Dear Christian, I am very glad you are explaining how to explore and test a hypothesis. I am afraid that many of our members might not quite grasp some things, so keep it simple. I feel I am learning much more about a weed than I really care to. Could make a decent subject for A MS Degree research project in agriculture. In a message dated 4/5/2013 4:07:02 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, christian.lachaud@gmail.com writes: Lou : I understand. I was not mentionning consistency as a test. For you to better understand my point of view, here is little information on my background. I worked for more than a decade as a scientist in very good labs, on various projects, and in different countries : I'm aware of experimental design, scientific methodology, and statistics - as well as their limits and limitations. Scientific result is all about experimental design. Collecting consistent reports from various sources gives clues for theoretical hypothesis formulation. I am not engaged in a scientific research about Cardamine, therefore not doing more than trying to understand what is going on at the level of hypotheses - contacting your group for more observations and eventually any hard science tracks. Bringing answers through science would require a serious planning of a complete study, and this is a lot of work I can't do myself - not to be achieved just with "one experiment to see". If you or a group of people is interested in starting some serious testing, I will gladly help and provide seeds, but I cannot do the work myself for various reasons including workload. Nhu's design is the very start in an investigation. It will only answer what it tests. If it shows that Cardamine seeds treated with roundup do not germinate better than the control lot, it will mean that (1) glyphosate is probably not the direct cause of what is observed in situ and (2) that something else might be going on in situ in relation to glyphosate. If it shows that Cardamine seeds treated with roundup germinate better than the control lot, it will mean that glyphosate triggers the germination of Cardamine seeds. It will not allow to know for sure that glyphosate is the direct cause (although reasonably, it may be, the cause could still be genetics, soil interaction, effect of a component in roundup or of a byproduct of glyphosate degradation, etc.), nor what mechanism is involved. As you see, it is not very helpful alone and needs to be considered as a first step in a more ellaborated plan. I agree with you : there can be many things we have not thought of, more than one factor can be involved, factors can interact or play a role in a sequence, etc. The effect can result from a very dynamic situation, and good documentation about the effect is always a requirement. Consistency of observation is important to understand that a phenomenon is not just a one shot due to chance. I had it before coming forward. *Dr. Christian M. Lachaud, PhD* _________________ http://www.saffron-crocuses.com/ _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.ibiblio.org http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/