You’ve probably heard or seen polygraph tests in many different places. However, it may surprise you to hear that the science behind polygraphs is not very well founded, despite the fact that they appear so often in TV shows and movies, and in real life.
A famous proponent of polygraph was Grover Cleveland “Cleve” Backster Jr., an interrogation specialist for the CIA in the mid-1990s. He founded the CIA’s polygraph unit shortly after World War II and then the Backster School of Lie Detection after leaving the CIA in 1960. However, he was most noted for his work with plants.
Backster believed that plants could sense pain and have extra-sensory perception, which he called “primary perception.” He used a polygraph test on plants to support his claims, and it can be said that he had some seriously strange results.
How does the lie detector work?
A polygraph test, also called a lie detector, is based on a series of physiological readings taken while asking the person being tested unanswered questions. The underlying principle behind the polygraph is that the human body reacts in certain ways when lying, and these changes can be detected by various instruments attached to the person’s body. These readings include blood pressure, skin conductivity, pulse, and respiration, and the stress of lying is expected to alter these measurements.
It is clear that plants do not have heart rate or blood pressure, but they do have certain conductivity, which can be measured by electrical resistance. Backster used it to perform a polygraph test on a plant leaf and attached a plant to electrodes that would measure its suspected “responses” to stimuli.
Backster reported readings similar to those taken from human skin when watering a plant, which prompted further stimulus experimentation to understand what plants could “feel”. He started burning a leaf and the polygraph went crazy in what appeared to be a stress response.
However, things soon got a little out of control. Backster claimed that when a small shrimp died in another room, the polygraph he attached to the plant gave heightened responses. He claimed that the plant knew that the shrimp was dying, that it could also read human intentions through some kind of telepathic ability. By doing further research, he suggested that just a small change in emotions could elicit a response from plants and they were actively reading our minds. He called it “Primary Perception” and published an article about it in 1968.
To prove the legitimacy of his polygraph tests, Backster also ran tests on things other than plants. He experimented with yogurt, eggs, and even human sperm, and concluded that they too can read minds.
His ideas were rejected by the scientific community, and a panel of experts questioned everything about his methods, from lack of control to whether the polygraph worked. Experiments repeated by him and others did not yield the same results, leading to the conclusion that it was just humidity or static that caused the changes during the experiments. So the plants and other things he tested didn’t have the brain-reading ability as he claimed.
Backster passed away after a long illness in 2013, but he left behind several publications and a book about his controversial work.
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