Welcome to WikiProject Paranormal, a WikiProject that aims to provide a framework for the improvement and organization of articles related to the paranormal, anomalous phenomena and other similar areas. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask us on our discussion page.
To provide a concise and accurate record of notable beliefs, organizations, experiments, individuals and events which are associated with the paranormal, including their history, background and their current status.
To provide a framework (including infoboxes, categories, and examples of Best Practice) from within which scholarly entries about the paranormal, and related topics, may be produced.
To provide a scholarly set of terminology to describe the paranormal which is technically, culturally, and contextually accurate.
To seek out and apply verifiable mainstream sources to pages within the projects scope with the aim of A) addressing any issues of verifiability and reliability that have been highlighted in existing entries, and B) ensuring that new entries are of sufficient quality that their verifiability and reliability do not become an issue.
To ensure that each entry approaches its topic from a balanced and neutral perspective.
To ensure that the notability of each topic can be gleaned from its entry, without the need for additional explanation.
To ensure that a clear dividing line is established between reporting the belief in/background of the topic in a scholarly manner, and advocating/denouncing the topic itself.
To expand project stubs to full entries and to progress full entries to the next level.
Patrol frequently vandalized pages within the project's scope.
The following articles fall within the scope of the project and have been noted for their outstanding quality. Project members are encouraged use them as examples of good practice and to note their different writing and organizational styles.
This is a list of recognized content, updated weekly by JL-Bot (talk·contribs) (typically on Saturdays). There is no need to edit the list yourself. If an article is missing from the list, make sure it is tagged (e.g. {{WikiProject Paranormal}}) or categorized correctly and wait for the next update. See WP:RECOG for configuration options.
There is no such thing as paranormal plant perception, this is not an independent field of research and the article is misleading as what the article describes is the "Backster effect". Most of the sourcing on the article refers to Cleve Backster. He is the only person in history to hold such ideas. The majority of this article is just citing Backster's experiments which is mostly duplicated material from his own Wikipedia article. There is a main article on plant cognition. I suggest that this article should be deleted and any information if needed in the "research" section of the article can be merged into Cleve Backster's own Wikipedia article which also contains criticism of his experiments. This article serves no purpose.
The two recently added single lines on the article about Jainism and Manichaeism are off-mission and belong on the plant soul article which is a religious belief. I suggest the article to be deleted and redirected to Cleve Backster. Psychologist Guy (talk) 17:29, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Yes, the nominated page is about stuff that is WP:FRINGE. But the pagename is the right name for that kind of stuff. On the other hand, the plant cognition page mentioned by the nominator is equally fringe. It makes the counter-scientific assumption that tropism and related kinds of plant responses to environmental stimuli are equivalent to cognition. For this reason, I believe that the nominated page should be kept, and a lot of rewriting is, instead, needed. Plant cognition should be largely merged into the page nominated here, rather than the other way around. Some parts of the cognition page are actually based on real physiology, and should be merged, instead, into the physiology page (and any non-scientific stuff there should be relocated in the opposite direction). So, while I agree with the nominator that we do not need both the paranormal and the cognition page, the one that should really be deleted (well, actually, just made into a redirect via a merge) is actually the cognition page. The paranormal page should be kept as the page that covers the various counter-scientific ideas that have been promoted over time. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:55, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that all this type of fringe content related to plant intelligence or "plant neurobiology" needs its own article away from the mainstream plant physiology article on perception. That is why I expanded the plant cognition article which unfortunately has the wrong title. All the WP:RS refer to the this fringe field as "plant intelligence" not plant cognition. I would support merging Backster's content on this article into the plant cognition article which should be renamed plant intelligence. The "plant intelligence" field is supported by botanists and philosophers such as Tony Trewavas, František Baluška, Stefano Mancuso, Peter V. MInorsky and Paco Calvo and is supported by plenty of reliable sourcing. However, there is no reliable references calling their research "paranormal". What they are promoting is definitely fringe but it isn't paranormal. Psychologist Guy (talk) 01:24, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think we are making some progress towards consensus now, thanks. We seem to agree about a 2-article solution, and the question comes down to the pagename for the one that isn'tPlant perception (physiology). I think there's a reasonable logic, based on WP:COMMONNAME, to go with "intelligence" as the catchall. But instead of deletion, I'd prefer to keep the other names as redirects. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:08, 2 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To join, sign your name at the /Participants page and add the main page to your watchlist. Members can add the following userboxes to identify themselves as members of the project. A list of members with these userboxes is available at Category:WikiProject Paranormal participants.
This article falls under the scope of WikiProject Paranormal, which aims to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to the paranormal and related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the attached article, help with current tasks, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and discussions.ParanormalWikipedia:WikiProject ParanormalTemplate:WikiProject Paranormalparanormal
This user is a part of WikiProject Paranormal, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of the paranormal. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
{{blackproject}} - Notice placed on talk pages of articles that discuss black projects — "highly classified military/defense projects, unacknowledged publicly by the government, military personnel, or defense contractors"
Because of the nature of such projects, the most authoritative sources (any involved governments and defense contractors) may not even acknowledge its existence. The most reliable sources may be highly speculative.