I& #39;m not sure about elsewhere, but there really isn& #39;t such a thing as a mycology PHD in the US, which seems very weird but it& #39;s just kind of how it is, and it& #39;s frustrating given my interests.

If you want a doctorate in mycology, you want to study plant pathology, or microbiology, or soil biology, or some other biology fields where fungi are definitely relevant, but a university can justify the course by saying you& #39;ll be a doctor or agriculture scientist.

This leads to a weird thing where mycology is a vague topic not because studying fungi is not a specific thing, but because people who study fungi have to make it just part of their expertise. There are mycology journals, but the writers aren& #39;t mycologists, they& #39;re X.

It also leads to people like Stamets and yrs truly and other amateurs believing we& #39;re experts, or in the former& #39;s case, marketing themselves as experts, because there isn& #39;t *quite* an authoritative body on fungal biology.

Fungi are these cool and complex organisms that cohabitate with us us and all life on earth, and we just, haven& #39;t quite decided on a good, systematic way to understand outside of how they specifically affect us, or our crops, or animals. So we just kind of don& #39;t understand them.