Quantophrenia and the Promises of Genetics: Do Research Practices (Dis)advantage the «Conservation» of Species?

Population genetics is concerned with the variability of genetic diversity in populations subjected to different evolutionary forces. One concrete application of this research is international genetic diversity conservation policies. Our perspective manuscript is a plea for research activities and policies that control their environmental consequences, for example, carbon emissions due to technical choices, and are emancipated from the main economic model. We have indeed witnessed a profound transformation in population genetic studies due to the proliferation of molecular markers and DNA sequencing tools. We analyze the underlying assumptions, and even the beliefs, of the scientific community regarding the quantophrenic use of markers when very significant results on the determinants of genetic diversity are already available. We also discuss the implications of these practices for conservation genetics policy at the international level. The community is indeed defending an approach that aims to describe effective population sizes on a large scale, without considering the environmental costs of these actions. In this paper, we also discuss the "knowledge hypothesis," that is, that knowledge would lead to effective action. We argue that both the meaning (through the associated promises) and the materiality (the environmental footprint of practices) must be considered in order to rebuild the discipline.