Schlafly chose to badger Lenski about his results, presumably because he felt a need to respond to the Coynes of the world and outrageous claims that are being made based on the paper. Unfortunately this can come across as simple bad manners. Schlafly appears to be insinuating that Lenski is dishonest and bullying him with threats of legal action.

We don’t know if the results Lenski reported are accurate—and we’ll never know. It will never be possible to prove that no evolution occurred, even if the same study is repeated with negative results. The best Schlafly can hope for is a Pyrrhic victory.

We do know, however, that Lenski’s own conclusions are quite modest: “We demonstrated that the evolution of this new function was contingent on the history of the population in which it arose.” No attempt is made to use the results to support the theory of evolution per se. And except for a little self-indulgence at the end, the paper is restrained and free from tendentious polemic.

So is it better, from a strategic point of view, to attempt to score points against Lenski through confrontation, knowing in advance that no conclusive result is possible, or can more good perhaps be done by taking up pure, sweet reason and explaining why his results can be interpreted to support ID and undermine Darwin’s narrative of effortless progression?

My first opinion of Schlafly’s behavior (and this was before Dave created this post) was that he was overreacting to Lenski’s work and making a fool of himself in the process.

Schlafly overreacted because the Darwinists overreacted.

Lenski is not directly responsible for the way his work is being trumpeted as the salvation of Darwinism. Which I think is hilarious, considering it appears to be a confirmation of Behe’s main thesis if anything else.

So far as I can see, Lenski and his colleagues have not repudiated any of the overenthusiastic responses to the study.

Agreed. My first opinion of Schlafly’s behavior (and this was before Dave created this post) was that he was overreacting to Lenski’s work and making a fool of himself in the process. And Lenski is not directly responsible for the way his work is being trumpeted as the salvation of Darwinism. Which I think is hilarious, considering it appears to be a confirmation of Behe’s main thesis if anything else.

Lenski has probably lost his temper a little bit, but Schlafly’s attitude was totally unreasonable, so maybe Lenski is partially justified.

We have to distinguish bewteen what Lenski says in his paper and what others(either darwinists or IDists)have said, both in the news and on the blogs, and of which Lenski is not responsible. A lot of things have been said about that paper which are simply wrong, and do not bear any connection to what is written in the paper.

Lenski’s paper, IMO, remains interesting, but is absolutely incomplete. Lenski should try to identify the mutation or mutations which characterize the Cit+ strain. Only then we can start reasoning about mechaninsms, evolutionary meanings, and so on. The main flaw in Lenski’s paper is probably to try to jump to conslusions too early, and without having the necessary information.

So, I think we should all wait that the mutation is identified. Most of the false beliefs of darwinian evolution are based on generic reasoning, and fail to survive as soon as one goes into details. We should not make that error again. We need details, molecular details. Only then discussions about mechanisms become clear and strict.

I do wonder what set off Lenski…the guy went postal.

That PZ “brass knuckles” Myers thinks Lenski is so great is not surprising, considering PZ’s instability.

“It is clearly very difficult for E. coli to evolve this function. In fact, the mutation rate of the ancestral strain from Cit- to Cit+ is immeasurably low; even the upper bound is 3.6 _ 10_13 per cell generation, which is three orders of magnitude below the typical base pair mutation rate. Nevertheless, one population eventually evolved the Cit+ function, whereas all of the others remain Cit- after more than 40,000 generations.”

Excuse the ignorance of a non-scientist, but doesn’t this show that micro-evolution is highly unlikely, even in a highly controlled environment favoring development of Cit+ E. Coli? In fact isn’t that what Lenski actually says? And isn’t there a distinct difference between Lenski’s rhetoric and what was seen in the New Scientist?

But, and as being very pro-ID this pains me to say, I understand Lenski’s responses and find them more than justifiable.

At the end of each 24-hour period, only one percent of the old populations were transferred to start the next populations, and if only one, two, or just a few of the bacteria in an old population possessed a particular mutation, then it was likely that the mutation would not be transferred to the next population. I am wondering why only one percent of each population was transferred.

I just want to add a few more thoughts.

Because there are few generations per daily population (44,000 generations in 20 years works out to an average of only 6 generations per day), mutations in a population get little chance to propagate and hence it is especially likely that only one or just a few bacteria in a population will possess a particular mutation. Thus, there is a good chance that a mutation will be discarded because only one percent of an old population is used to start the next day’s population. It is not possible to save the whole population (otherwise the experiment would quickly run out of room) but IMO a more reasonable portion — maybe half — of the populations should be saved in order to minimize the risk of throwing out mutations.

I suspect that the second, expressed mutation was fairly common because it was often repeated in populations descended from a frozen population of 20,000 generations or later, and I suspect that the reason why it took so long for this mutation to be expressed the first time — about 5 years (20,000th to 31,500th generations) — was that a lot of mutations were discarded when the next day’s population was started.

So, will we share the bacteria? Of course we will, with competent scientists. ~ Richard Lenski

Paging ‘Dr. Paley’