Jesus. Excellent work by Michael Le Page, and utterly infuriating scenario. As Michael points out, the press release from Colossal called these dire wolves throughout. But now they want to argue that they never claimed that. Scandalous, really.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2481409-colossal-scientist-now-admits-they-havent-really-made-dire-wolves/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2481409-colossal-scientist-now-admits-they-havent-really-made-dire-wolves/
Comments
What do they do with the rejects? Do they just discard (kill) them like dog breeders do as they create designer dogs?
1. How about we do SOMETHING to protect the 4,000-6,000 endangered gray wolves remaining in the lower 48 states, before we get all slobbery about a “resurrected” species?
2. Colossal’s previous claims were utterly reckless, as they gave Interior Sec. Burgum an opening to undercut the ESA
BTW, they haven’t taken down their YT videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPX4tm-J2bU
https://colossal.com/direwolf/
https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/philip-ball-critical-mass-dire-wolves/
(If this does not pan out by next month, I will deny ever having said this.)
I also don't think this is the way to walk it back, I feel like a mea culpa would have played better.
(best article yet on this shit-show)
But the problem is with Colossal’s lack of rigor, not the morphological species concept.
I wouldn't characterize Colossal's problem as a lack of rigour. That's the problem if, say, you didn't perform all the proper control experiments. It seems to me that (lucratively) claiming you've made something you haven't...