Why test Plants instead of Human Beings?

WHY TEST PRAYER AT ALL?

There wasn't a scientific way to explain prayer.  So many answers to prayer could be explained by chance, coincidence, suggestion, the placebo effect, or temporary and spontaneous remissions, that the Klingbeils felt the necessity to do research on prayer.

Bruce and John had a curiosity to explore how their thoughts and prayers operated
in controlled laboratory environments.  The Klingbeils faced resistance for doing
such research.

What about performing tests of prayer on animals and plants?  Dr. Herbert Benson writes in Timeless Healing:

Dr. Larry Dossey, once an internist and now a full-time author with five books about spirituality and healing to his credit, argues that prayer is potent not only for people but for animals, plants, and lower organisms.  (This might, of course, lend credence to gardeners who insist that talking to plants produces better growth.)  Dr. Dossey undoubtedly welcomes additional research that I believe is required to substantiate a link between beliefs and animal and plant physiology.

From Timeless Healing:  the Power and Biology of Belief by Herbert Benson, M.D., and Marg Stark, 1996, p. 187.

No.  The advantage of silent prayer is its non-physical character.

In experiments verbal prayers were avoided.  There is sufficient evidence by researchers that sound and music affect and promote plant growth.  The vibrations of moving air, which reach the organism prayed-for, would interfere with the experiment being a clean experiment.  Silent prayer does not appear to move air in a known way.

If a participant were asked to pray from the next room away from the organism, he or she could pray, meditate, hum, bless or talk anything they wanted to about the task at hand of affirming something beneficial toward the organism.

NOISE IN GENERAL

During tests the control group organisms were in the same room as the prayed-for organisms.  Even though there were no verbal prayers, if there were extraneous noises, the control group and prayed-for group were affected equally.

Control group organisms registered a much flatter response curve than did prayed-for organisms which registered a dramatic curve.  The exception was when someone prayed for an organism and he or she elicited no test results.  His or her response curve looked like a flatter control group curve.

HOW WERE THE RESEARCHERS PAID?

Researchers Bruce and John Klingbeil paid their research expenses from the money they earned as Christian Science practitioners.  Supporters of Spindrift gave funds also.  Spindrift relied on volunteer help.

The one salary Bruce and John wanted to pay was for a project manager.  Bruce said that healing research was a wide open field where a young scientist interested in consciousness research could blaze a name for himself/herself by working on the Spindrift team.

During the 1980’s, several scientific people from around the United States were contacted about becoming the project manager for the Spindrift team.  Spindrift supporters were polled on how much each could contribute to sustain the salary of a scientist for a year or two.  It was more than anticipated.  A volunteer was sought.

Not scientifically trained but two talented business men from Colorado, at different times, volunteered and became project managers for the Klingbeils’ Spindrift research.

A Statistical Study of Prayer http://archinte.ama-assn.org/issues/v159n19/full/ioi90043.html
                                 (pay-per-view of article) American
                     Medical Association-AMA