True story, I stuck some of his preserved birds in a freezer once (regular insect prevention).
Who is that, and why is that, your night ask. Well, here’s the relevant wikipedia quote. Reference numbers maintained, because damn, that’s a lot of them.
The success of Birds of America has been marred by numerous accusations of plagiarism, scientific fraud, and deliberate manipulation of the primary record.[33][68][103][66][104][105] Research has uncovered that Audubon falsified (and fabricated) scientific data,[58][106] published fraudulent data and images in scientific journals and commercial books,[33][68][103][105] invented new species to impress potential subscribers,[68] and to “prank” rivals,[58][106] and most likely stole the holotype specimen of Harris’s hawk (Parabuteo unicinctus harrisi) before pretending not to know its collector, who was one of his subscribers.[107] He failed to credit work by Joseph Mason, prompting a series of articles in 1835 by critic John Neal questioning Audubon’s honesty and trustworthiness.[108] Audubon also repeatedly lied about the details of his autobiography, including the place and circumstances of his birth.[109][110] His diaries, which might have cleared up some of these issues, were destroyed by his granddaughter, who published a doctored version that realigned the “primary” record with some of his false narratives.[105]
Speaking of Harris’s Hawks, what a stupid name. So awkward to say. I really want them to change them to Baywing Hawks, so much cooler and at least slightly descriptive.
Number of citations is not important. It’s about quality. I don’t know anything about the quality of these citations from this. Do you mind summarizing? It’s ok if if nott
brief summary: every one of those citations is a different thing where he lied, stole or faked something.
Right, but who is making those claims? How do we know they are credible?
Take my breakdown with a grain of salt, as I did not dig into all of it, owing to the quantity of citations. Picking some at random, I found a mix between sources contemporary to the time period and ones that are secondary. I did not check the relevancy of the wiki quite, this was just 15 minutes of snooping around.
This one was interesting as it claims it was minutes from a meeting of a contemporary society called the the American Philosophical Society.
[103] Ord, George (1840). “Minutes from the Stated Meeting, September 18 [1840]”. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 1: 272.
They still seem to be running to this day, and sound like they have a long history in the US. Not to say they are trustworthy, I know nothing about them.
You’re asking a stranger in the internet to do a whole lot of work for you.
The reference numbers appear to be sourced from the Wikipedia article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_James_Audubon#Dispute_over_accuracy
I’m fine with removing the Audubon name from any group – not because of John Audubon himself, but because the current Audubon Society seems to be an unscrupulous, anti-union, money-grubbing, greenwashing mess.
