Scientist Flubs and Flops, #3

                Press button to watch video

• "The evolutionary divergence of a single species into two has never been directly observed in nature, primarily because speciation can take a longtime to occur." -- Irwin, Bensch, and Price, "Speciation in a Ring," Nature, 2001.
• "Genetics might be adequate for explaining microevolution, but micro-evolutionary changes in gene frequency were not seen as able to turn a reptile into a mammal or to convert a fish into an amphibian. Microevolution looks at adaptations that concern only the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest. As Goodwin (1995) points out, 'the origin of species — Darwin's problem — remains unsolved.' " "Resynthesizing Evolutionary and Developmental Biology," Gilbert, Opitz and Raft, 1996.
• "All the three major textbook examples for alleged gradual species-to-species transitions have been debunked by more modern mainstream research." -- Paleontologist Günter Bechly (link).
• "'Nature makes no leap,' meaning that evolution took place slowly and gradually. This was Darwin's core belief. And yet that is not how the fossil record works. The fossil record shows more 'leaps' than not in species.” --  “Lamarck's Revenge” by paleontologist Peter Ward , page 43. 
• "The first eye, the first wing, the first placenta. How they emerge. Explaining these is the foundational motivation of evolutionary biology. And yet, we still do not have a good answer. This classic idea of gradual change, one happy accident at a time, has so far fallen flat.”  -- Biologist Armin Moczek.
• "It is now evident that genes play only a minor role in evolution....We now know that the gene-centered Modern Synthesis was quite wrong (see especially Shapiro 2011, 2022; Noble 2012, 2013; Noble and Noble 2023; Corning 2018, 2020). Over the past few decades there has been a growing body of contradictory evidence."  -- Scientist Peter A. Corning, "Cooperative genes in smart systems: Toward an inclusive new synthesis in evolution" (link). 
• "In the literal sense of the word, no doubt, natural selection is a false term." -- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species,1869 Edition, page 92. 
• "I suppose  'natural selection' was a bad term ; but to change it now, I think, would make confusion worse confounded." -- Charles Darwin, a letter to Charles Lyell dated June 6, 1860.
• "There is no actual selection carried out by natural ‘selection’. Nature – in this case the different rates of survival – is simply a passive filter." -- Biologist Denis Noble, "The Illusions of the Modern Synthesis."