[ignobel awards] and the dignity of plants

Video via Instapundit

Here is the 2008 list:

The "18th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony" was held on 2 October 2008 at Harvard University's Sanders Theatre.

• Archaeology: Astolfo Gomes de Mello Araujo and Jose Carlos Marcelino, for showing that armadillos can mix up the contents of an archaeological site.

• Biology: Marie-Christine Cadiergues, Christel Joubert, and Michel Franc, for discovering that fleas that live on dogs jump higher than fleas that live on cats.

• Chemistry: Sheree Umpierre, Joseph Hill, and Deborah Anderson, for discovering that Coca-Cola is an effective spermicide, and C.Y. Hong, C.C. Shieh, P. Wu, and B.N. Chiang for proving it is not.

• Cognitive science: Toshiyuki Nakagaki, Hiroyasu Yamada, Ryo Kobayashi, Atsushi Tero, Akio Ishiguro, and Ágota Tóth, for discovering that slime molds can solve puzzles.

• Economics: Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tyber, and Brent Jordan, for discovering that exotic dancers earn more when at peak fertility.

• Literature: David Sims, for his study "You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations".

• Medicine: Dan Ariely for demonstrating that expensive placebos are more effective than inexpensive placebos.

• Nutrition: Massimiliano Zampini and Charles Spence, for demonstrating that food tastes better when it sounds more appealing.

• Peace: The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology and the citizens of Switzerland, for adopting the legal principle that plants have dignity.

• Physics: Dorian Raymer and Douglas Smith, for proving that heaps of string or hair will inevitably tangle.

Let's look at the peace award a moment longer. Yep, it appears to be genuine:

The ECNH has also published a report on the consequences the constitutional definition of the dignity of living beings will have for our treatment of plants.

Practical Ethics addresses this thorny question:

This respect for plant dignity does not extend much outside science (or rather, the ethics committee). While most rules about handling animals apply regardless on whether they are in a lab or are someone's pet, it seems that Swiss gardeners are allowed to do whatever they want to their plants.

They can treat plants as instruments, create new ecological relationships or arbitrarily harm or destroy them (for example when weeding) with no legal repercussions. It is also hard to come up with a less dignified treatment than being cooked and eaten, yet this is the fate of many vegetables.

Maggie's Farm raises the question of how far this thing can be taken. This now effectively criminalizes Vegans who are clearly obsessed with non-animal food sources and are therefore dangerously psychotic. Cleve Baxter, father of the polygraph, maintained, in the 60s, that plants did indeed have feelings:

He also discovered that plants were aware of each other, mourned the death of anything (even the bacteria killed when boiling water is poured down the drain), strongly disliked people who killed plants carelessly or even during scientific research, and fondly remembered and extended their energy out to the people who had grown and tended them, even when their "friends" were far away in both time and space.

Gosh, you only need go as far as the Ents in Lord of the Rings to know they don't appreciate being mistreated by Orcs and the like. Do you mistreat plants? Do you maliciously chop a cabbage or gouge the stalk out of a tomato?

Leaving all that aside, it is not a greeny issue nor a party political one that most people I know adore the country stroll and the leafy nature of roadsides - property values are often higher where there is copious foliage too. Yet they'll still sit down to a dish with three veg and not feel any qualms.

I eat meat and veg in equal proportions, at least when I'm not being a pauper.