Cleve Backster
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Cleve Backster (b. 1924)[1] is a polygraph scientist best known for his controversial experiments with biocommunication in plant and animal cells using a polygraph machine in the 1960s which led to his theory of "primary perception." He is currently director of the Backster School of Lie Detection in San Diego, California.
Backster began his scientific career as an Interrogation Specialist with the CIA, and went on to become Chairman of the Research and Instrument Committee of the Academy for Scientific Interrogation.
His course of study changed dramatically when he discovered the ability to measure galvanic skin response in plants in the 1960s. He first published his findings to these experiments in the International Journal of Parapsychology.[2] The article was met with wide criticism of his research methods. Backster's work was inspired by the research of Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose,[1] who discovered that plants grow faster with pleasant music.
His biocommunications work is most famously discussed in The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird. Backster himself published only one volume of his research findings, in 2003, entitled Primary Perception.[3]
[edit] Popular culture
Backster's "Primary Perception" theory was referenced in the Discovery Channel television show MythBusters. The team attempted to reproduce Baxter's experiments using a polygraph and an EEG machine. The myth received a "Busted" rating.
[edit] References
- ^ a b William F. Williams, Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience, 2000 publ. Fitzory Dearborn Publishers, ISBN 1-57958-207-9
- ^ International Journal of Parapsychology: "Evidence of a Primary Perception in Plant Life," vol. 10, no. 4, Winter 1968, pp. 329-348
- ^ Cleve Backster, Primary Perception: Biocommunication with plants, living foods, and human cells (2003) White Rose Millennium Press, ISBN 0-9664354-3-5, Website
[edit] External links
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