Science works, but it requires unwavering adherence to a system.
The pollution of misinformation is science’s enemy. As G.K. Chesterton said “If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again”.
The public scientific system – peer review for funding, peer review for publication, and public scrutiny and open criticism thereafter – can help keep the post clean.
None of these filters is perfect, but together the scientific system removes most of the misinformation that contaminates a lot of human discourse.
Private science can also work when it signs up to the system. The non-Dire Wolves are a timely reminder about what happens when you stray from this path.
The company Colossal is not funded by public peer reviewed grants. Their website suggests they are supported by Chris Hemsworth, Peter Jackson, Paris Hilton, and Tiger Woods among others.
Next, Colossal has not published their work on the non-Dire Wolves. They used a press release without peer review.
But they have not escaped public scrutiny.
Thank heavens for the ABC and Radio National’s Fran Kelly’s astute conversation with Colossal’s Chief Scientific Officer, Dr Beth Shapiro.
Shapiro admits that they have not resurrected Dire Wolves, saying they “are genetically modified Grey Wolves that contain 20 edits that manifest as some of the traits that were embodied by Dire Wolves” – basically Colossal changed a few genes to make Grey Wolves bigger and whiter.
But she claims that one obscure definition of a species could apply; “by some of the definitions they would be Dire Wolves, morphologically they are similar to Dire Wolves, when we classify species in the fossil record this is the species concept that we go with.”
Yes, when considering fossils, scientists use that definition; because with fossils we have nothing but shape. But to call these wolves Dire Wolves is misleading. It would be like calling a hairy elephant a Woolly Mammoth. If one accepts such word games – a cow with one horn cut off is a ‘unicorn’.
Interestingly, Shapiro, who is an experienced scientist, understands all this – “I accept that we have not cloned a Dire Wolf … in 2015 I published a book about how it wasn’t possible to clone extinct species”. The Colossal website even says, “it is currently impossible to perform full genome synthesis of or to clone extinct animals”.
So, you might expect that when Fran Kelly asked about their Thylacine project, Shapiro may have become cautious. She didn’t.
First, she said she did not to know when the Thylacine is due to be resurrected and that the project leader, Andrew Pask, should be consulted. I checked the web. In mid-2022 he said, “With this partnership [with Colossal], I now believe that in ten years’ time we could have our first living baby thylacine”.
With just 7 years to go, I was surprised to hear Shapiro go into overdrive on the Thylacine project “We have done a lot…some tremendous work has happened…super exciting… which is really exciting news… it is a really incredible, amazing thing”.
Remember, the aim here is to resurrect the Thylacine (or at least something that looks like it), and to re-introduce it to restore the ecosystem in Tasmania together with other de-extincted creatures to tackle climate change.
I do not buy any of this.
One problem is they have no surrogate – there is no Grey Wolf or Asian Elephant to build on. They are using cells from the Fat Tailed Dunnart – a little-known and distantly-related marsupial. They need to make millions of genetic edits. As Shapiro said to Fran Kelly in the same interview “we couldn’t make that many changes to a living cell at the same time without that cell falling to pieces”.
Secondly, as she also said about resurrecting the Steller Sea Cow “we can’t do that – there isn’t an appropriate surrogate”. Nor is the Fat Tailed Dunnart a good surrogate for the Thylacine!
But they know this. Their idea is to gradually edit in a few important features of the Thylacine genome – stripes perhaps – into some Fat Tailed Dunnart cells and then … wait for it … because there is no appropriate surrogate, “we are pursuing growing marsupials from conception to birth in a test-tube without a surrogate”.
Remember so-called ‘test-tube’ babies were never grown in a test-tube, just the fertilisation was done in glass, but here the whole pregnancy will be in a test-tube.
Perhaps one day the combined power of human science may develop a human womb in a test-tube, but we know nothing of the reproductive physiology of the Thylacine – or whatever hybrid they create.
What’s more, only a few labs study Fat Tailed Dunnarts. A lot is said about how science is not about single heroes, and it really is not. Good science builds as it goes. With this amount of hype it will prove difficult for the project to keep recruiting talent.
I don’t accept that we will see a Thylacine pup in 2032.
But those supporting this project may continue to champion the project. Because humans love their teams, whether they are companies, labs, or football teams. Even when our team is losing, we often keep barracking for it.
Loyalty beats logic.
This is my message. Science is what you can trust – what we must trust. The process of peer review and open criticism works. it provides a self-correcting foundation on which our civilisation is built. I believe Colossal has the capacity to do some good and to develop some new techniques, but for the sake of everyone, including their own researchers, I urge them to sign up to the process of science.
Professor Merlin Crossley is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic Quality) at the University of New South Wales.
