When the private biotechnology company Colossal Biosciences announced its plans to bring the dodo back to life in early 2023, Sabrina Imbler was immediately skeptical. The firm’s newly publicized plans to use ancient DNA recovered from a dodo skull to reverse engineer a version of the extinct flightless bird had sparked a flurry of news coverage, “even though no de-extinction has happened yet,” says Imbler, a science writer at Defector, a news outlet primarily known for sports coverage. “That kind of rankled me,” they say.
Colossal, after all, had made similar claims before, with little to show for it. Since launching in 2021, the company has said they will de-extinct the woolly mammoth and Tasmanian tiger, attracting hundreds of millions of dollars from venture capitalists and celebrity investors. Each announcement garnered its own round of buzzy, breathless stories—coverage that Imbler found to be mostly lacking.
Some stories failed to make clear that the de-extincted animal wouldn’t be an exact replica but a genetic hybrid representing scientists’ best approximation. Others glossed over the suffering de-extinction efforts could impose on the surrogate animals tasked with carrying the target species to term, or failed to imagine what life would be like for an animal born into the world long after its last ancestor died. Amid all the enthusiasm, Imbler felt there wasn’t enough discussion of whether scientists should be pursuing de-extinction at all.
With encouragement from their editor, they decided to take on the subject in a reported opinion feature, a format that was mostly unfamiliar to them. Imbler had written shorter opinion blogs before, but this story felt bigger. And after many researchers known to be vocal on this issue declined their interview requests, Imbler realized their opinion would have to serve as the piece’s backbone, guiding the reader toward their own conclusion.
They originally told their editor that they’d file the story in a month’s time. The final story—“What Kind of Future Does De-Extinction Promise?”—which was published in December 2023, ended up taking almost a year, during which the shape and tone of the story shifted from a snarky takedown of Colossal to a more somber and studied reflection. In the final version, Imbler guides readers through the science of each step of de-extinction—from designing a genome to birthing a “firstling”—while posing ethical questions directly to their audience. At the close of the story, they lay out their own view, ultimately prompting readers to take a stance themselves.
Here, Imbler tells Jonathan Lambert about the merits of reported opinion stories, how to cover the intersection of science and ethics, and the craft of writing science stories for broader audiences. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
How did you approach reporting for and writing a feature that relied this much on your own opinion?
A lot of de-extinction stories focus on the science, which is incredibly cool. I knew I wanted this piece to be an explainer that someone who has never heard of de-extinction would be able to understand. But my focus was not “Oh, how cool is this new technology?” but rather the ethical questions that Colossal has tried to sidestep. From the start, I let my opinion guide the structure of the story and be visible throughout.
The most impactful things that I read that helped me figure out how I felt about de-extinction were opinion pieces by researchers. By exposing myself to all these opinions—some of which I disagreed with, or agreed with parts, or they made me uncomfortable—I was able to find my own. I’m not a scientist, but I felt that the reporting I was doing buttressed my own opinion. I [took] a position of authority in the piece [and] that wasn’t just because I quoted 20 different scientists.
Initially [I] planned to speak to every single person who has ever shared an opinion on de-extinction, especially anyone saying anything critical of it. Those voices were the voices I wanted to hear, but also the voices I felt weren’t being centered in the wall-to-wall coverage of de-extinction. But I actually had a lot of trouble getting people to speak with me for this piece.
Why do you think that is?
I think no one in science research has heard of Defector, which focuses on sports. Everyone is really busy, and if you’re reached out to by this sports blog, maybe you’re not going to respond. Also, I was explicit in saying that I was writing a reported opinion piece that was critical of de-extinction, and I think a lot of researchers may not want to be quoted in a [journalistic] piece that was critical of this incredibly powerful and very well-funded company.
I managed to get some very helpful people to talk with me, but because I couldn’t talk to as many people as I wanted to, I realized that my own opinion would have to be very clear and very well-researched.
How did your reporting shift when you couldn’t talk with everyone you wanted to?
After about six months of me sending out these batches of requests to scientists, with not many getting back to me, I realized that maybe I didn’t have that much to gain by asking more of these experts—many who had already said their piece about [de-extinction]—a lot of the same questions. Maybe my definition of sources is too narrow. If scientists aren’t going to talk to me, who else belongs in this story?
So, I started trying to talk to people in conservation who work with living endangered species. Philosophers were another really important source. Whether or not I spoke with them, I could read their work. I was reading a lot of philosophy and thinking, “Does this feel right to me? Do I agree with this?”
I didn’t want to write this to convince people that this is the only way to think about it, but rather to say I’ve digested the material, I’ve read a lot of what’s out there, [and] this is where I stand.
— Sabrina Imbler
How did you handle your interview with Colossal, knowing they might be defensive?
It was incredibly easy to talk with Ben Lamm, the founder, but we only spoke for about 40 minutes. I had all these questions, but when you talk to someone who is so good at talking to the press, you’ll ask them one question, and then they’ll talk for 15 minutes and won’t have answered your question. My advice would be to ask at the top of the interview how much time we have—to help figure out what questions to ask. If at 10 minutes in, you’re realizing all of these answers are taking a really long time, you can ask [yourself], “Are there versions of my pre-written questions that would force a yes-or-no answer [that would confirm key statements]?”
I tried to be as direct as possible to get specific answers and not have him bloviate or redirect, which happened a lot. The most productive questions were very specific: presenting what he or Colossal had said back to him and asking him to confirm or elaborate on it.
There’s this idea that journalists are supposed to be objective, mirroring the objectivity scientists are supposed to have. What do you think this kind of reported opinion piece can accomplish that a more traditional story might not?
A lot of features on de-extinction do raise larger ethical questions. But I’d leave them not really knowing how I felt. I understood that people were trying to do de-extinction, I understood the science and that some scientists were tentatively excited, and others were critical. But in a straightforward news story, you can only give one or two quotes to each source that is critical of the project, because they’re not the focus of the story. How am I supposed to take these two quotes and formulate my own opinion? I was never sure how I felt about what was happening, aside from a gut feeling of suspicion and confusion.
I didn’t want to write this to convince people that this is the only way to think about it, but rather to say I’ve digested the material, I’ve read a lot of what’s out there, [and] this is where I stand, with the hope that this would help them make their own decision or just think more deeply on the subject.
In line with that, you were measured with your opinion in the piece, too. In several places, you’re simply posing questions to the reader: “What is an elephant’s understanding of a miscarriage?” and “What is the quality of life of a social creature who is utterly, completely alone?” How did you land on that approach?
As I was writing it, I realized that there’s no right way to think about de-extinction. It’s an enormously complex issue. I was very aware that my own reaction to a lot of these questions is very specific and grounded in my own belief system, and everyone’s going to have a different reaction to them. So rather than me saying, “This is why this is wrong,” I felt a better way to get people to think critically was to put those questions in there for the reader to just sit with. I just posed the same questions and facts that I was thinking about.
I’m always trying to get people to care about science and to care about creatures…. I try to think of new ways I can make people interested in these things and have done a lot of experimenting with different formats, including silly science writing.
— Sabrina Imbler
Initially, my lede was much more insulting of this proxy dodo. I was getting really florid with imagining what it would be like to [see a de-extincted dodo navigating its new environment alone], how depressing it would be. And then I realized that the whole story is going to make that point for me. So, I really didn’t want to get bogged down in trying to convince someone when I hadn’t actually given them any facts beyond this single [dodo] scenario. I wanted to start with a realistic expectation of what we might get from de-extinction, so that readers can figure out if this is worth all the ethical questions I pose later.
In the section about what it would be like to be the first mammoth, there were earlier versions of the story where I included a lot more direct emotional appeals. Or, in talking about what surrogacy would look like for elephants, it felt at times like I was veering into an animal rights tone. I didn’t want to do that—even though I [was] having very personal, emotional reactions to what’s being asked of the animals there—since it would turn some people off who don’t share these same emotional responses.
A lot of that section was me working through my own feelings about all of these sprawling questions that I didn’t feel capable of having a single take on. Leaving the questions in was a better way of communicating that I don’t know the right choices.
This story took a lot longer than you and your editor initially envisioned. How much freedom did your editor give you with the timeline and scope?
My editor never gave me a hard deadline, so I had pretty much total freedom in directing when the piece would go up. That was good, but also bad in a way, because I’d sometimes feel so overwhelmed by it that I wouldn’t actually prioritize it. But this freedom was helpful in letting me set the scope of the story. When I first filed, I was like, “I’m so sorry, it’s 6,000 words.” And he was like, “That feels like an appropriate amount of words for this really big topic.”
It was really helpful, because I felt like nothing was out of bounds—the length of the story, the number of sources, or even the personal insertion I do at the end.
It seems like you have a lot of freedom at Defector to pursue stories you’re passionate about. How do you balance that with what you think your audience, who might come to Defector for sports coverage, is looking for?
It has been both incredible and makes me quake in my bones often to think about how much freedom I have and how I can responsibly use that freedom. When I write for Defector’s audience, I’m always trying to get people to care about science and to care about creatures, because they’re not necessarily subscribing for that. I try to think of new ways I can make people interested in these things and have done a lot of experimenting with different formats, including silly science writing. [For example,] I’ve written blogs from the perspective of animals.
When Defector reached out to see if I wanted to apply [for a job], I was like, “I don’t do sports. What would you want me to write about?” They said I could write about animals, but that “we always thought your voice and tone feel very Defector-y—that tone of being humorous and snarky but also rigorous, and motivated by an interest in holding people accountable. That feels like it suffuses all of the writing we do.”
Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, DC–based freelance journalist who covers science, health, and policy. He’s been a staff writer at Grid and Science News, and has written for Nature News, NPR, Quanta Magazine, and the Dallas Morning News. He holds a master’s degree in evolutionary biology from Cornell University. Follow him on X @evolambert, or on Bluesky @jonlambert.bsky.social