How did they control for factors other than the router? Did they again attempt germination when the 2 devices were completely off? I'm not convinced when entirely separate rooms were used.
On a serious note; how different can this be from the research for mobile phone interfering with nature??
I think mainstream media (reaching billions) should only publicize replicated scientific experiments. HN (reaching tens to hundreds of thousands) is not exactly mainstream though, at least not yet.
EX: Faster-than-light neutrino anomaly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_anom...
PS: And yes having a normal router having significant effects on plant life though EM radiation is about as likely as neutrino's going faster than light. Heat, contamination, or bad seeds etc is a far more likely culprit.
Your only judgment about likelihood of this is based on your limited mechanistic explanation, biased by the scientific dogma that nonionizing radiation is harmless. If you look above, I posit a quite reasonable (and testable!) mechanism for this to occur.
Why such attention? Well in most cases the radiation needs to go through your freaking leg which if your cells are absorbing this em radiation should act as significant shielding for some vary weak radiation.
Compare this to this plant experiment which is blatantly obvious.
PS: And just for fun, compare with the unharmed levitating frogs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1vyB-O5i6E
There is a very easy solution here. Reproduce it and control all the variables. I cannot fathom why anyone would take issue with this request.
But the post I responded to did not request a repeat, it totally dismissed it by saying it was "almost guaranteed" that other factors contribute, and that's what I take issue with.
To analyze a completely different example, to proclaim that a new elementary particle has been discovered, the community ask for a 5-sigma (i.e. if they are only measuring noise, the probability that the noise generate a similar signal is only 1/2000000.) The problem is that there are many many many running experiments and a 1-sigma and 2-sigma "discoveries of particles" are usual, but most of the just disappear when more data is collected. And that is done by experts, so the probability of a mistake or error in the design is smaller, but not 0 (remember to check the wires.)
The problem to give too much importance to a not reproduced, not peer review result is that many times it's interesting and feed the people's fears. Probably someone will propose to ban the wifi near the botanical garden and kindergarten because everybody knows that they kill seeds!
It could be good to discuss about these preliminary results, but with a very big warning signal that sais "STILL UNCONFIRMED". The problem is that in most of the press releasses and discussions the warning is just dropped.
As a high school junior, I conclusively proved the strength of Earth's gravity field was ~6.1m/s^2, give or take .2m/s^2. Or at least, if you're willing to take this story and the experiments of high school students at face value, I conclusively proved it.
This isn't a science story. It's a human interest story with delusions of being a science story.