Plants Feel Pain (Daily Mail Story)

Daily Mail Plants Can Talk and Feel Pain Story "Scientists say"
(AccessedJan 8th 2013)
EErrm, no they don't :-)
Shall we leave it at that? No....

There seems to be a general rule with the Daily Mail that nothing they publish should be true, or if you are being very charitable: ...nothing should be quite true.

So the story basically says that if you squish a plant bubbles of gas squeeze out which are audible (to a fancy microphone)...  There is no way that could be thought of as feeling pain or talking.  There is no citation given, but Frank Kühnemann of Bonn University, Germany is the name associated with the story.  I dare say (hope!) the mis-quote is not of Dr Kühnemann doing!!

By this logic a Jam Sandwich feels pain too.
So here is an experiment you can try for yourself, by way of :
(1) Take a jam sandwich.
(2) Place a powerful microphone along side it.
(3) Stamp on the sandwich.
(4) Analyse your audio recording.

Hey you will find that when you jumped on the sandwich there was a rapid expulsion of air and jam and the is audible as "squish" noise.  Ergo the Sandwich was alive, and screamed with pain....

And the Daily Mail comment (Newspapers and the media always do this): "Scientists say" is utterly stupid.  Scientists do not speak with one voice.  At the very least they should have said "we have found a scientist who believes that.....".  That is a mantra I shall be repeating!

DAILY MAIL DON'T BE SO SILLY


My Bottom Line would be if you are interested in gossip. Great.  If you are interested in science and/or health, pop your Daily Mail into the bin along with the Sun, which hopefully has been in there since 1989*.

Thanks for stopping by.


*Ps., I never bought the Sun even before Hillsborough 1989.  It was always clear to me since I was a child that it was a

horrible "newspaper".