It was discovered because it's existence wasn't shared with the world nor was it's taxonomy properly categorized. It was discovered because these people we're keeping this monkey a secret to the world.

Why does Lisa have such a blatant disregard for science? 

Liken it to a game of hide and seek. One child hides, the other seeks. When the seeker discovers the hidden child, it will exclaim "Ha I found you!" How asinine would it be if for the hidden child to go "No you didn't. I've been here the entire time."

Or is hide-and-seek and social construct that furthers to oppress indigenous people?

There's a they're/their/there error up there.

Not a sociological input, but does anyone else think there's like a 70% chance that first monkey is an animated monkey?

I
think it is possible to defend the claim that a piece of knowledge,
when published and disseminated by a scientific community, becomes
accessible in a qualitatively different way, and not merely to "the
Western world".  

Let me illustrate with an example from my own field.  In 1964,
Sharkovsky published a very important theorem in the Ukranian
Mathematical Journal, an extremely obscure organ published behind the Iron
Curtain.  As a result, practically no one else knew of the result until a
special case of the theorem was proven eleven years later by Li and
Yorke, working in the US.  Sharkovsky's work became well-known only when
Sharkovsky himself heard of their work and managed to contact Yorke at a
conference in Berlin.

No one denies that the theorem is Sharkovsky's, but it is also the case
that when Li and Yorke published their result, the work became much more
widely known; Sharkovsky could read Li and Yorke's paper, but Li and Yorke couldn't read Sharkovsky's.  Crucially, a professor of mine from Kazakhstan first learned of the theorem through Li and Yorke; I don't think that was atypical.

So the important question isn't "was the theorem already known by Sharkovsky after Sharkovsky published?" (yes, obviously) but "was the theorem known by any arbitrary mathematician around the world after Sharkovsky published?" (no).  Similarly, of course the Congolese knew about the lesula before this team published in PLoS ONE.  But did arbitrary scientists in other non-Western states know about it?  No, and that's an important difference.

The really really crazy thing about the Columbus analogy is that there *were* white people here in the New World well before his time.  They were white, they were pretty much Westerners--even if their contribution to Western culture was peripheral there for a while.  But they don't count either, for some reason I cannot fathom.  The indigenous, of course, should have counted first and foremost, but it's nuts how whites will start splitting hairs about who's the whitest and who has the most privilege.  It's a fricking lack of melanin already.  It means your bones won't fall apart at the far latitudes.  IT MEANS NOTHING.  GET OVER IT.  Sheesh.

They’re knowledge isn’t real - THEIR knowledge isn't real. Use the possessive, please!

It is significant that the Congolese who were aware of the lesula monkey were, in all likelihood, previously unaware that it was not a formally recorded species. This could quite plausibly happen in the Western world, though the time span between observation and "discovery" would probably be much shorter given the relative density of zoologists. How many times, when swatting away a fly, do you take the time to investigate which of the 240,000 species of the order Diptera is making a mild nuisance of itself? 

The use of the word "discovered," though not without unfortunate baggage, is a very typical example of the sensationalism that accompanies virtually every piece of science coverage in the mainstream press. Without big splashy words like that, it's hard to make a scientific finding sound interesting or accessible to a casual reader. 

But it doesn't evenly compare to the Christopher Columbus example of the word unless this "discovery" is subsequently used as a pretext and justification for violently seizing and colonizing the lesula monkey. 

The issue of "discovered" being a problematic shorthand for the work being done is widely known by the scientific community. That is why most people use terms like "new to science" when discussing novel treatments of species in the literature.  Most scientist ( in the modern era, at least) are careful and nuanced in their writing and speaking. Then their paper gets digested by a string of journalists and editors, resulting in these painfully black and white (and generally misleading) headlines and blurbs. 

Secondly, all of the rage about how nothing *needs* to be described by imperial, ivory tower eggheads in order to exist......no shit. No scientist talks that way. No scientist thinks that way. The very real and important purpose of describing each species in a semi-standardized way allows that information to be used by people who will be doing further research. Say, constructing phylogenies of extant monkey species etc. It furthers the understand for other scientists and allows a more accurate description of the world. The information gathered is no more *valid* that then information that a local person might have gleaned through contact and observation, however, information gathered by a scientist is done in a systematic and purposeful way for a specific purpose. Generally, the observations done by a scientist generate the most useful information for OTHER SCIENTISTS to use. 

Scientists are not exploring the world in order to send back decrees to the citizenry of their own homelands about what does and doesn't exist, like some 17th century adventure-explorer. They are usually trying to answer some very specific question where very specific information on the species is useful.

If an american scientist went into an african village and found an animal they'd never seen before and then found out that the people had been keeping detailed records of the habits of that animal, the scientist would be overjoyed...This kind of information is sometimes used, especially when dealing with agricultural or livestock records.

Lastly, scientists come from all over the world. It is not a uniquely western enterprise. We all have to use a common format and meet mutually embraced standards in order to facilitate communication and exchange. But science - the act of systematic observation, questioning and record keeping of the natural world - is a human enterprise.  

"Their* knowledge"

First paragraph: "They're knowledge isn't real." should be: "Their knowledge isn't real."

Modern scientific theories more accurately describe the physical world than the folk theories which preceded them.  Yes or no?  That's all I'm talking about here.

Now I’m not saying that it doesn’t matter that a trained scientist encountered the monkey and established it as a unique and previously undocumented species. The team did a lot of work to establish this. As the Times, which otherwise does a fine job on the story, explains: fireboy and watergirl

i will follow up and look forward to unicorn coloring pages

google is everything

The study included biological geneticists and biological anthropologists, who helped confirm that monkeys differ from owl faces, even though the two share a common genetic ancestry.

The study included biological geneticists and biological anthropologists, who helped confirm that monkeys differ from owl faces, even though the two share a common genetic ancestry. tiny fishing

Ce site est génial, j'ai passé du temps à lire et à apprendre à leur sujet.