Dear Fernando, > Arthur Carlson wrote: > > > > I'm afraid you will have to be meticulous if you don't want to waste > > your time. (Leaving aside the question of whether the project is likely > > to be a waste of time regardless of how carefully it is done.)
I see you are getting a bit meticulous (or scientific) already, following Arthur Carlson's advice, by sketching a real experimental protocol: > For instance, in this project, imagine that I select > a small piece of land that is relatively flat, > regular and uniform. I prepare the entire piece > for sowing using the same technique that I would > use for normal agriculture. > > Now I select a lot of seeds as uniform as possible. > I randomly divide it into 365 smaller lots of > equal size. Say, 20 seeds each. > > Starting on January first I sow the first 20 seeds. > From there on I sow 20 seeds everyday until December > 31. > > As I reap each row (a row per day) I can take the > measures I want: appearance, water contents, > nutrients contents, dry weight, plant size, > root size, quantity and weight of pods... whatever > is relevant for that particular plant. > > In the end I can -- for instance -- take am average > of each quantity/quality of interest. This will > give me a baseline in a graph. Now I plot, day by > day, the result of each harvest. Nevertheless, you may be a bit optimistic when stating: > Well, if we can't see no changes in the curve > as the days advance and the moon ages (in a > cyclical manner) then we can conclude no influence > exists. Otherwise, we can conclude that there is > an influence and then decide when it is positive > and when it is negative. You will most probably end up with a very noisy recording, from which it is not possible to draw any conclusion with certainty, in this case, to see a moon-synchronous component. In that sense you would have wasted your time. Maybe you nevertheless had a good time playing around, that's ok with me. Trying to get some return from your (time) investment, you might even be tempted to apply one of those debuked statistical techniques for discovering rhythmicity in noisy signals. These will - at best - only give you an estimated period and phase relationship, at a stated probability level <100%. Such results may or may not convince you. You are free to believe whatever you like. More importantly, such statistical results should also convince your neighbour, or Arthur Carlson for that sake. That's why we need a set of rules about what we should consider "convincing evidence". This is a major aspect of the scientific method. But, why not try? "The proof of the pudding is in the eating", as the British say. Progress is made by experiment! Kind regards, ===================================== Frans W. Maes Peize, The Netherlands 53.1 N, 6.5 E www.biol.rug.nl/maes/sundials/ =====================================
