More on whaling in Japan

The International Whaling Commission is meeting this weekend, and one of the things they'll be discussing is whether to keep allowing whaling for scientific purposes. Australia seems to be the country putting this forward, with one of their chief scientists in the IWC describing what kind of research Japan has actually been doing. Apparently they've been trying to hybridize whales with cows and other livestock -- not transferring individual genes from one species to another, but actually trying to fertilize cow eggs with minke whale sperm. I'd like to take it upon myself to save Japanese science a bit of effort here: that won't work. This isn't a pie-in-the-sky idea that's So Crazy It Just Might Work, to be vindicated when some brilliant research creates the first... I have no idea what you'd call it. This is just So Crazy, no chance of working.

There's two possibilities here. One is that Japan's life sciences are so primitive that a middle school biology textbook from the US would provide about a century of progress to them. This is certainly not the case. The other is that they're looking for the bare minimum of effort to continue their whaling without appearing to violate the ban on commercial whaling.