Reply #71: Last time I checked, there was no published research

[DemBones DemBones]

that supported the idea that classical music makes plants (or children in the womb) healthier or "better soothed."

In a previous post, you indicated that plants feel pain but I've never been able to find published research on that topic, either.

Ever since the 70s, these ideas -- that plants feel pain and that plants are affected by music -- have been floated around and every now and then an article will appear in a newspaper citing "new scientific research" showing one or the other, or both. I've never been able to track down such research, not even with the help of an excellent reference librarian who searched all the databases available at the time. The newspapers seem to just print these factoids without checking them out.

The topic interests me because I taught biology and other science courses in public schools, supervised a lot of science fair projects, and also judged a lot of science fairs. Kids often chose topics such as "How Music Affects Plants" but there was no scientific literature to back up their results, in addition to the fact that their results were usually flawed to begin with because they used too small a sample of plants, didn't control conditions carefully, etc.

Science doesn't know everything but I don't know of any science that indicates that music affects plants, or that plants feel pain. Do you have a reference for those claims?