in conjunction with Anti-Bullying Day, Ikea conducted an experiment where they had people give encouraging words to one plant and insults / bullying words to another. The results show that the encouraged one stayed healthy while the bullied one wilted.

Just wondering what people think of this, especially anyone who is a botanist or other well-informed scientist. Is it really possible that the bullying words could have harmed the plant, or was this a spurious result based on low sample size, possibly unconscious difference in treatment by the experimenters, etc.?

https://www.boredpanda.com/ikea-expe...-jessica-ones/

Contender for the most ridiculous experiments of all time. Whoever theorizes such effects doesn't deserve the money to be conducting research. This is why research budgets are tight. Screw them.

Seems kinda silly to me as well, but it didn't come from a research budget, the Ikea store just did it on their own as far as I can tell.

I like the ones where they get fish drunk.

Thats marginally better.

Someone paid for the research; the research attracts attention; the research is a waste of time and resources; research budgets everywhere else tighten.

Kind of like how my butthole tightens when I see a prepubescent couple kissing awkwardly.

I once bullied a piece of broccoli into believing in only Kantian Philosophy. The results were so staggering that to this day they remain unpublished.

First of all bs! Second of all meta bs!

Third; Basically each plant has a chance it defeats the other in some way so there you go they publish only what fits their agenda or it worked on the first run anyway and they look pure lol. Try this with 100 plants now to claim anything.

Forth; Maybe the time people spend to find nasty words correlates with how the plant receives various chemical influences if it takes more effort and they stay there longer. Or whatever the reverse for the other one if it helped it lol. Record these details for both. carbon dioxide connections (probably not but you know what i mean)?


So call bs on "research" of 2 and demand a bigger budget better organized one with proper cross testing etc to filter out or understand better bs correlations!

But make sure you use different languages too so that we can say the same insults in different languages and see if there is any correlation.

Looks like the Mythbusters group already did a somewhat more scientific experiment. They found encouraging words and insults to be about the same, but a group that got no talking to at all did worse:

http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/my...ing-to-plants/

People who set these experiments up are the type to pour antifreeze into the one they want to wilt. You’ll see these “woo” experiments aren’t reproducible by others as you have already noted.

The people who want you to think that WiFi is killing you will cite similar cases where badly setup experiments give them the confirmation they desperately need to further their alarmist agenda but when scrutinized by others it never holds up.

You can get arrested for abusing plants.

Forcing the children to practice being hateful is the real story here. That people evidently think nothing of it is outrageous.


PairTheBoard

Nice stunt but far more informative observations and considerations are available on the topic of bullying.

And ,it sounds like were being mean to the plant, a faux meanness enacted for the experiment. First meanness isn't simply bullying, and second fake mean isn't simply mean.

lolololol

edit:
thanks for this, haven't laughed this hard in days.

Friend of mine worked as a botanist/chemist assistant on a research for some Berlin Institution. They are researching pretty much the same thing, just more scientific.

Short answer, yes plants do react to their environment. ldo.
While the Ikea thingy was probably mostly publicity, their result is more true than false.

I get that Ikea doing this kinda thing is pretty iffy. But real talk, plants are important, we understand them little, to not fund fundamental research on such an important matter would be insanely stupid.