How Toby Spribille Overturned 150 Years of Biology about Lichens
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
On the other hand, figuring out why we've been failing to grow lichen by merging the two species manually for the past century and a half is definitely a job well done. :)
If you actually read the article you'll find out that the properties of the lichen could not be explained by the two known elements alone, that there was some other factor that nobody could describe. The careful work done here uncovered a third element that was the important difference, that there's a three way symbiosis. Now they have a complete model of what's going on after an initial hypothesis put forward 150 years ago.
Considering someone's finally explained how these types of organisms work, and it's a large branch of life, this is a pretty major breakthrough.
And that's why you can't trust them. (cue rimshot SFX)
But lichen... You know, now that we have a functional understanding of their biology, I'm quite excited to see what this new knowledge will yield when applied. Pharmacology, materials, food production/processing — "We don't know what we don't know," but having more data helps us to learn what questions we can ask.
Anyhow, thats just my perspective. No offense is intended here. This is solid, important work. I'm just quibbling over the headline.
(If your argument is that "overturning" should never be used to describe a scientific breakthrough you may have a point, albeit a rather uninteresting one.)
The home-schooled teens that go on to college may lack formal paperwork form a school, but they generally do have some test results, paperwork filed with the county/state, and other items they can put on a transcript in lieu of actual grades.
It sounded like the scientist didn't have the benefit of a structured home education.
None of the above is true.
1) He happened to grow up in a trailer in Montana, but eventually moved on to attend a good German university, and was no longer living in a "Montana trailer park" while making this discovery.
2) The guy corrected a misunderstanding that people had, regarding one very specific phenomenon found in nature; something that most biologists don't work with, depend on, or care about. The replication crisis around Ego Depletion, for example, can credibly be claimed to have overturned decades of psychological thought. The specific makeup of Lichens though, is an extremely niche field, that doesn't affect the broader field of Biology in any significant way.
Well you would be wrong. This guy almost single-handedly led the way to enabling the cultivation of lichen in laboratory conditions, something that has had very limited success up until now.
What are the benefits of cultivating lichen? It's another way to farm biological molecules. As it turns out, Lichen are actually composed of 2 fungi not just 1. Basidiomycetes and Ascomycete. So that's a huge crop of potential medicines, or manufacturing catalysts that can be economically produced now.
So give this guy a lil more credit. Just because you don't care about lichens, doesn't mean "most biologists don't care about it". He has literally, no hyperbole, overturned 150 years of biology. It is that significant.
Also, it's very arrogant of you to suggest that most biologists do not care about this discovery. At the very least, it is humbling to all biologists. And as such, most, if not all, biologists will care about this discovery precisely because it shows that we can be missing something so fundamental for so long.
There is a good chance that this discovery will be invaluable in 30 years time.
So you should still read the article. Just pretend the link-baity title doesn't exist and don't go in with pre-conceptions :-)
The article mentions how the symbiotic relationship discovered in 1868 cleared the way to our better, broader understanding of other ecological systems. I can see how the current discovery could lead to some deeper knowledge. Maybe it hints at how complex living things appear. Maybe we understimated this processess and they deserve more eyes on it.
I agree with the trailer thing on the title, no need.
EDIT:
Lichens aren't quite what we thought, shocked scientists discover
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/technology/lichen-yeast-1.368946...
> The path to this discovery began in 2011, when Spribille, now armed with a doctorate, returned to Montana. He joined the lab of symbiosis specialist John McCutcheon...
It's a fantastic life story, but the title is definitely distracting click bait.
I was lucky to get involved with computers, which at the time were something where you could pick up on your own and still end up with a good career. I don't know where I'd be without that; surely not with a doctorate doing research. Seeing this guy make it as far as a major scientific discovery warms my heart.
I hope his story inspires kids everywhere to persevere. And that gatekeepers everywhere think about the people they're excluding because they don't have the right pedigree. Without the University of Gottingen's willing to gamble, his talent could well have gone to waste.
However, many here dislike the title and we're happy to oblige. So let's make a deal: we'll change the title to something more temperate, and you guys start talking about something more interesting than how bad the previous title was.
That's true from a literal standpoint, however the title misleads many people into expecting that the subject isn't just from a trailer park as part of his past, but that he somehow made the breakthrough as a current, stereotypical, trailer park resident, i.e. not highly educated.
If there was an intention to mislead it is a lie.
If it's unintentional, it's just poor headline writing (ambiguous and easily misleading).
So if the authors of a story are being irresponsibly click-baity in their choice of title wording... it would not only be remiss of us not to convey this fact -- we would, in effect, be covering their asses -- which really now, are better left exposed in cases like these.
From my perspective, it is about perpetuating the stereotype that rural people are 'slack jawed yokels'. If this guy was from a vertical trailer park (i.e. a high rise condo unit), we wouldn't think twice about it because, despite being potentially just as poor, he is an 'enlightened city dweller'.
I think the people who point out this sort of thing are usually just trying to illustrate that there's all these gossipy judgements we make of each other and that it happens so often and so consistently that we end up doing it it thoughtlessly.
And then there are the people who think the rags to riches tale is just one of the tools of the rich and powerful. That the token success story keeps the rest of us from doing anything to change the status quo. And so rather than being inspired by them they just get grumpy.
He's an impressive person, but "poor guy pulled himself up by the bootstraps using sheer force of will" narratives usually fall apart when you look more closely.
If I were in his situation, there's no way I would have had the gull to try that route. Probably would've just stayed in the forest service. Maybe gone for a GED then community college then a local land grant. By which time I'd be too burnt out on it all (and too old) to even think about a doctorate.
There's no doubting that the German people helped this guy achieve what he achieved. There's also no doubting that he was truly exceptionally resourceful (and maybe a bit lucky, too).
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/05/the-female-mathematic...
> creating opportunities for yourself where none seem to exist
The fact is that there were opportunities. In countries where education is free and accessible, there are always opportunities.
If the subject is spreading education, I will happily be partisan and political, even if you find it irritating. It's too important to ignore, especially when it's a core factor in this headline and story.
Intellectual curiosity is HN's core value. Curiosity is gratified by things that are specific, so the specific is precious here. Generic ideological arguments are the opposite: they're reruns of episodes seen many times, for which circumstances are interesting only as primer fuel, quickly to be discarded on getting going.
Worse, the energy they mobilize is agitated and the stance they induce is rigid. They throw people out out of the relaxed, reflective state that makes for good HN conversation, charging their reflexes and putting them into battle mode . From an intellectual curiosity point of view, it doesn't matter what the battle is—we end up with scorched earth either way.
It may be important to get people marching, but let's not march over a lichen garden.
The discovery is amazing. What's even more impressive is that he received a free education in another country, with a home-schooled background.
At a minimum it pointed thither, since government programs and payment for education are politically charged and your comment read as advocacy in that area. You also used ideologically charged language ("poor guy pulled himself up by the bootstraps") which is the opposite of "purely factual". That explains why a user responded with "political bullshit" (which was also bad, btw, since it's name-calling by HN guidelines' standard).
Or maybe education is one of those things important to the survival of our species and the improvement of quality of life for everyone. Nobody benefits when someone who wanted to be a doctor or a scientist and was capable of becoming one is denied an education and instead can't get a job for lack of qualifications.
The number of people who've pulled themselves up from their own bootstraps are zero. You're always dependent on others or benefit from their knowledge in some capacity. The degree to which this happens is variable, but it can never be eliminated.
A "self-made man" is a myth. Give it up.
If you want to complain about a title, the valuable way to do it is to suggest a better title, i.e. an accurate and neutral one.