve resembling that of a human. Since the plant
behaved as a human he decided to treat it as a human and make a
"Threat/well being test" to see if there was any responses.
When he decided to burn the leaf with a match, the polygraph machine gave a
strong reading. "The reaction had been so immediate and strong, that he
could not avoid the feeling that the plant had read his mind". The
description above was the start of a long seriesof experiments with plants
and other living cells, among other things unfertilised hen's eggs, which
were "ticking", and reacting.
I do not have more data than that in this book chapter and one reference:
C. Backster (1968) International Journal of Parapsychology, no 4.
Unfortunately I do not have any page numbers nor title, but the article
should deal with a fully automatic experiment (no humans present) showing
how plants react to the deaths of shrimps killed by boiling in another room.
I hope this can be of some help, if you do some further research,
send me a note about the results
Good luck,
Jarmo Uusitalo
jarmo.uusital at algae.gu.se
Kristineberg marine research station, Sweden
