-Sky- writes:
The answer is that ANY theory so foundational to the development of life should have BILLIONS of trees and fossil series. Horse Series, Fish series, whale series, shark series, turtle series,,,etc, etc.
Except for the whole part about how fossils form. Because the conditions required for the formation of fossils are quite specific, the types of fossils we find are quite skewed to mostly just the hard parts of marine organisms. So, because we understand the process of fossilization, we can predict that fossils are going to be hard to come by, but of course, not impossible.
Skip those last two. Even Science admits that sharks and turtles east Darwin theories for breakfast.
Um, who's ever admitted that? Are you going to use sponges, hagfish, and bacteria against the theory of evolution too? Some strategies work, and there's nothing driving them to change. That doesn't mean evolution is not happening.
I have 2 decades of firsthand experience in scientific research. Seen with eyes, felt with hands, burn marks, watched people die kind of experience. I know what goes on in R&D. Whatever the boss wants or/and the customer is paying for.
And how much of this R&D has been in the academic realm? Because, I assure you, there's absolutely no benefit to conforming to the "norm", and there's no consumer to satisfy. In fact, according to your "scheming, results driven scientist" view, you would expect these tinkering researchers to fudge their results so that they disprove evolution. Because anyone who could present solid evidence refuting evolution by natural selection would receive incredible acclaim. In fact, when Darwin first came out with his theory, that's exactly what they did. For a long time, researchers tried to show that it was some other process besides natural selection that drove the evolution of adaptations. But in the end, they had to conclude, based on independent results (not a conspiracy) that Darwin was correct.
Scientists are not defending evolution because they hate creationists or because they think Darwin was a swell guy. In the same vein, physicists are finding that Einstein was wrong about the locality of the universe, but they're not changing their results just because Einstein was a revolutionary and well respected scientist. The only people who feel they have something to lose by changing their world views are the creationists (note this is creationists specifically, and not all religious types).