Scroll to the bottom for a TLDR if novellas do not interest you:
Again I want to be clear--this could damn well be the genetics. I'd be a fool to suggest otherwise.
We can't ever know unless there are at LEAST two runs. For the sake of science we'd prefer a minimum of 3 (that's typically the rule, everything in triplicate or it didn't happen). From a botany standpoint we're talking literally tens and possibly hundreds of runs under various conditions.
Botany is hard as hell because there are SO MANY variables. I'd say a true understanding of ANY biology is probably only secondary to something like particle physics in terms of complexity. It is literally easier to predict with high degree of probability the geometries, velocities, and spins of all of the molecules in a salt water solution than it is to understand even the first thing about biology implicitly.
Within that complex problem, gene expression is also super hard to tease out to a similar degree of difficulty.
Now, add to that the fact that there's been a moratorium on cannabis-specific research and it should come to you pretty quickly that we're basically in the dark here.
So I'm NOT saying what it is or isn't. I'm just trying to make clear for everyone how difficult it really is to say something like that (hence why I'm not doing it).
Believe me, I'd love to have the answer. I actually like Alien and his strains, if I could come to their defense nothing would please me more.
I can't.
I CAN however come to the defense of good sense, and I CAN do my best to combat patent ignorance. Ignorance IS NOT a bad word, it's not an insult--it just means there's more yet to know.
In that way, we are ALL ignorant of cannabis. I think we should move in a direction that really respects that notion--that as a community we can choose to say the things we can be sure of and shy away from those we can't.
As I've stated already it was the right thing to share this--and it's an even better thing to have the conversation. However, it doesn't make sense to talk about things in such a way that doesn't respect those things that we can and do know.
I think as cannabis becomes more and more mainstream we'll see more and more of the older notions, habits, and "commandments" challenged. There will be a helluva lot more resistance to it than we saw in this thread--that's for damn sure.
This was pretty mild and I thank everyone for that, it means we're moving in a positive direction.
Maybe the next time someone sees anthers they won't immediately blame the breeder or the genetics--and might instead choose to do a few isolated runs. We might get a chance to see some actual scientific results come out of it (and not necessarily only as it regards hermies).
Experience is good. Science is good. They can work together.
I look at something like the SCROG method. That came from experience more likely than not--not from some uber academic genius. Then I look at something like discussing lighting properties and I think to myself--scientists have left their mark here. That's clear enough just by digging 10 years back through the internet.
Put those two things together and you get a badass SCROG with maximized yield.
It doesn't make sense to turn off EITHER of these engines of discovery. They aren't mutually exclusive and in fact they do their best work together--there can be no question on that.
So it's not about me coming in here and saying hey, shut up guys you don't know what you're saying. It's about looking at what is known from both angles and finding a way to marry the two things.
What that means is accepting that we can't know stuff in a definitively empirical sense about a particular genotype (no matter WHAT is is) without running it a few times--but it also means that from an experience level maybe it doesn't make sense to keep running a strain over and over if it continues to hermie--and maybe experience is better at telling us when to pull the plug on that when science would just see us banging our collective head against the wall.
It's not about all or nothing in one direction or the other. We can bring these concepts together and do it in an intelligent way and come out with a new, shared, understanding.
That is not only the basis of logic and of all advanced human civilization to have ever existed--it can be the key which turns a lock in this community and broadens our horizons in ways we could've never predicted individually.
The only requirement is that we be willing to listen to each other. So when this dude tells me his LAD threw anthers--I perk my ears up. I look at my LAD pack a little differently.
Maybe one guy looks at it as a waste of time--while I look at it as a new opportunity for inquiry. If this thing throws anthers, why? Can I stop it? Can I make it happen on purpose in a non-conventional way?
There are so many questions to answer. At the same time, maybe the OP just saved a commercial grower a bunch of money or an un-needed headache (sure LAD is a killer strain--but there are LOTS of those around and Alien would be the first one to tell you as much). Maybe we saved a caregiver from having to tell his patients he doesn't have their medicine right now--because he chose to not take the chance.
There is something for everyone to take away from something like this. My intention wasn't to be a science Nazi--but rather to make science a part of a conversation which it has so often, and erroneously in my very humble opinion, left out of.
So, once and for all, this isn't about challenging someone's truth or their claims. Its about doing our best to listen and then understand. The understanding each person takes away might be different, and that's okay because we aren't all the same and we don't all have the same motives--but it doesn't make any damn sense to say okay there's this thing called botany which is the study of plants, and then there's this plant called cannabis, but for some reason botany doesn't apply to cannabis.
That's just silly.
As desertsquirrel/Quantum9 has pointed out so many times before this is exactly the type of oversight which makes this "industry" the laughing stock of agrobusiness. The wacky names for all the nutrient formulations, the insanely gouged prices, all of this type of thing which suggests that this one particular plant is different from every other plant we've ever found.
In a manner of speaking, it is a special plant--sure. It's not THAT special, though.
I'm reminded of the guy who gives too much credence to the idea that a theory isn't yet proven. The theory of evolution, the theory of relativity, the theory of gravity.
Okay so you don't believe in evolution, well explain why we've observed it in our lifetime then?
The theory of relativity seems pretty damn far fetched, especially for one man to have elucidated it--it seems unbelievable. However, your GPS signal would go 20miles off per minute if it wasn't right on the money (the satellites' clocks require a speed adjustment to coincide with the gravity-time dilation they experienced which is predicted by this theory).
And all of our science teacher's favorite one. The theory of gravity, sure it's just a theory--and sure we don't have the foggiest how it works or what makes it go, or how it fits in to the big picture--but I don't see people who want to live jumping from very high places without a parachute either.
Science as a precondition and, in fact, a founding notion--accepts that it can't know everything. I've only suggested that experience should incorporate a similar notion into its charter. Fallibility is the ONLY guarantee in human institutions. It may be the only guarantee in ALL of what life has to offer each of us. So why turn tail from it rather than face up to it?
Experience has saved science's ass more than once. I only want to see science try to return the favor where it's able. This is one of those places.
People have been looking at hermaphroditism in cannabis with rose-colored glasses. Whether the genetics are to blame here or not, that much is as clear as day.
So why continue to ignore it?
The answer is (and this is ALL that I'm sure of, and ALL I'm willing to attempt to prove): We shouldn't and frankly we can't afford to. As far as I'm concerned every gene is sacred until proven otherwise. Who knows, someone may have already tossed the cure to cancer in compost heap because the jumped to conclusions.
I'm not asking everyone to put on a lab coat or sacrifice their growing space and time for the sake of science--but I think it's not to much to ask that people have a little bit of respect for the work their fellow humans and ancestors have done over the course of hundreds of years in search of solid, demonstrable, repeatable, answers that can benefit everyone and to at the very least acknowledge the sacrifices that they have made in our stead.
For people who don't want to read all of that here's the TLDR:
No one is mad that you didn't know this shit yesterday--but now that you've been informed it doesn't make sense to continue pretending you never were. It is WORTH IT to learn new things and to grow together in our knowledge of this plant--both scientific knowledge and applicable knowledge.
Hell even in academia we have scientists (who do the thing the first time) and the engineers (who fight with might and main to make the shit actually work on a useful scale--usually A LOT easier said than done). I wouldn't be an engineer vs. a scientist to save the baby Jesus--it's not my bag of chips. Same can be said for my grow style. Some of you guys are engineers of cannabis, I'm a scientist.
What in the actual fuck is a forum for in the first place if not this type of growth? I suggest everyone give that word a google if they are confused as to its meaning.
