Any atrocious act that may
significantly harm the field of mycology on the short-term or long-term in any act, setting, platform, or medium (e.g., popular media, social platforms, online forums, websites, research papers,
identification efforts, foraging, or amateur/hobbyist endeavours). Crimes Against Mycology are
particularly prevalent in, but are by no means exclusive to, amateur mycology communities.
Examples are as follows:
1. Making false and/or inaccurate claims that the subject (most commonly a nondescript dark, hard protuberance on any tree) should be identified as 'Chaga' (Inonotus obliquus); often lacking substantiation or basic ID skills or knowledge. 'Chagaslighting'.
2. Overgeneralizing and/or spreading misinformation on edibility or toxicity to (e.g., claiming that "every mushroom is toxic when touched").
3. Identifying a collection "with confidence" in cases in which it can reasonably be assumed that this would be virtually
impossible to do with the available information.
4. "Publishing" new species on Index Fungorum.
5. Saying "all mushrooms are edible, once"
6. Pale Satanmints.
7. Unsubstantiated hypersplitting of established genera.
"
Counting the equally abused ganodermatoids, the Perenniporia s.l. clade now has forty-nine genera, when it could easily be treated as about seven. The authors
don't even mention Ganoderma (s.l.) in this paper. They also neglect to mention three of the seventeen pre-named genera in this clade (Diacanthodes, Flammeopellis, and Megasporia)."
"
Holy shit, that's a crime against mycology!"
