The wolf thing is a myth, these actually refer to the stages of software deveopment. Alpha is buggy, unstable, missing key features and unsutable for the public. Beta is mostly complete, but may still have bugs or occasional crashes. (So basicly teenagers)
Some recent papers sugest it might also refer to alpha particles, high mass but very low penetration power and depth. These particles are typicaly emitted by high mass atom.
And those are just the ones where the authors did not even proofread the thing.