ArticleeLife2020
Lack of evidence for associative learning in pea plants.
Article in eLife, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 43 citations in OpenAlex.
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- A litmus test for plant consciousness: Pattern-Temporal Synergy in a relation-first ontology.Communicative & integrative biology · 2025Article
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- The "plant neurobiology" revolution.Plant signaling & behavior · 2024Review
- Learning in Cnidaria: a summary.Communicative & integrative biology · 2023Article
- Understanding interdisciplinary perspectives of plant intelligence: Is it a matter of science, language, or subjectivity?Journal of ethnobiology and ethnomedicine · 2022Article
- Neuroecology beyond the brain: learning in Echinodermata.Learning & behavior · 2022Review
- Identification of intelligence-related proteins through a robust two-layer predictor.Communicative & integrative biology · 2022Article
- Our sisters the plants? notes from phylogenetics and botany on plant kinship blindness.Plant signaling & behavior · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Gagliano et al. (Learning by association in plants, 2016) reported associative learning in pea plants. Associative learning has long been considered a behavior performed only by animals, making this claim particularly newsworthy and interesting. In the experiment, plants were trained in Y-shaped mazes for 3 days with fans and lights attached at the top of the maze. Training consisted of wind consistently preceding light from either the same or the opposite arm of the maze. When plant growth forced a decision between the two arms of the maze, fans alone were able to influence growth direction, whereas the growth direction of untrained plants was not affected by fans. However, a replication of their protocol failed to demonstrate the same result, calling for further verification and study before mainstream acceptance of this paradigm-shifting phenomenon. This replication attempt used a larger sample size and fully blinded analysis.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.