This is a tough
one for me. A little backstory. Back in graduate school, we at Auburn hosted
SoHoST – the Southern History of Science and Technology conference. I met a number of other graduate students
from the South there, but one that stood out was a student who was studying the
history of paleontology. I was kind of
jealous, “why didn’t I think of that?”
All these years later, her book was published in 2022 and I knew I would
have to read it.
It's been
sitting on my shelf for a little bit, but with my nephew reading Jurassic
Park for the first time, I final decided to pick up Ancient DNA: The
Making of a Celebrity Science by Elizabeth D. Jones. I’ll try to be nice but honest. It was a struggle for me to read, perhaps
because I am no longer in the field. It
was well written, but it seemed very “surface level” to me. One of the more frustrating things is that it
brought up a few very interesting, in my eyes, moral questions, but they were
not really dealt with.
As the title
says, the book if focused on the development of the “ancient DNA” wing of
science, which was highly influence by Jurassic Park, but in reality
deals with any species that has become extinct.
Once I realized that the consensus is that DNA cannot survive more than
1 million years, meaning dinosaur DNA cannot survive, I kind of checked out. But again, there were some moral questions
that could be discussed more. She
outlines how this is a “celebrity science,” meaning it has gained traction
largely because it is something that can be sold to the media and the public
(we can resurrect the woolly mammoth! Or dinosaurs!). The problem that is brought up is that it
tends to lead at least some scientists to focus on areas that they can “sell.” Is that really a good thing? Too much of science today is focused on what “sells”
rather than what is worthy to be studied or even true (“I can be published if I
say that we have found dinosaur DNA, even if it’s not true and can never be
true.” – and don’t get me started in other areas of science *cough* environment
*cough*). The good news is that at least
some scientists are questioning this.
Another major moral question, again being questioned by scientists but needing further study outside of what is given here, just because we can do something does that mean that we should (paraphrasing Ian Malcolm)? Say we could de-extinct a woolly mammoth (there’s a strong argument that we can’t), should we? Even more importantly, if a scientist could impregnate a woman with a neanderthal fetus (again, it probably can’t actually happen), should they? I understand those questions aren’t necessarily the scope of this book, and I’m doing the old “this is the book that you should have written,” which isn’t fair, but I still would have liked a little more in-depth discussion on these moral questions.
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