When science worships its own shadow

On trees, eclipses, and the perils of belief

The trees and the eclipse, by Midjourney.

[Guest post by Ariel Novoplanky]

In October 2022, a partial solar eclipse passed over the forests of the Lower Dolomites in northern Italy. Most people barely noticed, but according to a recently published and widely circulated study, the local Norway spruce trees did more than just register the eclipse—they anticipated it. Hours before the event, these trees supposedly synchronized their electrical activity, as if preparing for a cosmic disruption long before it arrived. The authors of the study interpreted this as a case of collective anticipation, saying that their research is “opening on a solid scientific ground a new understanding of the forest, moving away from the picture of a collection of trees, approaching instead the picture of a community of phase correlated individuals, collectively playing as in an orchestra in synchrony with the ecosystem’s life.”

The paper, authored by Chiolerio et al (2025), has already drawn wide attention for its daring conclusions and poetic metaphors. It invokes everything from quantum field theory to entropic dynamics to suggest that these trees, particularly the older ones, are both recipients and disseminators of intricate environmental information. To the authors, this is not mere responsiveness, but a straightforward expression of anticipatory behavior operating on a systemic, communal level.

[Editorial note: one of the paper's co-authors is Monica Gagliano, to whom Figs in Winter has already dedicated an essay.]

To many, this might read like a glimpse into a hidden realm of natural intelligence but to me it represents something else, even if unintentionally: the encroachment of pseudoscientific thinking into the heart of biological research, draped in scientific jargon and propped up by deeply flawed epistemology. The problem here is not merely one of overstatement or speculative framing, which in itself is absolutely legitimate and even required for making true scientific breakthroughs. It is something deeper and more dangerous—a shift in the very ethos of what constitutes science.

Extraordinary claims, diluted standards

It is a cornerstone of scientific thought, echoed in the famous aphorism often attributed to Carl Sagan, that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” But the sentiment predates Sagan by centuries. In 1708, Benjamin Bayly noted that “these matters being very extraordinary, will require a very extraordinary proof.” That such a statement needs repeating in the 21^st century is a symptom of epistemic fatigue in science communication—a weariness with rigor that invites narrative over method.

The core claim made by Chiolerio et al., that trees can anticipate solar eclipses, is presented without sufficient evidence, built upon a scaffolding of meager statistics, speculative interpretations, and appealing yet ill-supported analogies. For instance, the electrical activity recorded in a handful of spruce trees began increasing around 14 hours before the eclipse. Instead of considering simpler, well-documented environmental factors, like a heavy rainstorm and a cluster of nearby lightning strikes, the authors leaned into the more seductive idea that the trees were anticipating the impending solar eclipse. Yet the eclipse only reduced light by about 10.5% for two short hours, during which the level of the sunlight was approximately twice what the trees could practically use.

Here, we meet the philosophical danger. Scientific inquiry is meant to prize parsimony—to opt for explanations that require the fewest assumptions. This principle, often linked to William of Ockham, is more than a heuristic; it is a safeguard against cognitive overreach and falling into intellectual honeytraps. When researchers abandon parsimony in favor of metaphysical flourish, they sacrifice not just clarity but scientific responsibility.

When metaphor replaces mechanism

Chiolerio et al (2025) presents a fascinating paradox. The paper claims to employ cutting-edge measurement tools and analytic sophistication, precise electrical monitoring, entropy calculations, spectral analysis, while invoking concepts such as coherence, entanglement, and fractal measures in a manner that is detached from falsifiable mechanisms and does so without measuring, let alone demonstrating, any correlations between the observed data and concrete physiological responses of the trees.

This mix of sophisticated analytical instrumentation and metaphysical speculation is what makes the study both alluring and dangerous. It projects scientific credibility while quietly avoiding the burden of proof. The electrical activity of trees, which is a real phenomenon but is still a nascent field of inquiry, becomes a Rorschach test for interpretive desire. Instead of proposing hypotheses that can be tested, altered, or rejected, the study retreats into the domain of suggestive analogies. Invoking quantum field theory to explain tree behavior without empirical scaffolding constitutes not a paradigm shift, but rather a redundant obfuscation disguised as novelty.

The entropic drift of explanation

What is perhaps most striking is the attempt to treat the trees’ electrical signals as indications of meaningful adaptive activity, but without any evidence. The idea that variations in electrical signals, observable even in dead logs, might encode and reflect memory, anticipation, or collective responsiveness, requires a few extraordinary leaps, none of which were actually supported in that study.

Such leaps, if unconfirmed, are unfortunately far from benign. They reflect both confirmation bias (Nickerson 1998), and what Ian Hacking (1999) called the looping effect—when categories created by science begin to shape perception in return, reinforcing themselves without external grounding or validation.

Scientific narratives can generate their own gravity. When forests are attributed such extraordinary abilities, it can easily catch public attention and acquire cultural inertia. The additional risk is that subsequent empirical studies will fail to rigorously test or challenge these ideas and instead merely elaborate on them, potentially leading researchers down unproductive rabbit holes. As Karl Popper emphasized, science’s fundamental role is to serve as a process of falsification, essential for distinguishing genuine science from pseudoscience (Popper 1963).

From evidence to echo chamber

Unfortunately, yet not surprisingly, this phenomenon is not confined to the Chiolerio et al paper. Similar biases can be seen in high-profile but empirically fragile studies in behavioral ecology, neuroscience, and physics.

As Philip Kitcher (2001) has argued, scientific progress depends not just on discovery, but on the careful orchestration of well-ordered science directed by plausible questions, methodical scrutiny, and public accountability. The solar eclipse study lacks these attributes. It is based on unreplicated, single-location measurements involving four trees, each unique in location, age, size, and growth conditions, and five tree stumps.

Its claims about collective anticipation rest on unsubstantiated assumptions and speculative reasoning about causality. Worse, it implicitly asserts that these trees retain a memory of previous solar eclipses, which occur more than 18 years apart and vary in both location and magnitude, never repeating at the same place. Such claims not only strain credibility and violate the principle of parsimony, they verge on the magical. Furthermore, my group’s calculations show that if we are to accept the proposed sensitivity of the studied trees to the allegedly unique gravitational alignment of the sun and moon during solar eclipses (which would be a few orders of magnitude below the gravitational sensitivity known in plants!), we would expect the same anticipatory behavior with, for example, every new moon, which is blatantly absurd.

When science plays both sides

A particularly insidious aspect of the study is its dual register. On the one hand, it speaks the language of physical measurement and statistical modeling. On the other, it traffics in holistic and animistic metaphors about community, memory, and collective behavior.

This two-faced rhetoric makes critique difficult: challenge the scientific claims, and one risks being accused of lacking imagination; challenge the metaphors, and one is told they are not to be taken literally. This ambiguity is intellectually misleading and borderline dishonest, as it allows speculative beliefs to hide behind the credibility of scientific formalisms.

Such tactics not only erode scientific standards but also distort public understanding of what science is and how it works. Taking a more accommodating and less dismissive approach, Susan Haack (2011) critiques the appropriation of scientific language and authority by views lacking empirical rigor, urging that such cases be assessed not simply by labeling them pseudoscience but by carefully identifying how they fail to meet the standards of genuine scientific inquiry, which is precisely what I am attempting to do here.

Science, belief, and the ethics of inquiry

Why does this matter? Because science is not merely a toolkit, it is also a moral and epistemic practice. It depends on transparency, reproducibility, and intellectual humility. When researchers present belief-laden claims under the guise of empirical insight, they risk misleading both peers and the public. Worse, they waste the epistemic capital that science has earned over centuries of hard-won skepticism.

Helen Longino (1990) has emphasized the social nature of scientific knowledge by arguing that it gains authority not through isolated genius, but by open criticism, methodological scrutiny, and collective correction. The eclipse study fails on all counts: it does not engage with alternative hypotheses, does not include meaningful controls, and shows no awareness, let alone acknowledgment, of its own speculative leaps, even when those are utterly irrational.

Mind you, this is not a call to strip wonder from science. On the contrary, true scientific wonder springs from deep engagement with reality, not from rhetorical sleight of hand. The forest is wondrous enough without inventing irrational and fantastic claims of anticipatory responsiveness lacking evidential support or assuming inter-tree communication where there is only correlation—readily and more parsimoniously explained as synchronous yet independent responses of the trees to the same lightning strikes that occurred fourteen hours before the solar eclipse.

The road back to reason

So what is to be done? The answer is not censorship, but cultural renewal. Scientific journals must recommit to epistemic rigor, prioritizing substantive contributions over mere editorial novelty. In academia we must teach not only experimental design but also critical thinking about the nature and logic of explanation itself. The scientific community, in turn, must reacquire the humility to say: we don’t know yet.

This calls for a return to philosophical fundamentals. Karl Popper’s criterion of falsifiability should be more than a textbook reference, it must be actively practiced. Thomas Kuhn’s insights into paradigm shifts should guide us but not be misused to justify unchecked speculation (Kuhn 1962). And the principle of parsimony is there not to stifle imagination but to keep it disciplined.

The idea that trees might communicate or cooperate is not, in itself, unscientific; indeed, the literature on plant behavior offers striking and rigorously examined examples of such phenomena. But these ideas must arise from careful, well-replicated experiments, not the unreflective projection of human qualities onto complex but indifferent systems. The forest is not an oracle, it is a system of living matter, governed by cause and effect, variation and error, surprise and regularity.

And that is precisely what makes it so intriguing.

_____

Bayly, B. (1708). An Essay on Inspiration. John Wyat, London.

Chiolerio, A., Gagliano, M., Pilia, S., Musso, M., Lodi, M., & Boccaletti, S. (2025). Bioelectrical synchronization of Picea abies during a solar eclipse. Royal Society Open Science, 12(4), 241786.

Haack, S. (2011). Defending science-within reason: Between scientism and cynicism. Prometheus Books.

Hacking, I. (1999). The social construction of what?. Harvard university press.

Kitcher, P. (2001). Science, truth, and democracy. Oxford University Press.

Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. University of Chicago Press.

Longino, H. (1990). Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry. Princeton University Press.

Nickerson, R. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, 2(2), 175–220.

Popper, K. R. (1963). Conjectures and refutations: The growth of scientific knowledge. Routledge.

_____

Ariel Novoplanky is an evolutionary ecologist at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. He works on plant behavior, learning and communication.