Apr 02 2009
A Significant Setback for Evolutionary Science
Shh! Don’t tell the creationists about this, for they will likely take it and run off to some crazy length. (They seem rather good at that.) The evolutionary sciences have recently suffered a significant setback. And by significant I don’t mean large or crippling. I mean important. Noteworthy.
As described by the ScienceDaily post, Hundreds Of Natural-selection Studies Could Be Wrong, Study Demonstrates-
Scientists at Penn State and the National Institute of Genetics in Japan have demonstrated that several statistical methods commonly used by biologists to detect natural selection at the molecular level tend to produce incorrect results.
Oh-oh.
Although the finding is mostly Greek to me, the problem seems to consist of branch-site and site-prediction methods “for statistical analyses of natural selection at the molecular level.”
Will scientists and believers in evolution choose to deny the finding or sweep it under the rug? No. We/they will investigate and welcome further information.
Here’s the good news: Science will progress per usual in a self-correcting manner. And that is why we put our confidence in it and not in religious dogma and thousand year-old texts.
