[PatrickHenry]

Everyone be nice, and please remember to use moderator-compliant FReepSpeak^tm in this thread.

[PatrickHenry]

Evolution Ping The List-O-Links

A conservative, pro-evolution science list, now with over 350 names. See the list's explanation, then FReepmail to be added or dropped. To assist beginners: But it's "just a theory", Evo-Troll's Toolkit, and How to argue against a scientific theory.

[bvw]

" The odds that the association is simply due to chance are only one in 250"

So Darwinists have some limited understanding of probability. Would that they apply it more broadly.

[ml/nj]

This helps fill a big gap that has existed in evolutionary studies

I thought all this Darwin stuff was layin' flat.

ML/NJ

[bill1952]

I didn't know that natural selection was ever in doubt.

[Fester Chugabrew]

. . . any kind of ecological characterization, through no fault of ecologists, will be limited in accuracy and precision."

Yet we have "positive statistics" from which we are free to extrapolate support for our anterior assumptions. The whole experiment was undertaken in hopes the results would meet all expectations. How can "natural selection" be a "driving force," when in fact it is merely an arbitrary way of explaining what has already taken place? If there is any driving force involved it will be energy itself, not a concatenation of ascriptions cobbled up by wishful thinkers.

[Pontiac]

The new study – published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – provides empirical support for the proposition that natural selection is a general force behind the formation of new species by analyzing the relationship between natural selection and the ability to interbreed in hundreds of different organisms – ranging from plants through insects, fish, frogs and birds – and finding that the overall link between them is positive.

Funk and his colleagues realized that if they used the results of these studies and added an ecological dimension then they would have an approach capable of measuring the link between natural selection and reproductive isolation.

I can think of a couple of on going experiments that refute the natural selection evolution theory quite well.

The first is dogs. Man has removed dogs from the environment and breeding population of wolves for at least 50,000 years. The physical appearance and behavioral make up of dogs has become much different than that of wolves and yet they can breed quite well.

The second is man. Many instances of populations of human populations are isolated for thousands of years in diverse environments and yet when those populations are introduced to other populations breeding readily takes place.

Another would be horses with the same circumstances as dogs and the same out come.

Man has been doing what by Darwin’s theory says should produce new species that can not reproduce with the old species for tens of thousands of years yet man has failed to produce a new species. Dogs are still wolves in reality and horses are still horses.

[Triggerhippie]

O.K. So how do I put this knowledge to practical use...?
How will this bit of knowledge help me live a better, more successful, healthier, happier life?


I'm sure that scientists spent a good bit of money proving something that they already believe (just like creationists do, btw), but it doesn't protect me from TROP, illegal immigrants, higher taxes, bird flu, or democrats.

At the end of the day, this study raises only one question in my mind, "So what?"

[RoadTest]

Evolution is a house of cards.

Here we see "new evidence" added to an unproven and unscientific hypothesis. The evidence must favor the Darwinian take.

[goldstategop]

It confirms Darwin's standing as the greatest scientist who ever lived, period. He'd be pretty much pleased at the impressive amount of work done to substantiate the theory of natural selection since his day. Given its repeated empirical validation, it now seems appropriate to describe it as a natural law.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[trisham]

bookmark

[ThirstyMan]

What Darwin did in his revolutionary treatise, “On the Origin of Species,” was to explain how much of the extraordinary variety of biological traits possessed by plants and animals arises from a single process, natural selection.

I don't believe this statement is accurate.

A trait that gets favored by natural selection is a trait that was already there. Natural selection explains nothing about "extraordinary variety" but rather is an expression of an existing species' environmental adaptation.

[Right Wing Professor]

Nice study, but over-hyped.

[VadeRetro]

The specific question that Funk and his colleagues set out to answer is whether there is a positive link between the degree of adaptation to different environments by closely related groups and the extent to which they can interbreed, what biologists call reproductive isolation.

By which the writer means "the extent to which they can't interbreed." He/she/they (Staff) did the same thing ealier, saying "... the relationship between natural selection and the ability to interbreed." "Inability to interbreed" made more sense.

[azhenfud]

Wow. A Funky find!

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Thankfully FReepSpeak is, at last, trademarked.

[js1138]

I think FReepSpeak needs a spokesperson. Perhaps a Miss Peak.

[Physicist]

Funk and his colleagues saw a way to address this question by extending a method pioneered by two scientists in a now classic study of species formation in fruit flies published in 1989. The original method measured the way in which reproductive isolation varies with time. It proved to be very powerful and a number of other researchers applied it to additional species.

This is one of the key lines of the whole article--the very link to speciation--but that's all they say about it. How can I understand what this new study means, if I don't understand the 1989 study? They don't give you much of a handle to find out more. It was done by "two scientists" in 1989, that much I know.

PH, do you have a link about that 1989 study? Icky, do you have a boilerplate about it?

[BnBlFlag]

Natural selection/Survival of the fittest/Adaption to changing circumstances are obsevable facts.
This has nothing to do with reptiles becoming mammals or amoebas becoming fish etc.

[Texas Eagle]

The famous scientist would be pleased because a study published online this week provides the first clear evidence that natural selection...

The FIRST clear evidence???

Gee, Wally. And all this time I thunk it was a done deal.

[Texas Eagle]

In the last 20 years, studies of a number of specific species have demonstrated that natural selection can cause sub-populations to adapt to new environments...

Sub-populations? What is that? Groups of less than one?