We at The Scientist take the time to carefully read each and every press release we're sent, especially those from our elected officials in Washington, D.C. (OK, not really.) Today, we got one from Capitol Hill that still has us scratching our heads.

An oddly worded press release from US Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) alleges that cloning pioneer Ian Wilmut is the biological father of Dolly the sheep.

The release begins by describing Brownback's pleasure with researchers who claim to have successfully created pluripotent human stem cell lines by reprogramming adult somatic cells.

Then the release gets bizarre. A sentence reporting Wilmut's recent decision to abandon somatic cell nuclear transfer using embryos reads: "This Saturday, Ian Wilmut, know (sic) as the father of the cloned sheep 'Dolly,'..."

As far as we know, Wilmut is commonly considered the father of cloning, but not the father of sheep, cloned or otherwise.

Or does Brownback know something we don't about what's going on in Scotland?