Cleve Backster
| Cleve Backster | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Grover Cleveland Backster, Jr. February 27, 1924 Lafayette, New Jersey |
| Died | June 24, 2013 (aged 89) San Diego, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Interrogation specialist |
| Known for | Theory of "Primary Perception" |
Grover Cleveland "Cleve" Backster, Jr. (February 27, 1924 – June 24, 2013) was an interrogation specialist for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), best known for his experiments with plants using a polygraph instrument in the 1960s which led to his theory of "primary perception" where he claimed that plants "feel pain" and have extrasensory perception (ESP), which was widely reported in the media but was rejected by the scientific community.
He was born in Lafayette Township, New Jersey on February 27, 1924. Backster began his career as an Interrogation Specialist with the CIA, and went on to become Chairman of the Research and Instrument Committee of the Academy for Scientific Interrogation. He is the former director of the Backster School of Lie Detection in San Diego, California and was a polygraph instructor before his experiments on plants. He got a D.Sc. in Complementary Medicine from Medicina Alternativa in 1996 and was on the faculty of the California Institute for Human Science Graduate School and Research Center founded by Hiroshi Motoyama which is unaccredited. He wrote the book Primary Perception — Biocommunication with Plants, Foods, and Human Cells which describes 36 years of his work and was published in 2003. He died on June 24, 2013 after a prolonged illness.
Backster founded the CIA's polygraph unit shortly after World War II. The Backster School of Lie Detection is located in San Diego, California, and is the longest running polygraph school in the world. The school was founded in New York City in 1960, shortly after Backster left his position with the Central Intelligence Agency. It trains policemen to use the polygraph or "lie detector" test.
Backster's study of plants began in the 1960s, and he reported observing that a polygraph instrument attached to a plant leaf registered a change in electrical resistance when the plant was harmed or even threatened with harm. His work was inspired by the research of physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose, who claimed to have discovered that playing certain kinds of music in the area where plants grew caused them to grow faster. Bose used a crescograph to measure plant response to various stimuli and demonstrated feeling in plants. From the analysis of the variation of the cell membrane potential of plants under different circumstances, he hypothesized that plants can "feel pain, understand affection etc" and wrote two books about it in 1902 and 1926.
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