You actually bring up a good point. All cutting edge research in science, no matter what field they are in, contains such suppositions. This is the type of research that tends to make the news. Usually, when a press release is made, there are some solid facts about the subject while some further verification is necessary for many of the finer points. If it was all solidly known, it wouldn't be very cutting edge, would it?
By the time something makes it to the level of a good textbook on the subject (which can take years or even decades), though, there has been much more peer review of the subject, and much more verification & testing. This is not to say textbooks never make mistakes (even the best ones occasionally do), but that by the time the process has worked to this level, one can be assured that the central tenets of what one is reading are correct (in a reputable text, anyway).
Science always attempts to improve itself through time; theories that are broad in scope are almost never completely discarded (they don't need to be) - they are refined and brought into better focus. The basic core tenets of evolution, gradual change through time, have not changed since the time of Darwin. What we see now, though is positive identification and evidence that refine the detail of his theory in ways Darwin could never have dreamed.
It also is an (un?)fortunate fact, though, that science has become so complex that the finer details of the supporting evidence for theories take many, many hours of dedication and time to understand -- to those without the time and/or desire to do their homework on the subject, the results that science presents can indeed look like a potpourri of nonsense and proposition of faith, even though they aren't.
What do you mean? The main phenomena being reported is asserted completely definitively. They say exactly what the phenomena is, when and where it occurs (in the lab, unobserved as yet in the cell but expected to occur there also) and the exact DNA sequence associated with the phenomena (not given in this popular article of course, but in the research paper).
They seem to state definitively everything that so warrants. What, specifically, do you think should have been stated definitively that wasn't? Or is your complaint entirely cynical and hypocritical (i.e. you would have made the accusation of dogmatic assertiveness with equal felicity if they did say more definitively)?
Evo articles are ALWAYS
full of if, could have, might have, may have,
might possibly be, etc etc etc.
Actually evolution is only mentioned one time in the article, in connection with the inference that this phenomena must not be deleterious, and is likely functional in some as yet unknown way, because otherwise evolution would have eliminated it.
So the one mention of evolution IS definite: evolution eliminates purely deleterious traits, so this one must be otherwise. Ironically it's all the questions about the design related functions of this phenomena (what precisely it does functionally, are there other phenomena of the same type, etc) that are -- however properly due to the need for further research -- couched in maybe's and possibly's.
One of the main reason I stay with
"Thus says The LORD"
No you don't. The LORD sayeth nothing whatever about computers and computer networks, for instance, but here you are.