Information may have changed! Peer Reviewed article:
“And that was when something happened that forever changed Baxter’s life and ours. For the plant didn’t wait for him to light the match. It reacted to his thoughts!..”
"Researchers from Michigan State University have also recently discovered that plants have a rudimentary nerve structure, which allows them to feel pain. According to the peer-reviewed journal Plant Physiology, plants are capable of identifying danger, signaling that danger to other plants and marshaling defenses against perceived threats. According to botanist Bill Williams of the Helvetica Institute, “plants not only seem to be aware and to feel pain, they can even communicate…”
Before you get too excited, take a look at the “Helvetica Institute’s” home page. The quacking sound is deafening, or maybe I’m just too mired in conventional definitions of energy…
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, islandladi, we’re glad you found us.
For future ref: when one starts a thread, it’s helpful to other readers to provide a link to the column in question. Saves search time, and helps keep us (roughly) on the same page. No biggie, I’ve edited it at the bottom of your post, and you’ll know for next time.
That column was indeed from 1988, and I’ll bring it to Cecil’s attention that there may be new information since then. Whether he’ll do an updated column, or add footnotes, or ignore it all, or whatever, I can’t predict.
Anyhow, as I say, welcome!!
Meanwhile: TimeWinder, did you mean for your post to go in the duck-echoing thread? Let me know and I’ll move it.
I think what **TimeWinder **is saying is that the Helvitica Institute website spews a great deal of woo. If it looks likes like a crackpot, and sounds like a crackpot, it probably is a crackpot.
I think he meant that the “Helvetica Institute”, where some of the research was supposedly done, is one big mystery. Their website tells us almost nothing about it, and their faculty adds only more mystery-“Dr. Herbert West”? “The Center for the Institute of Studies”?
Where is this institute? When was it established? Who runs it? Whjy is there no mention of this supposed Institute (or “The Center for the Institute of Studies”) anywhere on the web?
“Famous” Helvetica Institute alumni.
"Deus Bioengineering doesn’t seem to exist outside of a mention on the alumni page, and “Energon Thermodynamics” made a claim that they invented a nuclear-powered light bulb that powers itself.
I’m beginning to believe this “Helvetica Institute” is a one or two man operation run out of someone’s basement.
No, I didn’t realize there was a duck-echoing thread. As others have guessed, I’m accusing the Helvetica Institute of being quacks. I’ll have my sarcasmometer adjusted, it’s apparently out of spec.
