
9th grade student “Cress and WiFi” experiment attracts international attention - treerunner
http://stopsmartmeters.org.uk/9th-grade-student-cress-wifi-experiment-attracts-international-attention/
======
gus_massa
It's an experiment from 2013.

I remember reading the details when it originally appear. I was not convinced,
but it was a nice experiment, without an obvious flaw.

My bigger concern was that the difference was too big and obvious. I was
expecting a small difference between the seeds with the wifi and the control
group, but as the images show the difference is extremely easy to see. Also,
the experimental setup was well explained and looks straightforward.

This are usually good features of an experiment, but in this case the problem
is that if the effect were so easy to measure I expect that during this 4
years many independent research groups many independent groups would have
reproduced the experiment and published in a few peer review journals.

Are seeds of all plants affected? Which one are more susceptible?

How does the distance affect the result? It would be nice to see a graph of %
of viable plants vs distance. Does it have a 1/r^2 decay, 1/r or a sharp step?

Is this affected by the temperature or humidity? Wifi spots are a week source
of heat, so temperature and humidity may be important variables.

All these questions are too much for a science fair experiment at a school,
but they are interesting questions for a peer review article. If the effect is
real I'd like to read the answers for the extended version of the experiment.

