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Comment by tvink | Hacker News Reader

The person in question is definitely a good example of someone you SHOULD take with more than a grain of salt. From what I could gather (mainly from /r/mycology) he's not really well respected in his field, and seems to be rather a salesman who draws premature conclusions and evangelises them. The Netflix documentary with him also had my "this sounds too good to be true" sensors going off more or less constantly.

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Do you have any logical reason to not trust him or is it simply “I have a feeling”

I don’t know I can’t say. But scientists in academia and in national labs are salesmen for themselves and their research too, so I think you’re possibly giving him too hard a time compared to them

stamets strikes me as a well-intentioned enthusiast who is more scientific than most. He did a ton of work on the actual techniques used today in a lot of commercial production and is a really interesting guy. It's also evident that he has sampled a little too much of his own more 'exotic' product.

In the documentary (I'm assuming Fantastic Fungi), he came off as one of those types that are first and foremost making money off it, but also believes some of what he's saying. I honestly just wanted that documentary to just be a Planet Earth style thing with mushroom footage, and less talking heads.

We've bought an oyster mushroom kit from him, as well as some soil inoculum. From an ecological standpoint I wonder how genetically diverse his inoculum strains are, and whether they can crowd out native strains of fungi.

I've read most of his books/publications, his work is good (and generally reproducable), but he is somewhat prone to grand statements.

Thing is, a lot of labs will largely ignore fungi because they are fucking awkward to work with

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