> How do you explain the difference in growth rate under controlled conditions, then?
There is not a lack of candidates:
Riding the academy game (plants must be sentient now, just because this is where the money is now), pure luck (moving more of the better genetics to one group just by random), cherry picking (The experiment results were publishable the 49th time, pffew), or giving your greyhound a helping hand without even noticing it. Choose one, there are much more other coming.
This single study is irrelevant because is negated by a million of empirical observations in the real life. We need to just stop for a minute and apply some old good common sense.
To start Tagetes and Salvia are two extremely popular plants cultured in every f*k roundabout of each big city in this planet.
Because they grow perfectly well in this (really noisy) conditions. How I know this? Because I like culturing plants, so I know what to expect. And this knowledge does not came from academy. Is achieved killing a few tons of plants by mistake like I did, and trying again. This is what this teams seem to be lacking. They are blind to the big picture. They just believe what they want to believe.
Moreover, Tagetes and Salvia are unrelated, representatives of two different families with two very different defense strategies. Why they would need to evolve the same sound sensors twice?.
There are tens thousands of counterexamples in the real world, against this single result (But then you don't have a career, of course).
> Riding the academy game (plants must be sentient now, just because this is where the money is now), pure luck (moving more of the better genetics to one group just by random), cherry picking (The experiment results were publishable the 49th time) or giving your greyhound a helping hand (and faking the results). Choose one, there are much more other coming.
In other words, "they are liars," "they did not account for genetics and there just happened to be mutations that killed samples in one group," "they are liars," or "they are liars." To your credit, point 2 could have very well happened and I can't seem to find an actual citation in the article to determine that it didn't, but I dislike your reasons to doubt them on all other points. You could hardly trust anything at all following that logic.
Not to say that I doubt your experience. They certainly didn't test every plant in existence under every possible condition. I am certain that their results don't apply to everything.
2) "sometimes you obtain the desired result by luck or rogue factors that are unrelated with your desired explanation" Speakers have big magnetos, for example. Other team could repeat exactly the same experiment and conclude that "magnetic forces stunt grow".
3) "sometimes only the 'correct' results can be published, so people repeat the experiment until being convinced of their results"
and 4) "yes some scientists are liars"
I will add a 5) you may favor desirable events and ignore undesirable ones without even realizing it (provide better care to one group, water for a few seconds more each day or have two different people caring for different groups)...
... Because unplanned events and lab accidents happen. I assume that having big speaker boxes near plants may trow a temporary shadow on them each day. If it happens in your lunch hour you could never realize it. And this things happen in science. All the time.
I would suggest to put a couple of turned off speakers of the same size near the quiet group and repeat the experiment.
