Re: dead grass around our coil

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <Mddeming-at-aol-dot-com>

In a message dated 8/30/01 10:11:27 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes: 


>
> Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" < 
> Hollmike-at-aol-dot-com> 
>
> Well, I read that article(reproduced in a ham radio club newsletter 
> 'booklet').  It had data showing a significant increase in the size of the 
> vegetables in the patch with the tesla coil.  The power was not too high 
> though - maybe 500W.  Perhaps there is a power range where the high 
> frequency 
> influence helps.  Perhaps there is a range of frequencies that are 'good' 
> for 
> plants.  None of this was studied in any detail, from what I can tell.   An 
> 18kVA coil might operate at a low enough frequency that it would be 
> harmful, 
> but maybe above some threshold, improvement might be had.  The article 
> showed 



Hi All, 
        It would be interesting to see the original article showing the set 
up, methodology, number of growing seasons the tests were repeated for etc. 
While anecdotal evidence and testimonials are the types most often used by 
research amateurs, advertising media, and practitioners of various 
pseudosciences, they don't carry much weight in serious research. 
        Example of amateur error: 
I have two tomato plant seedlings. I use brand XX fertilizer on one and brand 
YY on the other. I count the fruit produced by each plant and the one with XX 
fertilizer produces more fruit than the one with brand YY. Conclusion: brand 
XX is the better product. 
Unfortunately, there is NO valid conclusion to be drawn in this example. 
There is exactly 50% probability that one of the plants would outproduce the 
other merely by random chance. If I use 8 plants, there is still a 12.5% 
chance that random variation will give brand XX the best positive result. It 
would take dozens of plant over several growing seasons, with the person 
watering the plants and the person observing the results not knowing until 
the very end which was which, before a valid conclusion could be drawn. 
        Then there is the fact that almost no one writes an article UNLESS 
they get a positive result. If I perform an experiment a hundred times and 
get no desired results, those are significant outcomes, but they go 
unreported. If someone else tries it once and gets good results, they report 
it. No one knows that it failed 100 out of 101 times. 
        Real science is tedious, painstaking, and laborious to eliminate 
procedural error, experimentor/observer bias, random chance effects, etc. , 
and then one can only say that the results are, or are not, consistent with 
the hypothesis. 
        It would be very interesting to see these Tesla Coil effects on 
plants studied over several seasons, under very controlled double-blind 
conditions independently by a number of people, both believers and skeptics. 
THEN there would really be something to write about and submit to a serious 
publication like Nature, Science News, or IEEE. 
        This article sounds like a good inspiration for the start of some 
needed research. Anyone interested in establishing a protocol for tests? 

Matt D. 
Geek level 3-#1185