I'm reading about this Backster guy. He's totally making this up, much like Hubbard made up most of his stuff:
"Early one morning in October 1966, Mr Backster connected the polygraph’s GSR electrodes to the leaf of a Dragon plant and then watered the base of the plant. His intention was to measure the amount of time it would take for water to reach the leaf and change its electrical resistance.
While expecting a drop in resistance as the water entered the leaf, Mr Baxter was not prepared for what followed – the resistance instead increased, and according to the polygraph results, the plant generated a curve similar to that of a human being experiencing happiness.
Mr Backster then tried another experiment. “It was early in the morning and no other person was in the laboratory. My thought and intent was: ‘I’m going to burn that leaf!’” Backster recorded, “The very moment the imagery of burning that leaf entered my mind, the polygraph recording pen moved rapidly to the top of the chart.”
He went to get a box of matches and returned, but realised the polygraph was already so agitated that there would be no observable response. So he took the matches back to his secretary’s office. According to Mr Backster, when he returned to the polygraph “the thing just evened right out again, which really rounded it out and gave me a very, very high quality observation.”
Over the next 35 years Mr Backster performed repeated blind, controlled and automated experiments to examine this phenomenon, which he calls “Primary Perception Biocommunication”, and others know as “the Backster Effect”.
His research found, among other things, that plants can perceive and measurably respond to intentional human thought and actions. Allegedly, Mr Backster’s experiments have been duplicated by scientists thousands of times using many variations."
Backster's claims were refuted by Horowitz, Lewis, and Gasteiger (1975) and Kmetz (1977). Kmetz summarized the case against Backster in an article for the Skeptical Inquirer in 1978. Backster had not used proper controls in doing his study. When controls were used, no detection of plant reaction to thoughts or threats could be found. These researchers found that the cause of the polygraph contours could have been due to a number of factors, including static electricity, movement in the room, changes in humidity, etc.
