Cleve Backster

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Cleve Backster
San Diego, California
NationalityAmerican
OccupationInterrogation specialist
Known forTheory of "Primary Perception"

Grover Cleveland "Cleve" Backster Jr. (February 27, 1924 – June 24, 2013) was an interrogation specialist for the

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), best known for his experiments with plants using a polygraph instrument in the 1960s which led to his theory of primary perception where he claimed that plants feel pain and have extrasensory perception
(ESP), which was widely reported in the media. These claims have been rejected by the scientific community.

Biography

He was born in

San Diego, California and was a polygraph instructor before his experiments on plants.[3][4] He got a D.Sc. in Complementary Medicine from Medicina Alternativa in 1996 and was on the faculty of the California Institute for Human Science Graduate School and Research Center founded by Hiroshi Motoyama which is unaccredited.[3] He wrote the book Primary Perception: Biocommunication with Plants, Foods, and Human Cells which describes 36 years of his work and was published in 2003.[5][6] He died on June 24, 2013, after a prolonged illness.[7]

Backster founded the CIA's polygraph unit shortly after World War II.[citation needed] The Backster School of Lie Detection is located in San Diego, California. The school was founded in New York City in 1960, shortly after Backster left his position with the Central Intelligence Agency. It trains policemen to use the polygraph or "lie detector" test.[8]

Primary perception

Findings

Backster's study of plants began in the 1960s, and he reported observing that a polygraph instrument attached to a plant leaf registered a change in

electrical resistance when the plant was harmed or even threatened with harm. His work was inspired by the research of physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose, who claimed to have discovered that playing certain kinds of music in the area where plants grew caused them to grow faster.[9] Bose used a crescograph to measure plant response to various stimuli and demonstrated feeling in plants. From the analysis of the variation of the cell membrane potential
of plants under different circumstances, he hypothesized that plants can "feel pain, understand affection etc". Bose wrote two books about this subject in 1902 (Response in the Living and Non-living) and 1926 (The Nervous Mechanism of Plants).

In February 1966, Backster attached polygraph

human sperm and he claimed his results showed "primary perception" could be measured in all living things.[10]

Reactions by the scientific community

Controlled experiments that have attempted to replicate Backster's findings have failed,[13][14][15] and the theory was not accepted since it did not follow the scientific method.[10][16] At the 141st annual meeting of American Association for the Advancement of Science, the panel of biologists found the claim unsupportable. The results seemed to be spontaneous; repeatability is still a problem, for him and the people who tried to perform his experiment. His lack of control experiments were criticized and explanations, such as that the polygraphs were responding to static electricity build-up and humidity changes, were put forward. The reliability of the polygraph test itself has been questioned.[10] Plants have cellulose cell walls but do not possess sensory organs, which rules out the possibility of plants having ESP.[3]

Biologist Arthur Galston told St. Petersburg Times, "We know plants don't have nervous systems. But they do have little electrical currents flowing through them and are subject to outside manipulation." He further said that plants can show altered electrical responses to light, chemical agents and disease but he "draws the line" to the claim of them "responding to human thoughts and events, including life elimination."[16][17] Scientists at the Cornell University and the Science Unlimited Research Foundation, San Antonio, Texas, could not find results that supported Backster's findings in the experiment, where the death of brine shrimp caused electrical voltage changes in the leaves of a plant in another room. Backster explained that they did not follow the exact laboratory techniques which he had used to perform the original experiments and he has not attempted to repeat them himself.[16]

In 2005

EEG machine, but all tests failed.[18]

Popular culture and influence

Backster's work became popular and drew public attention,

US.[citation needed
]

Ron Hubbard. Hubbard officially used the polygraph as an "E-meter" and he too, published plant communication experiments on tomato plants.[12]

Backster's "Primary Perception" theory was a subject of the

EEG
instrument, which is based on a different technology than the polygraph. Experiments where the team employed the same model of polygraph machine used by Backster showed positive results with the plant reacting both to actual harm, as well as thoughts of harm. In another segment of the episode, the team tested with an EEG by connecting it to a plant to check whether it would "see" eggs being catapulted randomly into boiling water. The EEG instrument registered no change in the plant and the myth was considered as "busted" in that particular segment of the episode. The differences between the two technologies likely played a key role in the differing results. [20]

In an episode of Adam Ruins Everything that discussed the pitfalls of forensic science, there was a cutaway during the segment which criticized polygraphs and also referenced Backster's Primary Perception experiment.[21]

References

  1. ^ U.S. Public Records Index Vol 2 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.), 2010.
  2. ISBN 9780965579407
    . "Cleve Backster, born Grover Cleveland Backster, Jr., on 27 February 1924 at Lafayette, New Jersey, received an appointment on 12 April 1948 as Plans Officer at the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) whose near total operation was headquartered at 2430 E. Street, N. W. in Washington D. C...."
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-1-118-04563-3
    . Retrieved 2013-08-06.
  4. ISBN 978-0-9655794-0-7
    . Retrieved 2012-09-01.
  5. ISBN 0-9664354-3-5
  6. ^
    ISBN 978-1-84694-345-4
    . Retrieved 2013-08-06.
  7. ^ "Grove Cleveland obituary" (PDF). Police Polygraph. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-08-04. Retrieved 2013-09-11.
  8. ISBN 978-1-55643-730-4
    . Retrieved 2013-08-07.
  9. ISBN 1-57958-207-9
  10. ^ a b c d e Mark Pilkington (June 10, 2004). "Primary perception". The Guardian. Retrieved 2013-08-05.
  11. ^ International Journal of Parapsychology: "Evidence of a Primary Perception in Plant Life," vol. 10, no. 4, Winter 1968, pp. 329-348
  12. ^
    ISBN 978-1-58509-128-7
    . Retrieved 2013-08-07.
  13. ^ Kenneth Horowitz, Donald Lewis and Edgar Gasteiger. (1975). Plant Primary Perception: Electrophysiological Unresponsiveness to Brine Shrimp Killing. Science, 189. pp. 478-480.
  14. ^ Kmetz, John. (1975). An Examination of Primary Perception in Plants. Parapsychology Review, 6. p. 21.
  15. ^ Schwebs, Ursula. (1973). Do Plants Have Feelings?. Harpers. pp. 75-76.
  16. ^
    St.Petersburg Times. January 31, 1975. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help
    )
  17. ^ Galston, Arthur. The Limits of Plant Power. Natural History, 84. pp. 22-24.
  18. ^ "Episode 61: Deadly Straw, Primary Perception". Annotated Mythbusters. September 6, 2006. Archived from the original on May 15, 2021. Retrieved January 8, 2022.
  19. ^ "MythBusters - Season 4, Episode 18: Deadly Straw - TV.com". tv.com. Archived from the original on 2009-11-16. Retrieved 2016-03-26.
  20. ^ "Mythbusters database". Discovery channel. Retrieved 2013-08-12.
  21. ^ "Adam Ruins Forensic Science". www.trutv.com. Retrieved 2020-03-09.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cleve_Backster&oldid=1213657655"