Most alarming of all (from a scientific perspective), some taxonomists use political considerations to define a species, calling a population a new species just to bring attention to it or give it legal protection, even when everyone in the room privately believes it’s not scientifically accurate. There is no consistent rule being applied.
If they are aware that it isn’t scientifically accurate, and they call it a species anyway, they are lying. It’s just that it’s hard to prove that they are lying without being able to read their mind, and they could probably say something that makes it superficially sound like a species that would be hard to rebut in a couple of seconds.
The fact that someone can undetectably lie about whether something is a species doesn’t affect the definition of species at all.
If they are aware that it isn’t scientifically accurate, and they call it a species anyway, they are lying. It’s just that it’s hard to prove that they are lying without being able to read their mind, and they could probably say something that makes it superficially sound like a species that would be hard to rebut in a couple of seconds.
The fact that someone can undetectably lie about whether something is a species doesn’t affect the definition of species at all.