You may recall the recent thread here about geneticist Dr. George Church seeking "an adventurous female" to give birth to a cloned Neanderthal baby. Turns out his statements from an interview with Der Spiegel were misinterpreted and sensationalized. Maybe he was misquoted; I'd go back and look, but I'm on mobile and it's a huge pain.

Dr. Church got a bunch of flak, apparently, and now says this:

"'The public should be able to detect cases where things seem implausible,' Church said in an interview at his office at Harvard Medical School in Boston. 'Everybody's fib detector should have been going off. They should have said, ‘What? Who would believe this?' ... This really indicates that we should have scientific literacy.'"

http://m.yahoo.com/w/legobpengine/news/neanderthal-cloning-chatter-highlights-scientific-illiteracy-051317850.html?.b=index&.ts=1359440926&.intl=US&.lang=en

My thought upon reading that article was, "@#%&*! Fooled again!" What was that I was just saying about sucking it up like Hoover.

I did doubt that a Neanderthal could be recreated--wondered if it was possible on a couple of counts, and even considered the story might be bogus. Mostly, though, I just thought it was a terrible idea and, in the end, mostly believed it.

Better late than never, the Yahoo! story made me curious enough to go looking for the Der Spiegel interview. It's a very worthwhile and I think amazing read. (On edit) I thought it seemed long when I read it on my phone, but now that I'm on my PC I see it's really not:

http://m.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/a-877634.html#spRedirectedFrom=www&referrrer

Sure sounds to me like Dr. Church believes it's possible to clone a Neanderthal, and like he wants and maybe even intends to try. I'm feeling less foolish, but it's always a good idea to follow up on those pesky little doubts and learn some things.



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 01/29/2013 11:30AM by munchybotaz.

His name alone makes my head feel wonky. Dr.Church. Sounds like a bad sci-fi movie star.

I never read up on this story, but I don't know why one's bull**** detector should go off on hearing about something like this. Cloning a Neanderthal is an inevitability at this point. We have the technology, they're a fascinating part of the human story, we have Neanderthal DNA samples taken from fossil cores, what's left to prevent it?

The first story I saw, that was posted here, quotes him as having said, "Now I need an adventurous female human."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2265402/Adventurous-human-woman-wanted-birth-Neanderthal-man-Harvard-professor.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

I didn't see that in the Der Spiegel interview, and I doubt he'd have said it in his book, so maybe he was misquoted. But there's a big difference between "I was misquoted [or misinterpreted]" and "You sillies, check your fib detectors!" He sounded pretty enthusiastic to me.

Knowing an entire genome, constructed via analysis using "DNA amplification" techniques in no way addresses the complexity of re-creating the entire set of chromosomes and implanting it in--presumably human--a viable ova...

The following article illustrates the hype surrounding the proposed cloning of a woolly mammoth, a far less daunting proposition than Neanderthals, since DNA can be extracted from mammoths frozen in the permafrost near the Arctic.

http://io9.com/5865590/no-we-wont-be-able-to-clone-a-woolly-mammoth-in-the-next-five-years

Bunk sells; de-bunking doesn't.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/29/2013 05:29PM by SL Cabbie.

Thanks for the link, and the info on the Ibex.


(Am I the only one that sees an anomaly in the fact that when neutrinos are found to move faster than the speed of light everyone yells "repeat repeat it must be repeated" but when a higgs-boson is found everyone yells "Nobels Nobels, Nobels all around"?)

I especially enjoyed "The Challenges of Being a Modern Mammoth."

What? No cloned wooly mammoth? I'm bummed. I was pretty sure Wyoming would start a hunting season:-)

We may be scientifically illiterate, but at least most of us know not to make jokes to Germans, for an article being translated into German. Germany isn't exactly known for its sense of humor.

I don't know, Hitler was pretty accomplished at stand-up. Have you seen him work a crowd?

...too far. :]

Just because he is a scientist, doesn't mean he is not capable of being an idiot.

Yeah, OF COURSE he never said that! ;o\/

Several times in my career as a journalist I have quoted people (well, politicians so that's not quite the same thing...) who, when their actual words were published, got them into a real s**t storm, pretend that I had either made up the quote or "must have misheard them".

That's why journalists keep their notebooks.