An obscure, 15-year-old study has been getting a lot of attention lately thanks to a sensational claim made by a couple of scientists that an unnamed species of bright orange mushroom found in Hawaii caused spontaneous organsms in a handful of women who smelt its odour.
But before you get too excited, we’re sorry to tell you that there’s no actual proof that this mysterious mushroom does anything of the sort, because all we’re going off is a one-page observational study involving a very small sample size that’s not yet been reproduced, and which makes some pretty dubious assumptions about female biology.
Let’s start from the beginning. In 2001, a pair of medical scientists published a report in the International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms (the site's down atm) describing the effects of an unnamed species of mushroom on 36 male and female volunteers.
Belonging to Dictyophora genus of stinkhorn mushrooms, which has since been renamed as Phallus, the mushroom is said to only grow on top of the 600 to 1,000