I love the idea of cloning, but as I understand it, it's not remotely like getting a second copy of the pet you love. Being genetically a twin is one thing. Being the second coming is something else. It sounds like cloning would have a much more practical application with livestock, assuming the breed registry allows it. Thoroughbreds have to be produced by a live cover to be registered in the studbook. I'm pretty sure that's not the case with Standardbreds, and I know it's not the case with sport horses, which can be produced with AI. They'd be good candidates for cloning, since the aim would be furthering the genetic profile and not recreating a specific pet's personality. Same for cattle. Several of my cows are bred by AI (which is unbelievably cheap) because it gives me access to bulls that I don't have to keep on my own property. Cloning would have to come way down in price to be competitive with AI for livestock producers, but it makes sense if one of the parents of the clonee isn't available any more and if there's no frozen semen available.
It's funny (not ha-ha funny) that the same people who leap to label skeptics and critics as "science deniers" on everything from "covid" to climate change, and who claim to deplore mis/dis/mal-information, are some of the same people who have absolutely nothing to say about the fraud perpetrated by "researchers" who buy citations. Is it a massive scandal that everyone's talking about? Has it galvanized insiders into insisting on integrity and honesty? I read a lot, but I haven't heard anything about it.
Medical errors are the third-leading cause of death in the US. Every year. Year after year. If the airlines crashed a fully-loaded 767 and 747 three days in a row, no one would get on an airplane again. An equivalent number die daily from medical errors. When 2-3 airliners crashed every year, the industry understood that something had to change, and something did. It took fifty years of hard work and hard lessons, but it happened. Medicine? Researchers in laboratory and academic settings? Meh. Researchers aren't crashing airplanes or mis-dosing patients, but I don't understand the indifference or even apparent hostility toward one's own career, integrity, and profession.
I agree, the cloned pet will likely have notable differences. While part of the behavior is genetically coded, other aspects of the personality come from its experiences (which will all be new). It's the age-old question of nature versus nurture. Cloning seems better suited to endangered animal restoration, at least until it becomes more affordable.
Artificial insemination (AI), as you mentioned, is still the best workhorse for most breeding applications. I completely agree. I'm more excited about the potential to take an animal's DNA, perform edits to create desired traits, and then use that DNA for somatic nuclear transfer and cloning. That’s where the real value lies—it's how they've been genetically engineering pig organs to make them more compatible for xenotransplantation. For example, pig DNA is edited to remove specific antigen-associated proteins, and then somatic nuclear transfers are performed to produce pigs with the desired traits. Another example might be engineering American Black Angus with genes associated with Wagyu beef.
I'm no longer in academia, but many of us were already suspicious of this, so it doesn’t come as a shock. The incentives aren't aligned with advancing meaningful science as much as they are with securing coveted academic positions. This is reflected in the exodus of many people I know into industry positions.
The real scandal that was shocking at the time was learning how many academics had connections to Jeffrey Epstein.
What an interesting summary about citation fraud. While Google scholar is a great resource, I don't think Google qualifies as a metric for academics research standing, particularly, if they don't have in place reliable measures to validate the metrics.
Yeah, I don't think it comes as a shock to anyone in the field. Academia was already hyper-competitive, but the incentives are becoming increasingly misaligned really pushing it to the brink. Now, to get to a STEM tenure track position, it often requires 2 substantial postdoctoral research positions and even working under another professor as a research associate. This has pushed the average tenure track age to mid to late 30s. H-index and citation counts are crucial for securing these positions, and no one is going to audit these numbers—they’ll just look them up and trust what they see, whether it’s from Google Scholar or another source. The irony is that these jobs aren't even that well-paying, considering the insane hours and a lifetime of training.
Good response from David, but to add to this: plenty of grants that I apply for, and I have reviewed for, include Google Scholar as key metrics (it's sometimes even stipulated to include your Google Scholar profile). What I didn't realise was how rife the citation black market is. Makes me very sad.
Thanks for chiming in here - you're better to speak on this than I am! It's been a few years since i've been in academia.
Thinking more about this - there have always been ways to game up a H-index, either by adding people to papers who didn't contribute or peppering them with self citations. But this definitely takes it up a level.
I love the idea of cloning, but as I understand it, it's not remotely like getting a second copy of the pet you love. Being genetically a twin is one thing. Being the second coming is something else. It sounds like cloning would have a much more practical application with livestock, assuming the breed registry allows it. Thoroughbreds have to be produced by a live cover to be registered in the studbook. I'm pretty sure that's not the case with Standardbreds, and I know it's not the case with sport horses, which can be produced with AI. They'd be good candidates for cloning, since the aim would be furthering the genetic profile and not recreating a specific pet's personality. Same for cattle. Several of my cows are bred by AI (which is unbelievably cheap) because it gives me access to bulls that I don't have to keep on my own property. Cloning would have to come way down in price to be competitive with AI for livestock producers, but it makes sense if one of the parents of the clonee isn't available any more and if there's no frozen semen available.
It's funny (not ha-ha funny) that the same people who leap to label skeptics and critics as "science deniers" on everything from "covid" to climate change, and who claim to deplore mis/dis/mal-information, are some of the same people who have absolutely nothing to say about the fraud perpetrated by "researchers" who buy citations. Is it a massive scandal that everyone's talking about? Has it galvanized insiders into insisting on integrity and honesty? I read a lot, but I haven't heard anything about it.
Medical errors are the third-leading cause of death in the US. Every year. Year after year. If the airlines crashed a fully-loaded 767 and 747 three days in a row, no one would get on an airplane again. An equivalent number die daily from medical errors. When 2-3 airliners crashed every year, the industry understood that something had to change, and something did. It took fifty years of hard work and hard lessons, but it happened. Medicine? Researchers in laboratory and academic settings? Meh. Researchers aren't crashing airplanes or mis-dosing patients, but I don't understand the indifference or even apparent hostility toward one's own career, integrity, and profession.
I agree, the cloned pet will likely have notable differences. While part of the behavior is genetically coded, other aspects of the personality come from its experiences (which will all be new). It's the age-old question of nature versus nurture. Cloning seems better suited to endangered animal restoration, at least until it becomes more affordable.
Artificial insemination (AI), as you mentioned, is still the best workhorse for most breeding applications. I completely agree. I'm more excited about the potential to take an animal's DNA, perform edits to create desired traits, and then use that DNA for somatic nuclear transfer and cloning. That’s where the real value lies—it's how they've been genetically engineering pig organs to make them more compatible for xenotransplantation. For example, pig DNA is edited to remove specific antigen-associated proteins, and then somatic nuclear transfers are performed to produce pigs with the desired traits. Another example might be engineering American Black Angus with genes associated with Wagyu beef.
I'm no longer in academia, but many of us were already suspicious of this, so it doesn’t come as a shock. The incentives aren't aligned with advancing meaningful science as much as they are with securing coveted academic positions. This is reflected in the exodus of many people I know into industry positions.
The real scandal that was shocking at the time was learning how many academics had connections to Jeffrey Epstein.
What an interesting summary about citation fraud. While Google scholar is a great resource, I don't think Google qualifies as a metric for academics research standing, particularly, if they don't have in place reliable measures to validate the metrics.
Yeah, I don't think it comes as a shock to anyone in the field. Academia was already hyper-competitive, but the incentives are becoming increasingly misaligned really pushing it to the brink. Now, to get to a STEM tenure track position, it often requires 2 substantial postdoctoral research positions and even working under another professor as a research associate. This has pushed the average tenure track age to mid to late 30s. H-index and citation counts are crucial for securing these positions, and no one is going to audit these numbers—they’ll just look them up and trust what they see, whether it’s from Google Scholar or another source. The irony is that these jobs aren't even that well-paying, considering the insane hours and a lifetime of training.
Good response from David, but to add to this: plenty of grants that I apply for, and I have reviewed for, include Google Scholar as key metrics (it's sometimes even stipulated to include your Google Scholar profile). What I didn't realise was how rife the citation black market is. Makes me very sad.
Thanks for chiming in here - you're better to speak on this than I am! It's been a few years since i've been in academia.
Thinking more about this - there have always been ways to game up a H-index, either by adding people to papers who didn't contribute or peppering them with self citations. But this definitely takes it up a level.
Great roundup, David. Didn't know about the myostatin pathway. That's one scary looking ripped bull!
Thanks, Nathan! Nature is amazing. There are a few other examples I was thinking of showing, but I plan to save them for another article!
Are you saying we can bring back Ol’ Yeller?
We can certainly birth a dog with his exact genome.
Coolness 100