Talk:Evolution/falsifiabilitytests

Falsifiability tests that need references

From Wikipedia brainstorming

1. edge of evolution December 2007 (UTC)

• Discovery of a naturally-occuring true chimera, made from widely differing lineages, which could not have been created by lateral gene transfer (like a hippogriff or sphinx).
• Incontrovertible evidence that the earth is too young to have allowed evolution to occur (e.g. thousands or millions of years old, rather than billions).
• Discovery that genetic information could not be passed down from generation to generation.
• Discovery that a subset of organisms within a clade (for example, a group of vertebrates) have a genetic code that is entirely different from the one currently observed to be universal.
• Discovery that many places on earth, widely separated from one another, have a nearly identical flora and fauna, without evidence of immigration.

From the internet

• [1]

1. true chimera (centaurs, mermaids), combinations from different lineages. An Intelligent Designer could put a human torso on a horse. Why not? Sure would have been awesome cavalry in the old days. But the process of evolution doesn’t permit a “mix-and-match” approach. Maybe a centaur seems silly, but there are billions of non-silly combinations that MIGHT have occurred. None have. Find one and you have falsified evolution. (Any commenter stupid enough to suggest that convergent evolution is the same thing, “bats are mammals with wings,” wins today’s booby prize.)
2. evidence of not enough time. Evolution has occurred over hundreds of millions, even two billion, years. If there were evidence that the earth is only 6,000 years old, or only 100,000 years old, or even only 100 million years old, that would falsify evolution. In fact, all the geological evidence indicates a 4 billion year age of the earth.
3. No means of passing information from parent to offspring. Since beneficial adaptations must be passed down through the generations, evolution depends on a mechanism to do so. (It’s important to note here that Darwin proposed evolutionary theory long before DNA was identified. That’s called the “predictive” power of a scientific theory.) An Intelligent Designer has no need for DNA. He could just “make it so.”
4. Evidence of whales and humans and kangaroos and horseshoe crabs coming into existence at the same time.
5. Absence of hominid fossils. When Darwin wrote Origin of Species in 1859, there were no pre-human fossil remains. If none had ever been found, that would have falsified evolution (or human evolution, at least).
6. Lack of transitional fossils. If we had dug up millions of fossils and not found transitional forms (dinosaurs to birds, equines, whales, bears, hominids, etc.), that would falsify evolution. Evolutionary theory predicts that when we dig up fossils, we will see development and change of forms over time. If we didn’t find transitional forms, that would falsify evolution. In fact, we have found thousands and thousands of transitional forms, documented here. In a stunning display of the “Big Lie” technique, Creationists love to insist that no transitional forms have been found.

• [2]

1. An earth that was relatively young. Even an earth that was less that a billion years old would create questions. However, the evidence points to a time frame in excess of 4 billion years.

2. Lack of continuity among species frameworks. If different species used different development programs (instead of just DNA), or if there were different basic structures within families, there would be questions.

3. An inconsistent fossil record, which fails to exhibit reasonable changes developed through genetic plasticity in relation to environmental stress.

4. If there is not the appearence of an intelligent designer at work. Darwinism could be questioned if natural selection did not create the appearence of intelligence in its product. Any living thing in its niche should appear to be made for that environment. And it was - through long periods of time and natural selection.

5. If there is no evidence of body modifications that lack intelligent design. In humans, this would include several structures, including the appendix, childbirth problems, need for an epiglottis, etc.

6. No relationship between animal species. Animals that lack a genetic relationship would be suggestive that Darwinism was false.

7. No predictive value. Darwinism would be assumed to be false if we were unable to predict that modifications occur in short periods of time among rapid reproducers. However, we use Darwinistic evolution to make predictions on bacteria, flu, etc.

• [3]

Evolution is easily falsifiable. 1.) Find human fossils in the mid-Tertiary or earlier 2.) Find palaeozoic mammals 3) Precambrian vertebrates. 4) A young or a youngish earth i.e less than 100 million - consider what Kelvin nearly did to evolution after 1860 5)0 our DNA more like insects than rats

• [4]

The most obvious and compelling falsification of evolution would be systematic violations of the nested hiearchy. Birds with mammary glands, or three bones in the middle ear, would do, as would octopuses whose eyes had the reversed retinas of vertebrate eyes, or primates with cytochrome-c more similar to that of pine trees than that of baboons. Examples could be multiplied almost endlessly. If Duane Gish had been correct in his oft-repeated claims that, e.g. human lysozome was more similar to chicken lysozome than chimp lysozome, or human albumin more similar to frog albumin than chimp albumin (in each case the human and chimp proteins are identical), that might not have *falsified* common descent (see initial weaselling), but it would have been significantly disconfirming. If the human LGGLO pseudogene was disabled identically to that of guinea pigs, but differently from that of gorillas, that would have likewise been contrary to the predictions of common descent.

Note that many tests and observations that have already been designed and performed offer potential falsifications of evolutionary theory. Tests have already shown (and they could conceivably have shown quite differently) that the human LGGLO pseudogene (the reason we can't make our own vitamin C) is identically disabled to that of chimps, orangutans, macaques, and gorillas, but differently from that of guinea pigs. They've already shown that the cytochrome-c of a great many species falls into the same nested hierarchy as other features (if it fell into a grossly different nested hierarchy, again, that would amount to a falsification of common descent).

Even the fossil record offers multiple opportunities to test and potentially falsify the theory. Mere "missing links" don't count for much -- there's no prediction that any great portion of the history of life will survive in fossils -- but the fossils, like living forms, should fit into the evolutionary tree. Intermediates between birds and mammals would be a thousand times more lethal to the theory than a paucity of intermediates between dinosaurs and birds. Descendants should not live before their ancestors. That's problematic, because primitive forms can survive in one niche long after they have spawned more evolved side branches (the old "if humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?"), and because fossils, or bits and pieces of them, can be "reworked" into higher or lower strata. But if all the known whales of the Eocene still were, or had many strong affinities with, land mammals (e.g. small heads and hind legs), then modern type whales in the Cretaceous would be nearly as big a problem as hominids in the preCambrian.

The mechanism of evolution are harder to test and falsify, but not impossible. If, in fact, beneficial mutations and gene duplications (allowing for increases in the size of the genome) were not observed, that would falsify current mechanism theories. So would observations that survival and reproductive success bore no relation to inheritable variation. So, as Darwin pointed out, would the presence of structures that could not be derived by incremental beneficial modifications of previous structures, though this is harder to ascertain -- it's hard to imagine all the possible (often indirect) pathways by which one structure can give rise to another. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Filll (talk • contribs) 16:57, 11 February 2008 (UTC)