Orchid Myths... Busted!

[Bud]

Those professors are obsolete...I will trust wikipedia because its the latest...people who write in it have no personal agenda neither are they paid or their works given awards ...rather than a reference book dated 1990's from an awarded professor who has tenure in a university and needs funding for his research...
I admit wikipedia dont have scientific research...but they are from life's experiences and they saw it with the naked eye and experienced the infos themselves...whereas the books might be from plagiarism and altered datas to suit the writers needs...anything from 1960's to the present has a suspected incorrectness: the scientists of the 1900's to 1940's are moral and honest and accurate...which I cannot say for our modern scientists now who have money and fame in their agendas..and they need tenure and they need funding: I will really hold their datas and findings suspect and inacurate just like a mislabelled or mistagged Orchid unless they are accepted wordwide as a fact.
Wikipedia is accepted worldwide as a fact...because the blue collar masses read it and beleive it...its their new bible of infos...those professors are a dying breed...no one will buy their books because it cant be found on kindle and no one will bother to look it up in a library...except masteral student who are REQUIRED to read it...

[camille1585]

I have to disagree with your overgeneralizations. For one, Wikipedia can't be expected to be completely clean either. And just because there are a few bad apples doesn't mean that that everything that scientists publish is questionable. Yes, cheaters exist, in some domains much more than others (medical and agrochemical come to mind). But they are the minority. Not to mention that the media love to twist the facts around.

Wikipedia is good for the general public (who can't access the info otherwise) in getting a condensed and understandable definitions/explanations of things and I use it a lot for that purpose, but it will never replace scientific articles and it shouldn't be expected to. Those and ref books were never meant for the public, which is why it's mainly students (as you point out) and researchers who buy them. And a good recent ref book gives a comprehensive and invaluable overview of your field of study.

There is a lot more I would say, but this is not the place for it. I simply want to point out that your view on research is biased.

[The Orchid Boy]

I agree with partially with you both.

[Bud]

I suggest scientists put their work in Wikipedia...that way it will be read by many as opposed to rotting in libraries...its the way to go...the academe is dying...no one reads books anymore and the only way for info is Wikipedia...no one even bothers to read an Encyclopedia its too big and heavy a book and so small letters...

I am generalizing because the infos we get nowadays are really blown to proportions by the media and we the public is made to beleive never to trust modern data findings because they are not accurate(media is even saying they only did videos of the moonlanding and it never happened). Just as the academe has been telling students not to trust Wikepedia because its not a legitimate source of information...

[Andrew]

God bless Wikiality.

Camille,
Kudos to your friend for having the balls to reference Wikipedia in a paper. Kudos to your friend for not backing down and citing a study that shows that Wikipedia is as reliable as the Encyclopedia Britannica to defend the reference. Most impressive is the fact that the editor didn't think to question the Encyclopedia Britannica as a suitable reference for a scientific paper!!! I always feel a bit lowbrow when I have to resort to citing books in papers when I can't get hold of the primary source. Citing an encyclopedia is brilliant!

[Bud]

I would trust Camille and her works...I read some of her advice and comments: it is precise , concise and accurate...with no emotions involved...
but I have read some Orchid books that were just an excuse to make money and its more a pictorial than information...thats why I am wary of titled professors with awards and tenured in Ivy League Universities...
Its true I am biased against the academe and its research...I would rather beleive a smalltime researcher with no fundings and just makes do with home experiments...these are more credible...

[gnathaniel]

Bud, if you think no one edits wikipedia to suit a personal agenda then you're not reading it enough!

--Nat

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Here's my opinion on Wikipedia...

Great source for pop-culture references and media referencing.

Hit or miss with scientific info.

Referencing scientific info on the web is possible, it's just through web archived material that's easily accessible to university students as well as science professionals. For the lay person, you gotta pay for the material. Google Scholar is beautiful in digging these articles out. Many of these articles are far more reliable than Wikipedia, the problem is, the everyday person may not understand the stats and jargon in them. No "emotional fluff" involved here. Just dry, hard data.

For example - if you tried to pull up a scientific article on the web through Google Scholar about orchid mycorrhizae...

Say, if there wasn't anybody on this forum (or any other orchid forum) mentioning anything about mycorrhizae. Would the ordinary untrained lay person understand what the "mycelia of an arbuscular mycorrhizae in the division (phyla) Ascomycota", means?

Well, that's the kind of stuff that's in these kinds of scientific articles online...

I would trust these kinds of articles that are on websites such as JSTOR or SpringerLink - for example, than I would Wikipedia.

I don't think you'll necessarily always find the above mentioned kind of description or information on Wikipedia.

In regards to the myriad of orchid books out there...

Many of the orchid books out there in the market are not necessarily written by scientists or professional horticulturalists (some are, many aren't). This is why there's a lot of "emotional fluff" and lots of pretty pictures in these books. Plus, if you look at the section about orchid propagation, notice how many of them glance over how to micropropagate orchids by seed. That's because the writers either don't have the experience to go into this in detail, or if they do know how to do it, that's a whole different skill set to even detail in a book about orchids in general. Some of these writers who write about orchids that are part of the scientific community also run businesses that involve something in the orchid trade, they will not give up their secrets to just anyone. For the most part these orchid books are, in my opinion, mostly made for coffee table reading. In other words, it's orchid pop culture for the masses.

Do also keep in mind putting together a book takes time, sometimes by the time a book is published, new information regarding cultivation has already come to the forefront. Many orchids that were once upon a time deemed "impossible to grow" are no longer the case.

[Bud]

Nat...its so easy to detect those kind of people with personal agendas(you can always google them for who they really are)...but at least I am not paying for Wikipedia and its just a click away...

[camille1585]

The thing is that scientists who really do care about their research also care about getting their research out there to the general public. Publications will never be acessible to the public, even if everything were free, because as you point out the language can be very difficult to comprehend.
I can only speak for my university and my group in particular, which is particularily active. For instance the professors orgainized a series of evening 'lectures' on the subject of insects in society, that was primairly aimed at the public. I went, and they were fun (and funny) and easy to understand with lots of photos, videos and funny stories. Another event, the Insect Days, was designed to also get the public, especially children into science. Nice movies and activities for the children (including a kid's university, where we did simple experiments with them) and the adults got to visit the labs and discover what we do research on. Maybe we are the exception because we work with interesting organisms, which everyone is familiar with (plants, as well as butterflies, mosquitoes, ticks...) I can hardly imagine this working nearly as well in the hard core sciences, where the most you have to look at is a petri dish....

Scientific matter does get onto Wikipedia, more than you'd think, and there are scientists out there (I know a few) who take time to write up articles for it.

---------- Post added at 09:31 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:11 AM ----------

Getting back to the original topic of orchid myths, one I hear a lot (which is similar to the 1st point), is that they are fragile and delicate plants, even if those people can grow them somewhat successfully. Things like:
*They must be misted every day to be happy
*They must never get any direct sun because they are fragile and burn easily (I have even read this about Cyms!!)
*Slightest change in temperature and they are not happy (a generalisation based on the fact that buds blast when conditions vary too much)

What I’ve found however is that orchids are tough as nails, and some are much tougher than house plants. They are tolerant of a lot of abuse, and can recover even when the plant looks mostly dead. I’ve read many stories like that here.