Perhaps the point is to preemptively stem the tide of lionization of McCandless.

>Did you even bother to read the article, which despite mentioning this detraction, has nothing to do with it?

In fact, it invalidates those criticisms against McCandless.

It doesn't really invalidate them, it says that if you eat the seeds while malnourished the ODAP can kill you. It doesn't mention anything about him dying in an unforeseen accident, he went into the Alaskan bush unprepared and died of malnutrition. If he brought a map he could've walked to safety when he started to realize his plight.

>he went into the Alaskan bush unprepared and died of malnutrition. If he brought a map he could've walked to safety when he started to realize his plight.

Did you actually read the article? That's not what it says. It suggests he became paralyzed by a neurotoxin, an event which no one could have foreseen at the time. Having a map wouldn't have cured his paralysis. I'm not even convinced he was lost.

The neurotoxin killed him in his weaken state. A weakened state he found himself in because he was starving already, basically from rabbit-starvation. Because he was unprepared.

Yes, had he not eaten the seeds, he (possibly) would still be alive... but he still would have been an idiot.

> Because he was unprepared.

Only if you stretch the term "unprepared" beyond what people understand the Park Ranger to mean.

Maybe "less than optimally prepared" for the scope of what he was trying to do, but "unprepared" is not fair. "Unprepared" basically puts him in the same category as people who die from hypothermia because they wear cotton clothes.

I don't think "sufficiently prepared that you are not operating at a significant caloric deficient for prolonged periods of time" is a high standard. He was in the same category of people who fail to dress properly. Those people have insufficient clothing, and he was unable to obtain sufficient food. This was all before the potato seeds became an issue.

The article specifically states that ODAP bears no no risk of toxicity unless someone is suffering from malnutrition, stress, or acute hunger.

No one should ever eat ODAP. It is too risky. Now the world knows (and in a very high profile way). No one should ever have to ask themselves if they are well-fed enough to eat wild potato seeds. You should never eat them.

McCandless had a map (though given that Krakauer himself perpetrated the myth, you can't really be faulted for thinking otherwise). Wikipedia, as well as the movie and a variety of primary sources make it clear that one was found among his possession. It's also possible, if not likely, that the onset of lathyrism left him no window for realizing his plight and walking out - the damage was irreversible at the time of ingestion (I'm admittedly sketchy on how fast the onset actually is - presumably it varies a lot).

Personally, I find the details completely beside the point. McCandless sacrificed everything to test his philosophical conjecture and I have nothing but respect for that. I honestly would've thought there'd be more empathy for it here.

But the article has no point.

Well, it's point is Christopher McCandless is a celebrity, lets work out how he died.

There is little science going on here, other than using science to work out how celebrity McCandless died.

Image if those scientists used their knowledge for real pressing issues that affect many people.

Not saying scientists should be boring and not allowed to do superficial things like all people. But take it for what it is.

Which is probably why people go back to the bigger picture.

>It’s been estimated that, in the twentieth century, more than a hundred thousand people worldwide were permanently paralyzed from eating grass pea.

Sounds like this issue isn't that superficial... it has affected a lot of people.

It wasn't grass pea - the author of the article was making a comparison between the symptoms of ODAP poisoning in people who had consumed grass pea and the symptoms displayed by McCandless. The plant that he was eating was wild potato, not grass pea, and it was McCandless's death that motivated some researchers to examine the wild potato plant to see if it contained the same toxin; that toxin turned out to be present in the plant, which had not previously been known.

According to the article, McCandless was using a reference book to determine which plants were safe to eat; the book listed wild potato as non-toxic, because it was not yet understood that it contained ODAP. If it had been known, McCandless would not likely have eaten wild potato, would not have been poisoned, and would likely not have died in the way that he did.

How he died counters the arguments of his hubris.