Second of all, it doesn't conflict with Darwinism. Darwin himself hypothesized that evolution might not proceed at a constant rate, but might proceed at a faster rate at some times, and proceed at a slow rate at others. Eldridge and Gould merely showed that the fossil record confirms this hypothesis.
To answer your question, punctuated equilibrium is not a logical fallacy. Using it to argue against evolution is.
Of course the fossil record confirms the hypothesis, because the hypothesis is based upon the fossil record.
Or would you deny that Darwin formulated these opinions absent knowledge of the current state of the static record?
Second of all, it doesn't conflict with Darwinism. Darwin himself hypothesized that evolution might not proceed at a constant rate, but might proceed at a faster rate at some times, and proceed at a slow rate at others. Eldridge and Gould merely showed that the fossil record confirms this hypothesis.
Punctuated equilibrium is a creation by evolutionists because there is/was no fossil record supporting evolution. It is intellectually dishonest to then turn around and claim that punctuated equilibrium is supported by the fossil record.
The lack of a record is no record; at all!
There are two places to look for verification of Darwin's theory: the fossil record and breeding experiments with animals. If Darwin's theory is correct, the fossil record should show innumerable slight gradations between earlier species and later ones. Darwin was aware, however, that the fossil record of his day showed nothing of the sort. There were enormous discontinuities between major animal and plant groups. He accordingly entitled his chapter on the subject, "On the Imperfection of the Geological Record." He hoped that future digging would fill in the gaps, which he admitted to be "the gravest objection to my theory." Enormous quantities of fossils have been dug up since, and, if anything, they make more glaring the gaps which troubled Darwin. Stephen Jay Gould, the Harvard biologist, calls this lack of gradual change in the fossil record the "trade secret" of modem paleontology.
The fossil record shows exactly what it showed in Darwin's day-that species appear suddenly in a fully developed state and change little or not at all before disappearing (99 out of 100 species are extinct). About 550 million years ago at the beginning of the Cambrian era there was an explosion of complex life forms--mollusks, jellyfish, trilobites--for which not a single ancestral form can be found in earlier rocks. A man from Mars looking at the subsequent fossil record would say that species are replaced by other species, rather than evolve into them. Paleontologist Stephen Stanley writes that "the fossil record does not convincingly demonstrate a single transition from one species to another."
You must be speaking of a different Stephen Gould than the one that wrote Wonderful Life, since in that book he plainly stated that Darwin's theory was in complete 180 degree disagreement with the observable fossil evidence.
Gould even went so far as to dub the fossil record as a "cone of decreasing diversity" rather than the "cone of increasing diversity that is required by Darwin."
Better straighten him out... ;^)