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
The reference numbers appear to be sourced from the Wikipedia article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_James_Audubon#Dispute_over_accuracy
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?
You’re asking a stranger in the internet to do a whole lot of work for you.
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.
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.
