Yes. Exactly.
This brings a certain surface appeal to your argument,
Translation: "Uh oh, that's undermining my point, I'd better try to hand-wave it away as just "a certain surface appeal", without actually refuting it..."
but the gap between type and species is a vast one.
Feel free to define it, then.
Your "leap" is still a huge one. Dogs are still dogs--goats are still goats.
Humans are still primates... Still apes too, for that matter.
That's your characterization, not my translation, and a very telling one on your part, indeed.
So, you don't think that a scientist should be very careful to avoid those tricks of analysis that are just surface appeal? It has surface appeal that, if you cut off the tails of enough mommy mice, sooner or later the offspring will lack tails. It had enough appeal that it was an actual experiment. Tail-less mice didn't happen, but such assumptions frequently mislead.
Modernman suggested that weakening the species of dog through breeding (the papillion, an obviously weak little misbegotten creature) would lead to a new species. I assert that it merely would lead to a fetid gene pool and inevitable "extinction" of a breed type.
Surface appeal can mislead people testing a new drug--frankly, it misleads all the time. As I have said, the evo-priests would do well to read briefs written by pharmeceudical developers to know how scientists should write and think, which is cautious and qualified and respectful of the guinea-pig public. 'Cause if pharm guys get pompous, arrogant, grandiose and ego-addled, they'll kill somebody and land in jail. Evo-guys just get tenure, I suppose.
re: Your "leap" is still a huge one. Dogs are still dogs--goats are still goats. Humans are still primates... Still apes too, for that matter.
Here you rather worry me...I do hope that "canine" means more to you than "dog"-- dog is a subset of canine, as ape is a subset of primate. And PhD is a subset of Grantgrubbicus.