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Don't go into such a snit. Plato said one thing in the Republic and contradicted himself many years later in the Laws. Which one is Plato's view?

Popper based his ideas of tautology on the statements of great Darwinists of his day. He was shocked that they admitted the theory was a tautology, yet did NOT admit that this therefore made it useless from a scientific point of view. Then a bunch of new guys come along and say "those old guys don't speak for us. Nobody speaks for us. The theory is testable and not a tautology." The fact that they kowtowed to these guys for decades is not mentioned.

As for your silly idea of dismissing his earlier notions, you've simply not read Popper. Had Einstein, at the end of his life, said, "You know, I've reconsidered relativity. I was hasty in throwing out the idea of an aether," we'd say "that's not in keeping with the last 50 years of your work. take a stress pill and relax." Same with Popper. His life's work -- and a perfectly solid understanding of neo-Darwinism -- led him to a sound conclusion on its status. Then he comes out with ths one statement saying "oops, I was hasty." Many readers of past work on science find his recantation inconsistent with his overall philosophy, not just his earlier conclusion. It would be one thing had he said "my entire philosophy and way of classifying theories were wrong and hastily considered." Instead, he claims "my philosophy is essentially correct; I misapplied it." It's perfectly legitimate to say "You're philosophy is, indeed, essentially correct. You correctly applied then; you are misapplying it now.

This hinges on claims by modern evols that the so called "synthetic theory" (Darwinism + genetics + statistical studies of populations) is different in essence from old fashioned Darwinism. In other words, Natural Selection as stated by Darwin himself was really a tautology; Natural Selection as stated by Richard Dawkins is scientific and testable. Popper claims that since the evols conceptions of Natural Selection has matured, his original appraisal of it must now change.

He was incorrect on this. The modern conception of Natural Selection is still, at root, a tautology, though hidden by a lot of other bunk.

No. Popper's earlier claims are the more typical of him, and certainly much more in keeping with his own theories, whether or not his feelings about Natural Selection had changed.

Plato said one thing in the Republic and contradicted himself many years later in the Laws. Which one is Plato's view?

In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, why should we not take his most recent statements as being indicative of his current thinking? You, like everyone else around, including me, have undoubtedly made mistakes in the past, and then corrected them later on. Is it not a tad disingenuous to decide from such a thing that we don't really know what you actually mean? If you were to accidentally write "2 x 2 = 5", but then erase it and write "2 x 2 = 4", is it really fair to you to derive from that some sort of dilemma, and claim that we can't be sure which one you really believe to be a true statement?

As for your silly idea of dismissing his earlier notions, you've simply not read Popper.

I'm afraid your crystal ball needs polishing, my friend. It is precisely because I have read Popper that I can dismiss his early assessment of the theory of evolution as wrongheaded, because he clearly did not, at that time, understand it very well. To be sure, that's not entirely his fault - he says as much in his recantation, although the tone strikes me as somewhat defensive - in that it's relatively easy to find examples of sloppy language among proponents of neo-Darwinian theory. But to take those examples of sloppy language as the definitive elucidation of the theory is to misrepresent the theory, and any attack on such a misrepresentation is fundamentally flawed from the beginning - it is a strawman attack, whether intentional or not.