How Toby Spribille Overturned 150 Years of Biology about Lichens
1–10 of 67 posts
Re: How Toby Spribille Overturned 150 Years of Biology about Lichens
#2Why couldn't he go get a GED? Most colleges accept those, and lots of homeschoolers go to college.
Re: How Toby Spribille Overturned 150 Years of Biology about Lichens
#3This is not only cool scientifically but inspiring because of the discoverer's life story.
Re: How Toby Spribille Overturned 150 Years of Biology about Lichens
#4Could we change the title to something a little less clickbaity/classist? Even though it's the title of the actual article, trailer parks have nothing to do do with the actual content.
Re: How Toby Spribille Overturned 150 Years of Biology about Lichens
#5Could we change the title to something a little less clickbaity/classist? Even though it's the title of the actual article, trailer parks have nothing to do do with the actual content.
It's also misleading -- although he did grow up in a trailer park, he also attended an world-renown university of both undergraduate and doctoral studies prior to making the discovery. And he wasn't working alone in the middle of nowhere -- he as working with a team of other scientists.
It's a fantastic life story, but the title is definitely distracting click bait.
Re: How Toby Spribille Overturned 150 Years of Biology about Lichens
#6Nicely told feel-good story!
Re: How Toby Spribille Overturned 150 Years of Biology about Lichens
#7The main revolution 150 years ago was that lichen was not a single organism. I'm not sure if refining that number from 2 to 3 is legitimately "overturning"; I was reading the article expecting them to say that the two organisms were in fact sharing the same DNA and were in fact sexual dimorphs all this time.
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. :)
Re: How Toby Spribille Overturned 150 Years of Biology about Lichens
#8The headline makes it seem as though some guy overturned a fundamental precept of modern biology, while living in a Trailer in Montana.
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.
Re: How Toby Spribille Overturned 150 Years of Biology about Lichens
#9Could we change the title to something a little less clickbaity/classist? Even though it's the title of the actual article, trailer parks have nothing to do do with the actual content.
I disagree. This is not only a scientific story, it is also an inspirational story. The title shows that.
Re: How Toby Spribille Overturned 150 Years of Biology about Lichens
#10How one click-baity title overturned 158 years of publishing integrity