6 ms·

Enthusiastic amateurs advance science as they hunt for exotic mushrooms

102 points by jdnier 5y ago

akomtu 5y ago
I'm sure they'll advance science a lot more when they find those mushrooms!
- kaycebasques 5y ago
  I know the parent comment was a bit tongue in cheek, but it reminds me of a theory about the origins of human intelligence that I heard in the documentary Fantastic Fungi. Long story short the theory is that our ancestors stumbled upon magic mushrooms and the psychedelic experience was a spark of new perspective, and then the one who discovered the mushrooms would take its tribe to other psychedelic mushrooms and have them try them so that they would all experience the perspective shift.
  - bredren 5y ago
    To bring this a little closer to this audience, readers may be interested in John Markoff’s book What the Doormouse Said, which draws a direct line between the use of psychedelics and the development of the personal computer.
  - ryder9 5y ago
    crackpot hypothesis without any basis in reality, can't even call it a hypothesis since legitimate hypotheses have somewhat of a basis in reality the sort of stuff joe rogan would spew under the influence
bredren 5y ago
Another example of this is in the study of domestic animal behavior with speak buttons. I believe this amateur wave is part of a much bigger set of societal actions “challenging assumptions” of the former era. There is a sharp decline in reverence for “authority” along with a lowering of barriers to entry. Almost anyone with interest and bravery to share has a chance to shine in any subject area. Computer science is leading the way, in part because it often requires little or no physical presence or collaboration. Proof of advancements can be disseminated in perfect fidelity and validated quickly. In other fields, people who happen to live among a rare natural phenomena have great potential to fall into discovery others could only hope to witness at great expense. Following this to its natural conclusion all fields will ultimately be advanced by a mix of professionals, academics and increasingly “amateurs” that earn reputation not by publishing but by pure contributions of content that unquestionably move the field forward.
- j4yav 5y ago
  That’s awesome. It is very much how I felt about computers when I was learning them in the 80s.. me, a little kid, could make or do something that nobody had ever done before exactly. And all the other homebrew clubs and hacker groups were doing the same thing. I guess 3d printing was similar recently, and I’m excited to see what the next ones are.
- toto444 5y ago
  There are a lot of people very interested by science but from what I read academia does not seem to be a good place to be in. That might help explaining why we can see 'amateur scientists' coming up with interesting results.
  - amelius 5y ago
    Do you think the existence of these amateurs will help improve the current state in academia, or will it have the opposite effect?
    - treeman79 5y ago
      Look at em drive. A nonsense device that caused a LOT of people to become very good at Torsion Pendulums. Was fastening to watch ever improving builds as people tried to prove/disprove. Did em drive work out, no. But a lot did come out of the effort.
  - mc32 5y ago
    It looks like there could be a twofold problem: Some academics are interested in pushing a particular take (agenda). This is contrary to science but often serving some social or political sentiment. Amateur scientists might lack the rigor to give their claims validity and may reach undeserved conclusions leading to misunderstanding from a part of the public who want some validation for their own beliefs.
    - scottLobster 5y ago
      I'd say the root is likely much simpler: Money Getting a degree, particularly a PhD to do research, is hideously expensive in the US and rarely pays well relative to the cost, even for STEM. Science in general is underfunded IMO, and from what I'm told competition for grants can be extreme. Society says they want the next Thomas Edison but they aren't willing to fund all the other failed light bulb designs to find him. In that environment being an amateur scientist makes the most sense if you can swing it. Do something more lucrative to ensure prosperity and, if you're really passionate about something scientific and can afford the necessary equipment yourself, do it at home and blog about it. Worth remembering that prior to modern funding mechanisms a lot (most?) of science was done by the independently wealthy gentry.
pmoriarty 5y ago
My favorite amateur mushroom hunter is Alan Rockefeller, who I found out about through his fantastic talks on identifying psilocybin mushrooms: [1] [2] He talks about how he got in to mushroom hunting at about 18 minutes in to [1]: "About 2001 I went hiking, and I've always been in to nature and camping but around 2001 I was hiking and I kind of felt like it was sort of a waste of time to hike. Sure, it was exercise and it was pretty out there, but I was kind of like "What am I doing with my life?", but I saw all these mushrooms, and I'm like "Huh.. these are pretty interesting," and so I looked at them a little closer and thought "there must be people out there that know what these are, that know which ones are common, which ones are hallucinogenic, poisonous," and so I just started paying a little bit of attention to them and taking pictures of them and that gave me a reason to go out in to the woods, so I didn't feel nearly so guilty for wasting all my time in the forest anymore, since I had a mission. "These days my mission is usually to take the best pictures I possibly can of every species of mushroom I come across and then I publish all the pictures online with a free license so anybody can use them forever. I do DNA sequencing of all of them and get them all in to genbank. But I think the path was just being really curious about them and just being really curious about nature and doing that. I never really expected to get well known for psilocybin mushrooms. That was kind of random. I just got really in to them at the same time they got kind of popular. "I think psilocybin mushrooms are really useful for getting people interested in nature. So many people out there looking for psilocybin mushrooms. This gets them outside, gets them looking closely at the mushrooms. There are so many people looking for psilocybin mushrooms to get high and now they're super in to plants and mushrooms and all of nature. It's kind of like a gateway in to nature." [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pInqVRRva7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pInqVRRva7M [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcL-7u80kjs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcL-7u80kjs
jgrahamc 5y ago
Reminded me of a piece I wrote years about about amateurs in science: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/mar/03/amateur-role-science-arts https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/mar/03/amateu...

102 points by jdnier 5y ago

akomtu 5y ago

I'm sure they'll advance science a lot more when they find those mushrooms!

kaycebasques 5y ago
I know the parent comment was a bit tongue in cheek, but it reminds me of a theory about the origins of human intelligence that I heard in the documentary Fantastic Fungi. Long story short the theory is that our ancestors stumbled upon magic mushrooms and the psychedelic experience was a spark of new perspective, and then the one who discovered the mushrooms would take its tribe to other psychedelic mushrooms and have them try them so that they would all experience the perspective shift.
- bredren 5y ago
  To bring this a little closer to this audience, readers may be interested in John Markoff’s book What the Doormouse Said, which draws a direct line between the use of psychedelics and the development of the personal computer.
- ryder9 5y ago
  crackpot hypothesis without any basis in reality, can't even call it a hypothesis since legitimate hypotheses have somewhat of a basis in reality the sort of stuff joe rogan would spew under the influence

bredren 5y ago

Another example of this is in the study of domestic animal behavior with speak buttons. I believe this amateur wave is part of a much bigger set of societal actions “challenging assumptions” of the former era. There is a sharp decline in reverence for “authority” along with a lowering of barriers to entry. Almost anyone with interest and bravery to share has a chance to shine in any subject area. Computer science is leading the way, in part because it often requires little or no physical presence or collaboration. Proof of advancements can be disseminated in perfect fidelity and validated quickly. In other fields, people who happen to live among a rare natural phenomena have great potential to fall into discovery others could only hope to witness at great expense. Following this to its natural conclusion all fields will ultimately be advanced by a mix of professionals, academics and increasingly “amateurs” that earn reputation not by publishing but by pure contributions of content that unquestionably move the field forward.

j4yav 5y ago
That’s awesome. It is very much how I felt about computers when I was learning them in the 80s.. me, a little kid, could make or do something that nobody had ever done before exactly. And all the other homebrew clubs and hacker groups were doing the same thing. I guess 3d printing was similar recently, and I’m excited to see what the next ones are.
toto444 5y ago
There are a lot of people very interested by science but from what I read academia does not seem to be a good place to be in. That might help explaining why we can see 'amateur scientists' coming up with interesting results.
- amelius 5y ago
  Do you think the existence of these amateurs will help improve the current state in academia, or will it have the opposite effect?
  - treeman79 5y ago
    Look at em drive. A nonsense device that caused a LOT of people to become very good at Torsion Pendulums. Was fastening to watch ever improving builds as people tried to prove/disprove. Did em drive work out, no. But a lot did come out of the effort.
- mc32 5y ago
  It looks like there could be a twofold problem: Some academics are interested in pushing a particular take (agenda). This is contrary to science but often serving some social or political sentiment. Amateur scientists might lack the rigor to give their claims validity and may reach undeserved conclusions leading to misunderstanding from a part of the public who want some validation for their own beliefs.
  - scottLobster 5y ago
    I'd say the root is likely much simpler: Money Getting a degree, particularly a PhD to do research, is hideously expensive in the US and rarely pays well relative to the cost, even for STEM. Science in general is underfunded IMO, and from what I'm told competition for grants can be extreme. Society says they want the next Thomas Edison but they aren't willing to fund all the other failed light bulb designs to find him. In that environment being an amateur scientist makes the most sense if you can swing it. Do something more lucrative to ensure prosperity and, if you're really passionate about something scientific and can afford the necessary equipment yourself, do it at home and blog about it. Worth remembering that prior to modern funding mechanisms a lot (most?) of science was done by the independently wealthy gentry.

pmoriarty 5y ago

My favorite amateur mushroom hunter is Alan Rockefeller, who I found out about through his fantastic talks on identifying psilocybin mushrooms: [1] [2] He talks about how he got in to mushroom hunting at about 18 minutes in to [1]: "About 2001 I went hiking, and I've always been in to nature and camping but around 2001 I was hiking and I kind of felt like it was sort of a waste of time to hike. Sure, it was exercise and it was pretty out there, but I was kind of like "What am I doing with my life?", but I saw all these mushrooms, and I'm like "Huh.. these are pretty interesting," and so I looked at them a little closer and thought "there must be people out there that know what these are, that know which ones are common, which ones are hallucinogenic, poisonous," and so I just started paying a little bit of attention to them and taking pictures of them and that gave me a reason to go out in to the woods, so I didn't feel nearly so guilty for wasting all my time in the forest anymore, since I had a mission. "These days my mission is usually to take the best pictures I possibly can of every species of mushroom I come across and then I publish all the pictures online with a free license so anybody can use them forever. I do DNA sequencing of all of them and get them all in to genbank. But I think the path was just being really curious about them and just being really curious about nature and doing that. I never really expected to get well known for psilocybin mushrooms. That was kind of random. I just got really in to them at the same time they got kind of popular. "I think psilocybin mushrooms are really useful for getting people interested in nature. So many people out there looking for psilocybin mushrooms. This gets them outside, gets them looking closely at the mushrooms. There are so many people looking for psilocybin mushrooms to get high and now they're super in to plants and mushrooms and all of nature. It's kind of like a gateway in to nature." [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pInqVRRva7M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pInqVRRva7M [2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcL-7u80kjs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcL-7u80kjs

jgrahamc 5y ago

Reminded me of a piece I wrote years about about amateurs in science: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/mar/03/amateur-role-science-arts https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/mar/03/amateu...