FIELD STUDY OF AN ENHANCEMENT EFFECT ON LETTUCE SEEDS: Working In Adverse Conditions

Abstract

During the years 2000-2002, research on organic farms looked at the effect of a healer on lenuce seeds. The basic hypotheses were that the healer would enhance the seeds to produce greater yield and greater health. The first yearl found a significant result for the second hypmhesis, as measured by looking at the fungal damage. The second yea? found significant results on all the measures, greater yield, less fungal damage and less slug damage. However, doing field trials has many problems compared with doing laboratory research, weather being one of the major variables that cannot be controlled. For various reasons, in 2001 trials 6 and 7 were not planted om umil long after they had become pot-bound. The delay in plaming out was so great for trial 6 that the plants never grew properly, and trial 7 was harvested first as those plants grew to a point where they became big enough for sale. In 2002 the research rook place on another farm and was a disaster. For various reasons up to half of the lettuce plants died in the seedling trays, and the people working on the farm became "spooked." They considered that the reason for the loss of plants was due to the research trials upsetting the delicate balance of energy needed to keep the farm running smoothly. Therefore the research was terminated after only two trials were harvested. However, in both 2001 and 2002 significant results were still found. Trials 6 & 7 in 2001 both showed first place "hits" for gross weight of lettuces in the "enhanced" (HX) condition, which, when combined with trials 1 -5, give an average rank for gross weight of 1.92. The net weight was also significanc. When each harvest is ranked, by group, on the number of lettuces produced, the HX group has mean rank of 1.79, with t(11) = -2.75, and two-tailed p 0.019. The total yield was also significant for the HX group. The two trials in 2002 yielded nine experimental vs. comrol pairings. The nine "experiments" comparing net weight HX to another condition yield an average effect size (r) of 0.21 (sd = 0.31), which is statistically significantly greater than chance expectation. The six control experimems (NH v. controls) yield average effect size r = -0.02 (sd = .26), which is not significantly different from zero. These results suggest that a psychic healer can have a practical value for the commercial farmer. This is good news for organic farming where the lack of fungicide, pesticide and artificial fertilizer can result in a lower yield.