[Pyrites]

Lichen may be a combination of algae, fungi, And a yeast, according to an article in Science. http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/technology/lichen-yeast-1.3689468 It is a core charecteristic of science that it is never done. I like that.

[gb]

Thank you for that article. I participate in Nature programs with Seattle Parks and the Mountaineers. It is always interesting to get new information.

[Kim Brown]

Lots of angst in the bryophyte community no doubt - all those years living a lie. The psychiactric (sp) field should experience an uptick. And new textbooks. It's pretty amazing (and I don't use this word lightly, i.e. to describe Facebook photos of "noms" and views from Si) that something so tiny yet so huge is so recently discovered. Makes you wonder, "what's next!"

[Yana]

Amazing!

[wolffie]

Science is full of fascinating stories of scientists behaving unscientifically, stubbornly adhering to erroneous traditional ideas in the face of strong evidence for contradictory new ones. Ignaz Semmelweiss Long before Pasteur and Lister established the germ theory of infection, Semmelwiess collected beautifully sound data showing that childbed fever in maternity wards could be reduced 10-35x by simple handwashing by doctors. For this, he was essentially hounded out of the profession. Millard, Destiny of the Republic recounts similarly incredulous behavior by American doctors during their lethal treatment of President Garfield (recommended read). "To believe this, we would have to imagine that we are living in a sea of invisible 'germs'!" Alfred Wegener; continental drift Sound evidence for continental drift from about 6 independent lines of observation, ignored in the absence of a plausible mechanism. The scary thing: we ALL behave this way, almost willfully oblivious to things right under our noses. What idiocies do I myself believe, despite "obvious" contrary evidence? I almost don't wanna know about it....

[Pyrites]

All of us older people looked at South America and Africa, and Madagascar and Africa and noted they fit. This is a fully modern discovery. It needed cheap DNA testing to attract attention to an apparent anomaly.