The Wood Wide Web and Do Plants Feel Pain? – Forest Ecologist Justine Karst on Sentientism ep:220

Find our Sentientist Conversation on the Sentientism YouTube here and the Sentientism Podcast here.

Justine Karst is Associate Professor at the University of Alberta in Canada. As an ecologist she studies the mycorrhizal ecology of forests. She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Ecology and President of the International Mycorrhiza Society.

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the most important questions: “what’s real?”, “who matters?” and “how can we make a better future?”

Sentientism answers those questions with “evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” In addition to the YouTube and Spotify above the audio is on our Podcast here on Apple & here on all the other platforms.

00:00 Clips

01:13 Welcome

Justine on the Many Minds podcast

– The #woodwideweb

03:45 Justine’s Intro

– “I’m pretty into mycorrhizas”

04:30 What’s Real?

– #catholic parents “they both left the church when they got married”

– Raised in a non-religious home

– Summers with grand-parents who felt “we need to get a healthy dose of religion because we were missing it from all the other months of the year”

– “I was and I still am a very curious, curious kid… I was really fascinated by a lot of the [church] stories and the rituals… but there was no time for asking questions.”

– Bible stories “some of them are extraordinary – they don’t always make sense to a kids mind or an adult mind”

– Dad “the Spock in the family”, mum an artist

– Cousins mostly religious. An argument at ~10 yrs old about evolution and whether He Man has more muscles than Justine 🙂 “No – he has the same number of muscles as me – they’re just more developed”

– Getting in trouble with grandma for telling cousins we evolved “from something ape-like”

– “I’m not somebody that ever talks somebody out of their faith… not anti-religion… I deeply respect people’s values and beliefs and faith even though it’s different… I find it very easy to co-exist with people who do have a faith.”

– Enjoying good faith conversations with religious people about nature “I really appreciated how he would give me space to ask questions”

– “I’m not religious, I don’t  believe there’s a god, but I am totally open to being wrong about that.”

– “I practice science with a small ‘s’… I am someone who loves an elegant experiment tied to field observations – that’s what I’m here for.”

– “Some people could say that I’m a reductionist… reduction is kind of a dirty word… but I can kind of live with it.”

– “There’s definitely been some events in my life that do make me pause… is there something else going on here?”… coincidences vs. something else?

– Epistemology: Naturalism vs. fideism (faith), dogmatism or unchallengeable authority or revelation

– JW: Even “a naturalistic approach based on evidence and reason… that can be done well and it can be done badly too”

– “This naturalistic approach… science… can have some failings… I do think the overall process is robust – but it breaks down because humans are involved… we have some flaws”

– The Wood Wide Web story started ~25 years ago from an experiment published in Nature by Suzanne Simard, Melanie Jones and others https://www.nature.com/articles/41557

– Mycorrhizal fungi, carbon transfer, trees and plants “an ancient relationship… 400-500 million years ago… they can link the two trees below ground… that in itself is super interesting”… organisms from two completely separate kingdoms connected

– “Fungi are more closely related to us than they are to plants”

– Non photosynthesising plants can get carbon via the fungal network from a photosynthesising plant

– “Someone… nobody knows who… called it the Wood Wide Web… it quickly took off… that was 25 years ago.”

– Pushback to the paper both technical and conceptual “why would it give it up to another plant?”

– “From our review there’s been less than 30 experiments done in the field on this topic and no one has definitively shown that this carbon is moving through these… common mycorrhizal networks.”

– “…never been conclusive… always a lot of uncertainty… but then… about 5 years ago… that one book… ‘The Secret Life of Trees'”

– “I picked up this book… I didn’t really care for it… I found the language really kind of infantile… I’ve never felt the need to anthropomorphise forest or trees to that extent to get me interested in what they’re doing and why we should care about them.”

– “This book became like a super-international bestseller… for many scientists we’re a little surprised by that… it removed all the uncertainty and the debate…”

– The Secret Lives of Trees book was saying: “Trees talk to each other… they’re co-operating… they’re recognising their kin… they’re saving each other and they’re warning each other…”

– “It seemed to really resonate with people… then there was this second book, Suzanne Simard’s book ‘Finding the Mother Tree’”

– “By that time… my neighbours were asking me… ‘I heard that trees talk to each other’… I was like ‘what?!’”

– How people get fascinated by fungi “here, there, everywhere… networks… mostly invisible… tremendous decomposers so they live on the edge between life and death…”

– “For the trees… you imagine these towering, stoic figures reaching up to the sky… enduring all this stuff, environmental change around them… taking care of their families in this quiet, unnoticed way”

– The effect of COVID “We didn’t have anywhere to go besides being able to walk out in the park… many people rediscovered or discovered nature for the first time… it was a mirror of a better world out there”

– “Many people have abandoned religion… I think that there might be a little bit of a gap there… this reverence – this nature religion… is filling that gap maybe in an unscrutinised way”

– Human tendencies re: attributing agency and teleology

– “When I walk through a forest… there’s so much life right in front of your eyes… it’s hard… not to feel like I’m part of nature in a forest… it’s a very comfortable place for me.”

– In grasslands “there’s tremendous diversity… the sky is huge… it’s often windy… I have different feelings…”

– On the ocean “I feel like a foreign body… I feel like I’m in the wrong place… scared… alone.”

– “I’m one person and that’s three landscapes and if you took someone else I’m sure they’d have pretty different feelings as well… these feelings are important… but none of this changes or informs how nature works – none of it”

– “It’s all feelings… but it doesn’t change how nature works… we have to be very cautious about using those feelings… what we project on nature… agency, these teleological arguments… it’s all massive projections of us on what we hope nature to be like… nature doesn’t care…”

– “It infiltrated all of us [scientists, journalists]”

– “I call myself a scientist but I mean I’m a member of the public as well and I am vulnerable to all the same short-cuts in thinking… that everyone else is… We have strategies in place… peer review…”

– “I really enjoy working with people that don’t agree with me – as long as we’re arguing to unpack ideas and not necessarily to be right – I learn so much…”

– “Initially I don’t think journalists were asking enough questions… I’ve heard it described as ‘narrative gold’… it was just so good – why would you ask any questions?”

The Arran Stibbe episode

– “This beautiful idea was then legitimised by science with a capital ‘S’”

– But “we have evidence that as scientists we were caught up in this story as well”

– Justine and team’s review: “45% of papers that were citing the original papers on this topic were making unsubstantiated claims. And they weren’t just random mistakes – they were directional… wood wide web… resources were moving around… forests were more resilient… all trees in the forest are connected”

– “It was a directional bias in the literature that promoted these ideas… we scientists – we were vectors in this misleading story as well. That part was a surprise for us… I had to revisit some of my papers… I was making some misleading statements as well… I was also caught up in this… I thought in my mind that the evidence was more certain and conclusive than it actually was”

– “When we went back to look at these original studies… people were frank about… caveats… limitations… but that didn’t get carried forward… just the beautiful story – that’s what moved forward”

– Scientists were also influenced by the journalistic coverage “especially when it’s in the New York Times… beautiful documentaries… it just sucks you in.”

– “The story just got to be so extraordinary… ‘these mother trees before they die they send their wisdom to their seedlings through the mycorrhizal network’… I’m a little bit embarrassed how far it had to go…”

– “We didn’t start the review to debunk any of these claims”

– Discussing a 25 year look back review with Melanie Jones and Jason Hoeksema

– “Jason was thinking he was not on top of the literature… given these extraordinary claims – we really were missing some really important papers… we should really be on top of the literature…”

– “It ended in this dark place… by the time that we’d gone through the literature and assessed these wild claims – it was really disappointing… kind of sad… the story that I grew up with in my career – it was this house of cards.”

–  “It was really eye opening for me… it made me realise that as a scientist my job is not to be a parrot… I need to have the time to really dig in and decide for myself… ‘do I think that the evidence is strong?’… that is really my job… I needed to do my job better.”

– “I felt like I was killing Christmas for everybody”

– “From the research community it was mostly positive… there were a number of people that were getting uncomfortable with this really popular story… for many of us it was a bit of a sigh of relief that somebody finally tackled it… we need to get back on track here.”

– “Then there was the public… that was definitely a lot messier… some people that had very strong feelings… some pretty terrible responses… but lots of good responses too… ‘this is the process of science – self correction – good job’”

– “There was a question of ‘if this story makes us care about forests more and want to conserve forests… why are you doing this?’”. The noble lie idea… “Because it’s the truth!… don’t you want to know the truth?”

– “We can’t pick and choose what are the good stories and the bad stories – that’s not our job… it just totally undermines our credibility”

– “There’s already a loss of the public’s trust in science and this deeply, deeply worries me”

– “For some people who were really interested in forest conservation… we just removed a really powerful pillar in their arguments”

 – Our current knowledge: “Trees and plants can be connected below ground through these mycorrhizal fungi… that’s pretty cool! How these networks function we don’t know… It will take more research and studies to figure that out… there’s a lot of unanswered questions.”

– “Does it function like an internet… probably not… more as a mosaic?”

– “It’s a topic with so much uncertainty… and metaphors spring from areas of uncertainty… this one just got wildly out of hand.”

52:30 What and Who Matters?

– Anthropocentrism/sentiocentrism/biocentrism/ecocentrism?

– “One thing that’s puzzled me… about this ‘wood wide web mother tree’ story is this need to make different organisms similar to us to care about them”

– “You project families on trees – it makes them like us therefore we should care about them… not only are they in families they care about each other… we must care about them”

– “For most of my life I’ve been comfortable with deeply caring about nature and accepting it probably doesn’t care about me”

– “All organisms in some way care about their environment… there’s definitely a response to the environment”

– Growing up as a kid in the forest – “As much as there was life around me – there was death”

– “When you’re living close to the land you’re trying to live but you’re also taking the lives of other organisms around you”

– At 10 yrs old – seeing Missy, a pregnant yard cat: “She crawled into my lap… she was birthing her babies… there was one kitten… it was dead… then the cat she ate the dead kitten in my lap… My mum is like ‘that’s a lot of nutrients’… I was young enough not to be totally, completely grossed out… I was super curious”

– “That life – death… I definitely do not have a very romantic view of nature… but I’m definitely somebody who cares about ecosystems”

– “I don’t care that trees are not like me… nature is going to continue if humans are not on this planet so in a way they already have intrinsic value”

– “If we disappear nature will be… mostly fine… [although] there are a lot of ecosystems that have been stewarded by humans”

– JW: Taking a sentientist stance and therefore seeing a radical moral difference between cutting a pig and cutting a tree

– “It often comes down to killing… what’s OK to kill and damage, ultimately… or cause to suffer”

– Growing up with chickens, cats and dogs. Dad grew up on an animal farm raising cows

– Cats tormenting birds “My dad would be… ‘kill the bird – put it out of its misery – how, Justine can you watch that?’ – I just hated that job”

– “My dad was just totally confused… ‘how could you possibly watch something that you know has feelings… has a deep capacity to feel pain… suffer like that?’”

– “If the intent is noble is it OK to kill?”… e.g. compassionate euthanasia

– Links between the “wood wide web” meme and the “plants feel pain too” meme?

– JW: Are plants sentient?

– “As far as I know they don’t have pain receptors… but I think you’re right to keep an open mind what plants can do. They respond to all sorts of things – light, gravity, neighbours… we know that they can change their environment… Are they doing this to achieve some kind of goal?”

– JW: “And is it a goal that they are aware of and do they feel good when the goal is achieved and bad when the goal is not?” vs. “a thermostat has a ‘goal’ of achieving the desired temperature”

– JW:” That’s what I’m getting at with sentience. It’s distinct from goal setting. It’s distinct from sense and respond. It’s this capacity to feel and to have an experience… whatever that really is.”

– “There might be degrees of that [sentience]”

– Intelligence, memory, self-awareness, learning… “there’s different degrees”

– JC Cahill’s work on plant behaviour “he’s keenly aware that it’s super-controversial… a lot of experiments done in this topic have never been replicated… it’s kind of like the wood wide web. We’ve got to go back and assess these experiments.”

– JW: Is there a middle way between “don’t be ridiculous – shut all the research down” and blindly being conned by yet more narrative gold that people really want to believe?

– *Luna makes an appearance*

– Getting agreement from the research community… what would it look like… what does it look like in animals… can we then use those experiments that we’ve all agreed on ahead of time… then use them on plants… what’s the outcome?”

– “It still allows that open-mindedness but it has that rigour”

– The developing field of animal sentience and welfare research

– Should we include a soy bean plant or a venus fly trap in comparative research about animal sentience?

– “It’s a slippery slope to look to nature as examples for our morality and ethics… there’s all sorts of things happening out there… I don’t want to emulate it in society”

– “I’m just so sceptical when people see what they want in nature… it’s just all projected feelings… we see what we want or don’t want in nature… we’ve just got to let it be and then instead focus on these ethical frameworks… how do we want to live together?”

01:19:15 How to Make a Better World?

– “I’ve been sweating over this question for weeks!… It’s so overwhelming.”

– “I am not someone who generally finds any joy in telling someone else how to live”

– “A better world would be when we are better versions of ourselves… the better version of myself might be different than the better version of yourself… it’s a very personal thing.”

– “My better version involves freedom to be creative… to learn… to be curious.”

– The role of science and science communications given modern politics around the world?

– “So much of what you’re talking about boils down to trust… trusting one another… trusting institutions… I think that has been eroded”

– “If somebody says to you ‘science says we should do this’ in response to a normative question… that to me is a red flag because that person is totally dismissing or ignoring the importance of values”

– “I don’t think science has any role in determining values. We can not weigh in on values. I think we have to cede that space.”

– “Scientists have crept too far into the value space – the wood wide web is an example of that… we love forests… so we were willing to let the truth slide because it’s this noble goal… then the wood wide web got this stamp of approval from capital S science.”

– “Ultimately these questions of ‘do we conserve forests… how do we value forests’… that is not a space for science – that is a space based on values. Part of regaining the trust of the public is backing off those spaces.”

–  “If someone walks into a forest and they’re like… ‘damn this place makes me feel good’… that’s important.” – but it’s separate from the scientific space

– “It’s also saying ‘I was wrong’… I’ve seen the new data… I’m updating my knowledge of this system now… that’s OK… people need to hear why that happens.”

01:28:40 Follow Justine:

Justine’s Karst Lab

Justine on BlueSky

Justine on Twitter “I kind of abandoned that account… I just got tired of the ads and the crappy algorithm”. JW: “That platform almost now seems to be an attempt to destroy public epistemology and ethics – almost the antithesis of what we’re trying to do with this [Sentientism] worldview.”

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info.

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Thanks to Graham for the post-production and to Tarabella, Roy and Denise for helping to fund this episode via our Sentientism Patreon and our Ko-Fi page. You can do the same or help by picking out some Sentientism merch on Redbubble.

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