If this bears out, I guess it might have implications for the importance of science fiction as a practical, if incipient, source of scientific development. SF writer X comes up with a new idea drastically afield from easy anaologies, and the field eventually catches up - or some such relationship.

It's interesting to me how the Cham's satire of the scientific method applies to amateur study as well as professional for profit study - where the funding agency manager is just the amateur herself. At least as far as mushrooms are concerned, because some are rarer or more edible, there is often a strong, usually unconscious motivation to make presumptions about a given find which subsequently colors the investigation into the specimen. My experience here on steemit, watching another fungi enthusiast make an obvious mistake has fit that bill exactly - even though there's no monetary motivation riding on being right or wrong.

Anyways - enjoyed reading this. I'm going to be very low on SP for the next couple of weeks, but I also gave this a resteem.

Although I delegate 1k to steemstem, so there vote includes some of the value I'd ascribe to this post :)

Edit: holy cow esteem is making it difficult to comment right now...