Update on Emoto experiment

Babichev

In a previous (now locked) thread Masaru Emoto’s “experiments” with rice were brought up. To those not familiar, he claims he took 3 jars of rice, labeled one “love,” one “hate,” and one was blank, and he then spoke words of love to the one, hateful words to the second, and ignored the third, or something along those lines. He claimed that the one labeled love ended up growing “good” mold and started fermenting some very nice fermentation. The one that got hateful words grew some ugly, yucky mold and the one that got ignored got the yuckiest, ugliest mold of all. Discussion ensued on the ridiculousness of this “experiment,” including that it’s not a valid experiment for a variety of reasons. There’s no serious control of the environment, no blinding of the person doing the assessment, small sample size, and the assessment for what is good outcome is subjective. Plus there is no reason to believe that talking to rice will affect mold growth on it. However, someone claimed they did the experiment and got the same results and asked if I’d tried it. I’m not willing to devote 30 days of my life to this but I do grow oat and barley grass for my bunny. I agreed to try it with 3 3” pots of oat grass. I carefully weighed out X number of grams of oats for each pot, they were soaked for the same amount of time overnight in separate cups of the same amount of water taken from the same sample of water. They were placed in 3 identical pots with the same amount of solid taken from the same batch of potting soil. One was labeled “I hate you,” one “I love you,” and one got a blank tag. They were placed in the middle of a light bank so they should get equal amounts of light, the tray in which they were placed was rotated 1/4 turn each day so any undetected advantage of placement would be compensated for. They were spoken to twice a day in this manner: I would pick up the individual cup, turn my back to the others so that no “overflow” to the other pots would occur, and I’d repeat “I love you I love you I love you you’re the most wonderful and beautiful oats on the planet,” or “I hate you I hate you I hate you you’re the ugliest most useless oats on the planet” for 15 seconds. The third pot was ignored. In the beginning, they were sprayed with water twice a day until they started sprouting. After that they were watered from the top once a day in the morning and given the same exact amount of water.

They are now at a point where I think one could evaluate any significant differences.

I’m not telling (yet) which pot is which. Can you tell? I’m including a photo of the bottom of the pot so you can see root growth.

HogboblinZwei

I'm not at all knowledgeable when it comes to plants. The only detail that catches my attention is the bottom of the rightmost plant—there appears to be fewer tendrils projecting from the container.

I believe those are "roots", which can be added to fizzy water to make a type of beer. I think.

Given my lack of plant lore, I can't say for certain which plant is which.

I look forward to reading about the results of your experiment, @Babichev.

Travismo

I’m no expert, but it looks to me like pot 1 has fuller growth than the other two. Pot 3 also looks a little weaker, I think ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Babichev

@Travismo - I agree but I don’t think the differences are that significant. There’s going to be some variation no matter what. I’ll reveal tomorrow which is which.

MCcuddles2

@Babichev ooh, the important thing will be to quantify the statistical significance of the results. Typically this is done using a p value. In this case I'm not sure how you would derive that.

You could measure each blade width and height in each pot and then calculate the average and standard deviation for each pot.

Then you can build probability distributions, using mean and std, and compare the bell curve for each plant against the other. I can probably help with that if you have the data.

I moonlight as a data scientist.

NicoSnuggs

@Babichev - Thank you for putting in effort to try this.

MCcuddles2

There is an empirical method requiring programming knowledge called bootstrapping, which allows you to calculate P values (hence statistical significance) from a small data set.

Basically you put all the blades of your control plant in one bag and then pull out one blade at a time until you've built a plant.(you put the blade back after each pull).

You do this over and over again. Maybe a thousand times. And then you build a probability distribution for what the mean(average) of a randomly picked control plant would look like.

(Fun fact here, this distribution almost always looks like something we call the normal distribution. This is due to something called the Central Limit theorem:
"In probability theory, the central limit theorem (CLT) states that the distribution of a sample variable approximates a normal distribution (i.e., a “bell curve”) as the sample size becomes larger, assuming that all samples are identical in size, and regardless of the population's actual distribution shape")

The you see where the mean of the measured two non-controls (love and hate) fall on that probability distribution.

Sounds complex but can be done instantly using programming.

Typically if it falls past the 95th percentile on either side, the result is considered statistically significant.( p value less than .05)

quixotic_life

@Babichev ~ I lovity-love that you're doing this!! Are they at your typical harvest point? I wonder if your bun will be able to taste the difference or display any preferences?? So fun!
Also, if I had to guess which is which...

I think left is love, right is hate, and the middle is an eavesdropper.

🪴👂

DaringSprinter

Lessee. Humans exhale carbon dioxide, so whichever two plants you've been talking to are probably getting more CO2 than the one you've been leaving on the tray.

High levels of carbon dioxide can retard plant growth when temperatures are high, they're watered a lot, or there's a lot of nitrogen in the soil, so... I'm gonna put my non-existent internet forum money on Plant Number One being the one you're not talking to.

No idea about the other two, though.

Babichev

I typically harvest them when they are about twice this height. However, at this stage I think any difference will probably be most obvious. The leaves are tall enough that you can clearly see the growth but not so tall that they start to obscure each other or fall over.

I’ll reveal which is which in a day or two.

The bunny eats greens with great gusto, she gets very excited about fresh greens.

@MCcuddles2 , I’ve been curious about how they calculate p values but not enough to ever investigate it. I love the xkcd cartoon on p values. Or, as my friend put it, “How I learned about p values from stick figures.”

https://xkcd.com/882/

MCcuddles2

Wanted to add one more thing, to make the p value little more intuitive.

A p value of .05 means that if you were to grow a control plant a 100 times, you would only randomly see the value of the non-control plant in less than 5 percent of the plants (so no more than five plants in that range).

Which implies there is something significant happening between the control and non control, something that is extremely unlikely only due to chance.

So you could theoretically grow the control plant a 100 times under the same conditions and arrive at a p value that way. But probably better with a thousand.

Sashamcgee

That's a very interesting experiment! I look forward to the results 😁

UCpaaHVg6u0

If you don't feel the hatred and really mean it, I'm thinking the words are not what matters. Unless you are using English oats.

notmymichael

For what it’s worth, I really do hate that middle one. The little jerk.

Babichev

@UCpaaHVg6u0 - nowhere in the description of how the original experiments were done says you have to have strong feelings of love or hate towards the plants. It just said the jars were labeled and spoken to.

I’ll reveal which is which tomorrow.

Meanwhile, just to retrace our steps:

Soaked oats

Planted in pots

Babichev

Today: The reveal! These photos were taken earlier today.

Babichev

And here’s what they are, left to right:

1) Ignored. 2) I hate you. 3) I love you.

Babichev

I’m so glad I can stop talking to the grass now.

Sashamcgee

Omg! That's not what I expected at all!!! Thanks for sharing this @Babichev

vivlnnw

@UCpaaHVg6u0 lol

@Babichev Thanks for the experiment and sharing the results.

Like all other living things in the planet, I guess even plants want to be left alone and doesn't need a human to decide their fate.

theHugAlchemist

Ignored is better than "I will uproot you and feed you to rabbits"

I love that you did this experiment, thanks for doing the work! I am much too lazy

TheFunCartel

This shouldn’t even be a shock because if humans suddenly disappeared plants would take over the urban spaces rapidly. Can’t believe people believed otherwise.

Sashamcgee

@FunCartel that's a wonderful point.

MCcuddles2

@Babichev I love it! But is the result statistically significant?

I’m so glad I can stop talking to the grass now.

Given enough of certain substances, I find that it's the grass that starts talking to me.

quixotic_life

@Babichev ~ "I’m so glad I can stop talking to the grass now."

🤣😂🤣

@vivlnnw ~ "Like all other living things in the planet, I guess even plants want to be left alone and doesn't need a human to decide their fate."

Nice take away.

@Sashamcgee ~ "Omg! That's not what I expected at all!!!"

Right?! ~ Lol

JoyfulHeart

Maybe they didn't understand English?

(Just kidding, honest!)

Babichev

@MCcuddles2 - personally, I don’t think the differences are significant. Perhaps a statistical difference but not enough to be clinically relevant.

I don’t uproot it, I either cut it with a scissors or just set the pot down and let the bunny graze on it. I get at least two good cuttings and then a scanty third. If I were to anthropomorphize the grass, I would think it might enjoy feeding the bunny. She certainly loves it and munches it down with great enthusiasm. In the end, the spent grass/root mass is added to the compost pile, along with the poop pellets where the grass eventually ends. It all gets composted and turned into other plants. Not a bad cycle to be part of.

From an earlier batch:

quixotic_life

Awww... adorable!! 💓

UCpaaHVg6u0

Now I'm concerned for the bunny.

CuddleDuncan

@Babichev, I'm afraid to say that your conclusion may be invalid. From their haughty demeanor, and distain for being eaten, these plants are quite obviously French.

This means

a) they may not speak English and

b) even if they did speak English, you did not even attempt to speak French, and so they will ignore you.

---

On a serious note, the original hypothesis proposed that a plant can distinguish between the words 'love' and 'hate' which are almost identical. Soft consonant - vowel - hard consonant - silent E.

Further, either the plants speak English or, presumably, all languages. I'm not sure which is less believable.

To put it another way, if somebody claims a physical cause (words) has a physical consequence (growth) without seriously discussing HOW the causality works, then you are probably being hoodwinked.

DaringSprinter

Ha! I guessed right!

...Regarding the ignored plant. I didn't even try for the other two, since they were essentially being treated the same.

Not bad. Thanks, @Babichev! This was fun.