As Close To Fun As We Can Get Right Now

Tuesday, April 28, 2026

I am in desperate need of some fun right now.  I think we all are.  So I set aside this article, based on the headline, because I thought it was funny – “Scientists Discover Plants “Scream” – We Just Couldn’t Hear Them Until Now.”  I cannot help but ask – if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear, does it make a sound?  The latter question is about the intersection of science, philosophy and what actually matters.  So I guess the story about plants “screaming” is silly or not silly depending on your perspective.  Do sounds that the human ear cannot hear actually matter?  Are they even “a sound” at all or just pressure changes in the atmosphere?  Most importantly, just how much money was spent to determine that plants make noise, of any sort?

It seems like the last question I ask in the preceding paragraph, makes one consider all the rather silly questions that come before it.  Science, even silly science, costs money to do.  The government provides a lot of that money – a whole lot of it.  And because the government is not driven by profit motives (like “evil corporations” are) it often provides money to pursue rather silly science – science of little to no practical use.  The pursuit of silly science is justified because 1) you never know where it will lead and 2) simply expanding the base of human knowledge.

So, the first justification means that research about plant “noise” might lead to early detection of crops under stress permitting earlier intervention and higher yields.  But then again it might also lead the the formation of “People for the Ethical Treatment of Plants (PETP)” that would seek to end the inhumane practice of mowing the lawn.  The second justification means now that we know they make “noise” we have to figure out how they do so and that will require us to do a lot more science, taking a lot more money and probably angering the people at PETP.  But it will keep a lot of people at a lot of universities busy.

Which leads me to the apparently “horrific” news that the president has fired the entire board of the National Science Board.  This echoes moves he has made at the EPA.  Together these agencies distribute vast sums of money to for the pursuit of science.  But how much of it is worthwhile and how much of it is silly?  And just how much of it goes to proposals that will result in research that aids the current administration’s agenda?

“Independent science” my eye.  The government funding of science started with very specific aims – largely military.  It does not get much more agenda driven than that.  So all the stories you read about these moves ending “independent science” are pure poppycock.

But where things will get really interesting is in the pursuit of silly science.  Private enterprise is highly unlikely to look into plant noisemaking.  So what happens to that kind of “pie in the sky” research? I quite frankly don’t know.  At this juncture the pursuit of university science and government funding are so deeply intertwined as to be inseparable.

All of this has its roots in covid – where “science” simply ran amok – on government money.  And often in ways designed to keep the government money flowing – regardless of any other consequence.  Limiting that possibility strikes this retired scientist as a good idea.