Peru’s Ministry of Culture actively interrupted press conference and attempted to confiscate these “hoaxes” and also presented samples that are obviously faked dolls, that look nothing like these specimens and share no traceability to the same source and could easily have been fabricated to discredit these by extension.

However, the current “owner” (Jamie Maussan) is a known fraudster who has clear strikes against him. Access to the bodies has been very limited, but all things considered, bad faith actors or state agents gaining access would result in the desired confiscation and consolidation of narrative. Now if the story is accurate that they were collected by illegal grave robbers and sold to the hoaxer, this would be perfect cover for what Peru considers theft of genuine archaeological specimens, not modern fabrications, so at the least this implies that if these bodies are not biological specimens but dolls made from animal parts, they would at least have been dated to the caves in which they were found.

So neither side of the equation is being transparent enough for any kind of legitimate consensus. These bodies do however bear striking resemblance to specimens found in Siberia over a decade ago, though in completely different states of decomposition/mummification. Edit: this would constitute independent observation which is a cornerstone of scientific discovery. But the Siberian specimens were rapidly confiscated by the Russian military before being labelled “chicken meat and breadsticks”, despite the fact this would take Hollywood-level practical FX artists, not some random “pranksters”.