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You make a model, then you make predictions. If they fail, your model was wrong. You can do that in evolution theory, even though you are mostly looking at hist
by facepalm 11y ago
You make a model, then you make predictions. If they fail, your model was wrong. You can do that in evolution theory, even though you are mostly looking at history. Maybe you predict that all birds should have tails at least 30'' long, then you look around and see that they don't. You can also look at the way genes spread - I suppose you can compare the observed spread of a gene to the spread that would be expected if it were random.
Nevertheless, once you see something unexplained (like zebra stripe), I suppose you start with creating theories, then you try to verify them. Isn't the article here doing exactly that?
- EGreg 11y agoYes and if the a particular theory of evolution were only 5 years old that would be fine. But several classical formulations like the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_evolutionary_synthesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_evolutionary_synthesi... have been around for decades and various proponents around the world yell that they are "as proven as gravity". A strange position to take when there was little falsification. Your examples above serve to illustrate the point - they are just illustrations of how falsification might look like if it were done. If the prediction and falsification framework was robust by now, you wouldn't have to come up with made-up examples, there would have been tons of them like there are for other, widely tested theories, even in biology
- facepalm 11y agoI am not a biologist, so you shouldn't draw any conclusions from me not knowing good examples or the state of verification. Your Wikipedia link seems to mention evidence for the "modern evolutionary synthesis", are you sure that there has been no falsification? Also, I have heard that name for the first time today.