Reply to Altaba (2025): Corrections to the article "Taxonomic revision of the Iberian Allognathini (Mollusca, Gastropoda, Helicidae)"

This document stems from a thorough reflection on a scientific article which, in our view—and in the opinion of numerous other experts—should never have been published. After attempting to submit a formal reply to the same journal, we ultimately decided to withdraw our manuscript, as the review process we were subjected to was, in our judgment, inconsistent with the standards clearly applied to Altaba’s original publication.The core arguments presented here have been shared with curators from major natural history museums in Spain, with Molluscabase reviewers, and with respected researchers in the field of malacology. Without exception, they have expressed concern over the article’s unusually high number of methodological flaws and untenable taxonomic conclusions, which in their view—and ours—render it fundamentally invalid.Why have we chosen to release this document through an unconventional channel, outside the peer-review system? Because we have no interest in engaging in a drawn-out exchange of publications that would burden the academic community or descend into territory closer to sensationalism than to scientific discourse. This is not a disagreement between equally valid methodological approaches, as suggested by the reviewers of Folia Conchyliologica—one of whom explicitly stated: “All scientific approaches to the genus Iberus need to be considered by the community”. Rather, it is a matter of safeguarding the credibility and integrity of taxonomic science, and of drawing attention to practices that promote taxonomic inflation and confusion.