> When Mech published his book, even after more than a decade of field research, he had only once come within fifteen feet of a free-range wolf
> while he was on Ellesmere that “it dawned on me the need to tell the world about this alpha stuff. Because it’s nonsense.
so basically both the original and the myth are one anectdote each? he even say:
> It makes no sense up here.
how this special community of wolves generalize to other?
article doesn't care enough to say.
does the researcher say at some point?
is there anyone doing actual research with data that can be repeated, instead of deriving principles from natural observations? I thought we were past Aristoteles&co.
Did you read the full article? It says that current researchers don't ascribe to there being a struggle to become alpha male/female (long before Mech tried to get his booked to be stopped publishing). There is long paragraphs about how packs are really organised, which are presumably based on scientific studies. However in laypeople the myth still persists.
As a side note, you seem to dismiss research through observation of natural behavior. How else are you going to do it?
> is there anyone doing actual research with data that can be repeated, instead of deriving principles from natural observations?
I can’t imagine a way to do a controlled reproducible experiment looking at the social behaviour of wild animals. It’s not like any of this could be observed in a lab environment.
There are a lot of subjects that can only be studied through natural observation.
>I can’t imagine a way to do a controlled reproducible experiment
The question isn't "what would happen if", but "what's the behavior as exhibited", so you don't need to do a "controlled experiment". You just need to observe and accurately describe the kind of pack dynamics and behavior seen.
Observation is enough for this, and there are tons of studies done exactly that way on animals, some of them lasting decades, from gorillas to meerkats and from dolphins to mice...
natural observations can range from personal diaries to rigorous data collection at scale with cross validation and identification of confounding factors to the point where theories can be tested against the data from the field
the wording of the article and your reply hints at this research being of the first type.
> is there anyone doing actual research with data that can be repeated
It's impossible to have a controlled environment to study a phenomenon in an uncontrolled environment. As soon as you put these wolves in captivity, you're not measuring the same thing. And good luck repeating an experiment with wild wolves in nature.
> while he was on Ellesmere that “it dawned on me the need to tell the world about this alpha stuff. Because it’s nonsense.
so basically both the original and the myth are one anectdote each? he even say:
> It makes no sense up here.
how this special community of wolves generalize to other? article doesn't care enough to say.
does the researcher say at some point?
is there anyone doing actual research with data that can be repeated, instead of deriving principles from natural observations? I thought we were past Aristoteles&co.