
How a guy from Montana overturned 150 years of biology - dpc59
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/07/how-a-guy-from-a-montana-trailer-park-upturned-150-years-of-biology/491702/?utm_source=atlfb&amp;single_page=true
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protomyth
The thread from last year:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12143199](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12143199)

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tasty_freeze
The HN title is consistent with the Atlantic title, but the Atlantic title is
clickbait.

He didn't overturn 150 years of biology. He found that one little corner of
the vastness which is biology was somewhat wrong -- lichen are symbiosis of
two fungi and an algae, instead of just one fungus and an algae. Good for him,
and he has an interesting backstory, but sheesh.

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thisisdave
Yeah, "150 years of lichen biology" would be much better.

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hyperion2010
My favorite part of this story is how incredibly strong biases are toward
existing hypotheses.

"Lichenologists all thought that the fungi in the partnership belonged to a
group called the ascomycetes—so Spribille had only searched for ascomycete
genes. Almost on a whim, he broadened his search to the entire fungal kingdom,
and found something bizarre."

Sometimes we need to just throw our hypotheses out the window and look at all
the data our tools can give us, especially now that sequencing is so cheap.

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GeekyBear
Here's another story that demonstrates the bias towards an existing
hypotheses, featuring a newly minted recipient of the Nobel prize whose work
was ridiculed by his peers and by a rather famous recipient of multiple Nobel
prizes.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nobel-chemistry-
idUSTRE794...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nobel-chemistry-
idUSTRE7941EP20111005)

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gordaco
TLDR: lichens are not a symbiosis between a fungus and an alga; they are a
symbioses between _two_ fungi and an alga.

It's a very nice article that explains how this was discovered. If you like
biology, read the article; you'll like it.

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dboreham
I think Montana should be capitalized, no? Proper noun, right? Possibly
Biology too, but I'm an engineer so English not my strong suit..

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bshimmin
Montana yes, biology no.

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cwbrandsma
Hate the writing of the article. Hallmark of a lazy writer is one that starts
with "if you had told <insert name> ... would have laughed". Probably grew up
in one of the Hutterite communities in Montana (since he spoke a form of
German).

Other than that, nice discovery.

