Bad Science Journalism

Part of a headline from a recent news story "Scientists say plants good at math."

Um.  No.

The story goes on to say that plants adjust their energy consumption at night depending on how much excess energy they managed to store during the day (remember:  plants need sunlight to produce energy through photosynthesis, less sunlight = less energy).

The actual scientific report shows that a specific plant, Arabidopsis, uses about 95% of its energy stores overnight, even if the night comes early (they can be grown under artificial lights to control day and night cycle length).

I read the article.  There is a lot of higher level math that I didn't wade through that looks at energy storage and expected time of dawn so I can't say that I really understood the gist of the article.  It seems like the plant can tell how much energy it has in storage and can adjust it's metabolism accordingly.

That is interesting, but does that mean the plant is doing math?

Plants don't have nervous tissue.  That means no brain.  Plants don't have fingers to punch numbers into calculators or a computer.  They can't tell the difference between one penny and one hundred pennies.  So how is this system working?

I'm not sure (as I said, I couldn't understand the article myself) but here's my (simplified) guess based on my understanding of molecular biology.

Proteins involved in metabolism have to interact with stored energy (a carbohydrate) within a cell.  The more carbohydrate that is available the more likely it is that a carbohydrate molecule will come in contact with the necessary protein. 

Imagine a bunch of kids on a soccer field.  It there is one ball each child's chance of kicking the ball is limited.  If there are a dozen ball them more balls will be kicked.  If there are a hundred then all the little kids will be able to kick balls nearly continuously.

In a cell if there is little carbohydrate available there will be fewer interactions with the metabolic protein.  If there is more carbohydrate available there will be more interactions with the metabolic proteins.  The rate of "kicking" (metabolism) will be affected by how much carbohydrate (balls) is available.

tl:dr:  No, plants can't do math.  

I am a scientist and I couldn't understand the article, how could someone who didn't study science get it right?

Science journalism done by journalists sometimes get the story wrong.

Arabadopsis thaliana from Wikimedia Commons, image by Reo On