Enthusiastic amateurs advance science as they hunt for exotic mushrooms
npr.org
npr.org
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.
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.
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.
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.
I like the idea of making money first and then pursuing research, but I think for certain fields the only way to do much of anything would be to latch on as a research volunteer to an existing lab. Because the cost to run any experiments is just way too high, particularly if you have no shared equipment to begin with.
Alternatively, you could just start a PhD later in life. There are time limits on a bunch of the academic stages, but no clock really starts until after you've finished your PhD. I do think it would be a lot more comfortable to do a PhD once you've already financially established yourself, plus I think it produces a better culture when people aren't so attached to progressing up the academic ladder, like their life depends on it.
The barriers to entry are intimidating but not insurmountable - there are so many hidden idiosyncrasies and inefficiencies in academia that obfuscate the real cost and make it seem harder than it really is. Just look at the proliferation of hackerspaces with their capital equipment which, although not as expensive as some lab equipment, still runs in the tens of thousands per machine. It's just that we've been doing it this way for so long we can't imagine any other way.
IMO postdoc is where people really start to get set back - you don't get benefits like free health insurance or subsidized housing anymore, you are getting older with additional life expenses, and you aren't getting a degree that can open doors to additional jobs anymore. You are basically just continuing to chase a university career at shit pay by the point you reach a postdoc. The worst part is that people are forced into postdocs almost immediately, because you literally can't get one after you are a certain number of years past graduation.
I don't disagree that as a society there are better ways. But as an individual actor unless you make an absolute killing with some start up or something there is no way you can afford to do proper biology research (for example). Perhaps if you're willing to move into some specific niche based on feasibility, but you'd have very little freedom in what questions you could ask this way. Beyond money there are also logistical questions surrounding care of animals or possible clinical collaboration, so unless you're happy doing in vitro work only this is another can of worms for someone attempting to be an independent researcher.
Equipment, training, larger communities, sometimes even functional wealth.
Let’s see what happens when we drop a car from a crane onto a trampoline.
That’s a lot more equipment then dropping a feather and a cannon ball off a tower.
Take chimps for example, who learned hundreds of sign words. Despite knowing how to "communicate", they never once asked a question.
I haven't watched a bunch of bunny videos, but it strikes me more as astrological sign reading than "dogs finally have a meaningful way to communicate".
This feels so different to what I’ve observed in “blue” states and popular media/social media over the last 1.3yrs
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."