There's no new information here. Why are we even discussing "experiments"? What is a lay man going to discover with a poor experiment, that researchers already haven't?
When it comes to cannabis and experiments like this--just about everything. There has not been extensive study of the growth patterns and needs of cannabis (at least not in the scientific sense).
What I'm suggesting is that people have put scientific practices up on a pedestal where they are relegated to "scientists only." I don't only think that isn't reality, I also think it's a shame that many people truly believe it.
As you mention at the top of your post lux can be measured to get some good values here--and if we run some experiments we might find some cool correlations. Don't sell these plants short--they are not as clear cut as you believe them to be.
Just thinking about it, if light is the fuel for manufacturing plant mass, then more light will yield more. It's not like you can create some kind of momentum by giving vegging plants lots of light, then you can just take it away and still have them produce. Less light in veg, and more light during the flower stage makes more sense to me - all other variables being constant. I'm a firm believer in maximum light, at all stages of growth.
While you make some good points here--one thing you appear to overlook is that plants do not utilize all of the light we provide them with, nor do they conduct photosynthesis at the same rate throughout the entire day. The reaction rate for photosynthesis is not without bounds--and so there are some constraints here. That is to say that more light does not necessarily mean more growth.
What's important is to remember that each cell will only do photosynthesis until it reaches a given concentration of the reaction products. This is a self-inhibited pathway in
all plants. While considering that, it is also
absolutely worth realizing that the active products we are interested in from the plant are
light-sensitive and thus are easily degraded by light. There are good reasons (even beyond these) to find a balance here.
As much as we all might like to believe it--these things are living creatures and
we will never find a "set it and forget it" value for any setup using flawed methodologies.
That science is somehow "too hard" or not worth doing in this case because we get close enough is a notion that I categorically deny and reject. I'm here to flat out tell you that we can do better--there is no argument to be had about that. The motivation for doing so
should be that the only people who are willing to do it is us. No one in academia cares how to best grow marijuana--and I don't blame them, there are more important plants to worry about (food supply). Either way, as you've said the scientists
have done experiments like these before--just with
different plants. It matters that the plants are different in terms of what their individual "best values" will be--however, the previous statement also betrays that there are multiple sets of instructions, if you will, on how to properly do these experiments. All one has to do is look up a research paper on Arabidopsis or soy, check out the methods section, and apply the same procedure to cannabis.
Literally the
only reason I bring this up is that I know the most prohibitively expensive facet of doing botanical research is the botanist. The equipment which is needed is fairly cheap. The most important part of the experiment is your ability to observe and analyze when it comes to doing botany. You do not need some $50,000 machine to get going. You can do it "in your closet" as it so happens :)
As an aside, here is a graph which might shed some light on the intensity argument (no pun intended):
And a few links I found worth reading:
http://www.controlledenvironments.org/Light1994Conf/1_1_Geiger/Geiger text.htm
