James Stewart
speaker
4,486 appearances
22 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard 5d ago
James Stewart’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 17 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 3.
Appearances
Astrum Space · The Science Fact You've Been Taught for Years Is a Lie | Astrum Earth · 28 Apr 2026
podcast
And this one may be shocking because the authors actually found no published peer-reviewed evidence from forests at all to support this claim.
In fact, a master's thesis from Simard's own lab actually found the opposite.
as Douglas firs placed in a shared fungal network were less likely to survive if they were close to their older genetic relatives in the field.
Even more uncomfortable is that Simard made a narrative choice to write in her book that the grad student had found support for her theory, even though she has since denied that she was deliberately misleading her readers.
To top off their review, Kast and her colleagues looked to see whether there had been any bias in the literature surrounding the network.
They identified 18 studies that had been influential in this field, and looked at how they were used in subsequent research.
there can be a tendency for more positive or more interesting results to be cited more than those that are neutral or disagree with the hypothesis, even if methodically the research was correct.
It's called positive citation bias and can lead to misconceptions being spread.
And sadly, that is exactly what the authors found in this case.
Across nearly 1700 papers citing the 18 original studies, around 25% of them were misinterpreting these studies as support for claims about network structure, and 50% of them for claims about network function.
To give just one example of this bias, several of the 18 papers have reported evidence that networks could form.
But many papers published later had cited these studies as evidence that networks were present in forests.
In research, wording is everything, and evidence suggesting that networks can form is not the same as evidence that they do form in complex real-world habitats.
But you can see how that kind of positive bias is a bit of a runaway train.
And if even published researchers are doing it, then it's bound to happen in the mainstream media too.
As you may expect, Simard wasn't too pleased when the Wood Wide Web began to unravel at her feet, calling Kast's review paper an injustice to the whole world, no less.
She labeled all the critics as reductionist scientists and has since published response articles pushing back on some of their arguments.
Now, although we're often quick to take sides during a drama, it's important to note that there are no heroes and villains in this story.
Some scientists may disagree with Simard's stance, but others don't.
And if nothing else, Simard has done good work for the forest too.
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