Ancient bacteria with modern DNA, problem for evolution?

Okay, so its a scientific controversy. If it is a controversy, then it is being looked at, and people are devising experiments to settle the disagreement.So there isn't any evo conspiracy here. It's just a controversy over data. Such controversies come up from time to time. I'm not seeing any cause for concern.

I have no idea whether both sides are reasonable. I'm not a biologist, so I leave it to those in the area to settle the question.There has always been controversy in science. And there always will be. If controversy ceases, then science will have ceased. Creationists can think what they like. It is no concern of mine. It only becomes a problem when then try to force their religion into the science class.

Hi, randman.The puzzle for me, and I think for others, is why you consider this a problem for evolution or evolutionists.The history of science is a succession of changes. Investigators are often finding data that appears to conflict with accepted theory. It is these apparent conflicts that drive much of the scientific discovery process.

It might require revision and refinement of assumptions about the molecular clock (as already suggested by Quetzal).If an organism should happen to be well adapted to a fairly constant environment, there isn't any particular reason it has to change. My own expectation would be that mutations would contribute to an increase in variability. But if particular bacteria are already carrying a maximal amount of variability, there isn't anything that could increase.Keep in mind that I'm not a biologist.

I don't see that. The worst I could see would be to change an equality to an inequality. That is, a measurement of age based on the amount of mutation might set a lower bound for the age instead a providing a reasonable age estimate.But you are jumping the gun. As others have indicated, there might merely be a problem of contamination, resulting in bad data. Until you have eliminated that possibility, you cannot conclude anything. And even if that possibility is eliminated, further experimentation would be needed to better understand what is happening. Science theories aren't just invented on a whim, they come out of careful studies that attempt to understand the processes involved. As indicated before, I'm not a biologist. My knowledge of bacteria is particularly limited. For sexually reproducing creatures, one must distinguish between phenotype and genotype. My own view is that we should expect to see gradual evolution of the genotype, but punctuated equilibrium (periods of stasis and bursts of change) in the phenotype. During a period of phenotype stasis, the genome could be building up variation with mainly unexpressed genes (or rarely expressed genes), and at a later time and under selection pressures, some combination of the new genes could lead to relatively rapid change in phenotype. The change would involve some reorganization, in that rarely expressed genes would now be more commonly expressed. Only if that can be seen to happen for all organisms. That one particular group did not evolve, would just show an interesting peculiarity about that group.I think it best to wait till all of the evidence is in.

Those are two of the possibilities. There could be errors elsewhere. It is known that contamination can be a problem when dealing with micro-organisms. You need to give this controversy time to play out.Here is the view of it from a report in American Scientist. This isn't any different from what happens elsewhere in real life. If you were a bank security office, looking for possible forgery in checks, you would be far more concerned about a million dollar check than about a two dollar check. Data that is consistent with other observations actually provides very little new information. It isn't earthshaking, whether the data is properly obtained or not, because it doesn't report anything that isn't already taken for granted. But data that suggest a possible problem is very valuable if it turns out to be valid. Because of its importance, scientists want to be very careful to fully scrutinize it, and to not accept it without skeptical scrutiny. Science depends on such careful analysis.This isn't a double standard.