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Author Topic:   Darwinism Cannot Explain The Peacock
Arriba
Junior Member (Idle past 3610 days)
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From: Miraflores, Lima, Peru
Joined: 01-24-2013


Message 1 of 2 (688771)
01-25-2013 10:37 AM


In biology evolution means merely change and most textbooks describe biological evolution as a change in the frequency of alleles from generation to generation. However, on debate boards like these, "evolution" usually means some form of neo-Darwinism, to wit, the claim that simple life originated somehow in the past, that all living creatures share a common ancestor, and that this process has been shaped by descent, modification, and natural selection over billions of years.
Natural selection is normally held up as an obvious truth. "Imagine," the proponents say, "an animal that is born without eyes while all others of its kind can see. Surely you can see that the chances of this animal surviving long enough to pass its genes on are greatly reduced." After sage nods all around, natural selection is enshrined as the guiding pillar of evolution.
Nevertheless natural selection has its share of challenging themes. The peacock's tail, for example, is a puzzling situation. Surely this tail does not enable the peacock to trap food better or to evade predators more easily. What good is it? How could such a bizarre trait have evolved over countless generations of feral cats, raccoons, and the occassional tiger making its owner into lunch? The answer, we are told, is sexual selection. A standard pro-evolution explanation can be found at Page Not Found | dB Skeptic which theorizes that an ornate train proves that the peacock is healthy, virile, and a good genetic contributor for the females in question.
However, a seven-year study of peacock mating behavior can be summed up by its title: Peahens do not prefer peacocks with more elaborate trains (Just a moment... ). The authors of the study attempted to pin down exactly what it was about the trains that peahens went for. Was it length, symmetry, number of eye spots, or what? The answer is simple: None of the above. The theory of peacock sexual selection has been falsified.
This result has surprised many especially in light of a previous study by Marion Petrie in which she (supposedly) discovered that peahens do indeed prefer males with more eyespots. The appropriate way to express the new findings is simple: Marion Petrie's results could not be replicated.
This should not surprise us. Hard numbers are available for medical research indicating that the vast majority of published studies cannot be replicated (Is medical science built on shaky foundations? | New Scientist ) despite concerted effort on the part of highly interested and motivated companies anxious to bring new life-saving treatments to market. This "open secret" is the reason why Ioannidis' article entitled "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" (http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/infooi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 ) is the most-downloaded technical paper from the journal.
Ioannidis pulls no punches in his paper which boldly states, "It can be [proved] that most claimed research findings are false." What exactly is the problem? The first problem is simple: Science is based on a logical fallacy that has been papered over by Bayesian statistics. Going to the heart of the matter he states, "...[this] is a consequence of the convenient, yet ill-founded strategy of claiming conclusive research findings solely on the basis of a single study assessed by formal statistical significance, typically for a p-value less than 0.05."
The second problem is bias. Whether we are talking about researchers looking for and finding what they want to find and ignoring findings that don't confirm their beliefs (confirmation bias), researchers dropping subjects from the study in order to obtain that tantalizingly close 95 percent statistical confidence interval (selection bias), or when a publisher chooses to publish a study that shows a relationship and not to publish a study that shows no relationship (publication bias) the results are the same. Ioannidis writes, "Claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias."
How much bias is there in evolutionary biology research? Only time will tell.

"...nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin can be described as scientific..." - Imre Lakatos

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Message 2 of 2 (688774)
01-25-2013 11:00 AM


Thread Copied to Biological Evolution Forum
Thread copied to the Darwinism Cannot Explain The Peacock thread in the Biological Evolution forum, this copy of the thread has been closed.

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