Research with plants

In plants, we began our studies just as we did with mice. That is, we wanted to se if we could affect healthy plants.

We started off by using barley seeds and we put them on blotting paper to see if we could see any difference due to laying on of hands by Mr. E. on the sprouting of these seeds; we did not see any differences.

The next attempt was to put these seeds in soil to determine whether there was any difference in the growth of plants in soil due to laying on of hands.

Having found an effect due to laying on of hands on sick but not on healthy mice, we felt that we ought to work on plants made sick in some way. The way we did it with plants was to inhibit plant growth by watering them with a salt solution. Under those circumstances, an effect of laying on of hands was observed.

The details of the technique are written up in publications in the two journals mentioned previously. However, the main point which should be mentioned here is that it was not necessary to have Mr. E. or Mr. B. hold the plant pots in the hands to treat them.

It was possible to treat them just by holding between the hands the 1 percent saline solution to be poured over them.

Only on the first watering was salt water used and only the salt water of the treated group was given laying on of hands. In all the subsequent waterings, ordinary untreated water was used in both groups.

After we watered the plants with salt water, they were dried in an oven at 38-40 degrees centigrade, following which they were watered with ordinary water which was not treated by laying on of hands.

Results measured

In about eight days the seeds would come breaking through the surface of the soil, and we would count the number of seedlings coming through. We had put in 20 per pot. As these seedlings got taller, we would not only count the number but we would also measure their height and average the values per pot per group.

The first plant experiment showed that the laying on of hands treated group had more seedlings coming through the soil initially than did the controls, and that they grew faster and yielded more plant material than the controls. And all this was supported by statistical analysis.

The next few slides will show you pictures of the plants in this experiment. We had two groups, an X Group and a Y Group, and when I set them up in this particular experiment, it was blind in that I didn't know if X was the treated group and Y the control, but I did know which pots belonged to the X Group and which to the Y Group. So I was able to separate them and to take pictures of these.

Later on, when we did multiblind experiments, I was unable to tell even that. Therefore, no photographs of this kind are available. However, in the first plant experiment you can see that the seedlings of the X Group are taller than those of the Y Group from the 10th day on to the end of the experiment even though on the 13th day we didn't water them and so they were a bit droopy and it's difficult to see the difference.

New questions arise

Now, when I finished this experiment, the question that came to mind was: Did this experiment arise purely by chance? Statistically, you'd say it didn't, but I said, Supposing I would repeat the entire experiment with only one change in it:

Instead of having one group a treated group and the other group a control, we would have both groups controls. If I just ran two groups in the same way - without laying on of hands treatment, would I get the same kind of differences that I just saw in the previous experiment?

Well, when we did that, we found that we got exactly the same results in both groups. This is shown graphically in the next slide. So the difference in the previous experiment was not due to any errors in handling the material.

Effect of mental attitude

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