I thought the "alpha male" idea, as applied to humans, was an analogy to the concept of alpha wolves (as opposed to dominance hierarchies in non-human primates). You always hear about the pack leader, or the lone wolf, never the alpha macaque, right?

So, dispelling that myth in wolves may be an attempt to shake off the pseudoscientific idea that this concept can be used to describe human social structures.

Of course, not being based in science in the first place, a scientific appeal has no chance of changing anything. Which is why it gets rewritten every few years.