Is Evolution falsifiable? What would disprove it?

Question

I'm talking about macroevolution

Answer 1

I don;t understand why people feel it is important to distinguish between microevolution and macroevolution. If it is some desperate attempt to maintain human dignity by saying we did not come from non-human primates, it is badly misplaced. Molecular data (i.e. microevolution) makes no sense unless we have recent common ancesters with other primates.

Answer 2

Technically everything is falsifiable. However, if someone had come up with any "real" evidence to disprove evolution it would no longer be accepted by the scientific community. Just as the idea of spontaneous generation or the spread of malaria by "bad air" are no longer accepted as valid.

Contrary to creationist opinion, scientists don't blindly accept every theory that is offered. Most are highly competitive and love to prove each other wrong. In the case or evolution, it hasn't happened.

By the way, the observed spontaneous generation of a living organism from non-living matter would be a perfect example of an answer to your second question. There's a Nobel Prize waiting for the person who provides the evidence.

Negative proofs such as Jim R.'s "no change - hypothesis falsified." are not acceptable scientific arguments. This is why intelligent design is not accepted as science.

Answer 3

Macroevolution and microevolution are just different viewpoints of the same thing: evolution. In reality, there's no difference between them. The same mechanisms cause both phenomena and the only distinction is how long it takes for each one to happen. That's why most biologists consider the distinction artificial at best.

Evolution as an event is pretty much a fact. It's observable in the fossil record and in the laboratory, so no credible scientist debates that it happens. I think you mean to ask: is the THEORY of evolution falsifiable? In that case, the answer is yes. All theories are; that's just one of the things that makes a theory a theory. For any given theory (evolution, gravity, atomic, big bang, etc), there must be the possibility that some as-yet-undiscovered evidence will come to light that doesn't fit in with the current theory. In that case, the theory will have to be modified or scrapped altogether, depending on the scale of the disqualifying evidence.

The theory of evolution makes several statements (I'm summarizing and lumping together like crazy here):

(A) Evolution happens (again, this is pretty well known). Evolution is defined as the change in allele frequencies within a population over time.

(B) It has five major causes: mutation, natural selection, gene flow, genetic drift, and nonrandom mating.

(C) Evolution can eventually lead to speciation, or the formation of new species. Over time, groups of species can branch off into new genera, then new families, then new orders, and so on. The bigger the taxonomic group, the longer it takes for a new one to appear.

(D) Every bit of observed and collected evidence supports this idea.

If you can provide evidence that shows even one of these tenets to be false, then you will have falsified the theory of evolution. For example, you could aim for the big kahuna itself: prove that species don't change over time (and that evolution doesn't happen). A lot of people have tried, and a lot have failed. It's not an easy thing to prove when you can literally watch the history of life unfold in the geologic record.

If you can show that mutations don't happen, that natural selection doesn't happen, that gene flow and genetic drift have no effect on allele frequencies, or that all mating is random, you will have eliminated one of the major theoretical causes for evolution. Yeah...good luck with that. Mutation has been as well-observed as evolution itself, and it follows that changes in alleles would cause changes in allele frequencies (i.e. evolution). Genetic drift has also been observed (read about polydactyly in the German Amish community for an interesting example of recent human evolution), and gene flow is simply the result of organisms moving into and out of a population. Obviously that happens, even among humans. You'd have better luck winning the lottery than you would showing any of these ideas to be wrong.

Could you disprove that speciation ever happens? Well, that certainly seems to be the focus of many Creationists. The fossil record, molecular genetics, and comparative anatomy and embryology all seem to suggest that the current biodiversity on Earth is the result of new species emerging over a very long period of time, but perhaps you could find something fundamentally flawed with four major fields of science. That would be something, wouldn't it, if four unrelated fields of biology were all COMPLETELY WRONG about their conclusions, which all seem to point to the same thing? Yeah, good luck with that too.

I don't know what your personal opinion is, but here's the flaw that most Creationists make. They only attempt to deflate the theory of evolution, as if the failure of that theory makes Creationism or Intelligent Design the default winner. In fact, it doesn't. If evolutionary theory collapses, we have a scientific void until an even BETTER theory can rise to fill it. That new theory might be a modification of the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory, or might be something considerably different, but one thing's for sure...it will explain the vast wealth of evidence even better than the modern theory does. And the modern theory does one helluva good job explaining all the evidence. I wouldn't hold my breath, if you know what I mean.

I'm glad you're interested in evolution, and good luck!

Answer 4

Once you define what hypothesis you mean by "evolution", it would be possible to falsify it by setting up an experiment, the same as any other scientific hypothesis.
If you make the hypothesis that characteristics of a population of animals will change over time in response to an environmental factor, you would gather a population of animals, expose them to the environment containing the factor, let them breed, and examine subsequent generations for a change in the characteristic. Change observed - hypothesis confirmed; no change - hypothesis falsified.

This particular hypothesis has been confirmed many times, as any observation of the history of domesticated animals will show.

Answer 5

Yes evolution is falsifiable (although it has not been falsified). If it wasn't it wouldn't qualify as a scientific theory:

Things that would disprove evolutionary theory:

1. Trilobites in Jurassic layers. T. rex's in the Cambrian layers. (Or trilobites and T. rex in the same layer.)

2. Lack of genetic evidence supporting common ancestry. (Remember, Darwin proposed his theory of evolution *before* the basics of genetics was understood.)

3. If some life forms had left-handed DNA and some right-handed DNA.

4. If some life forms used completely different amino acids, instead of all life forms using the same 20 amino acids.

5. If all structures were prefectly designed specifically for their function, instead of common structures being *repurposed* for different functions. (E.g. if a bat's wing and bird's wing had the same structure, because they have the same function ... instead of finding, as we have, that the bat's wing is closer in structure to the human hand, or the digging front paws of a mole ... indicating a mammalian front-limb *repurposed* for flying.)

6. A lack of junk DNA. The fact that so much DNA (as much as 98%) has no function whatsoever is evidence of millions of years of DNA accumulating, without any strong cleanup system for getting rid of DNA that is no longer used. (Again, the main structure of evolutionary theory was in place before the discovery of DNA.)

7. A lack of pattern in the commonalities of structures. E.g. the split between the Old World (OW) primates (the African and Asian primates, including all apes and humans) and New World (NW) primates (the Central and South American monkeys) also coincides in the split between opposable thumbs (OW primates have them, NW primates don't); color vision (OW primates have it, NW primates don't); prehensile tails (OW primates don't have them, NW primates do); number of teeth (OW primates have 2 premolars, NW primates have 3); etc. All of these show that the OW primates are more closely related to each other by common ancestry than they are to the NW primates ... a relationship explainable by the separation of the Old World and New World *continents* ... a relationship that would NOT be apparent if these features (opposable thumbs, color vision, prehensile tails, dental patterns) were evenly distributed across all these 145 different species of simian primates.

... And on and on.

It is for all of these reasons that it is clear that 'macroevolution' is just the result of 'microevolution' on a long time scale. In other words, there is no reason (except for reasons of *study*) for making this distinction. Creationist literature that tries to draw some line between the two ... as if they were two different *processes* in nature (rather than just two different levels that humans use to *study* the same process) ... are completely bogus. They have not shown any reason whatsoever that such a line exists *in nature*. Don't fall for it!

Answer 6

If you found a bird skeleton in the same rock as a trilobite (or something similar that's against the predictions of evolution) that would call some of evolutions' major principles into question.

Answer 7

ANYTHING in science can be proven wrong. That is what makes the scientific method so powerful and why I believe it to be the best way to search for any quantifiable truth.

You'd have to set up an experiment though, or at least gather some evidence. For instance, if your theory was that humans sprung whole cloth from a peach tree in the year 4000BC, one might expect to see the phenomenon repeat itself in other peach trees, or to see the human fossil record start very suddenly in 4000BC in a very localized area (where the peach tree was) with little in the way of fossil or DNA evidence that would link humanity to other types of animals in the modern or prehistoric world.

Clearly, that is not the case. The human fossil record starts millions of years ago, 250,000 years at least even just for modern humans. And the fossil and DNA evidence shows an African origin descending from ape-like ancestors and even co-existing at some points in time with other hominid species.

So unless you can modify the peach tree theory to explain the evidence above one would logically come to the conclusion that the theory was questionable at the least.

If you wanted to take the Biblical story of Genesis as fact, one would expect to see all fossil evidence for humanity begin very suddenly roughly 6000 years ago near the vicinity of Eden (most theologians think this to be somewhere in the Middle East) and to have mtDNA trails lead back to that place as well. Also, most language families should trace back to there, with a level of divergence that linguists would expect to see after about 6000 years (assuming we started out with language.) If this evidence were present, it would strongly suggest that the Biblical story of Genesis had at least some truth to it. The sudden appearance of human fossils, without any other fossils in the hominid line, would also make mankind stand out from the other animals of the world. Other elements of Genesis being confirmed - like the story of the flood - would lend weight to the theory as it would make the text of Genesis seem more reliable.

None of this is the case though. In reality there is a great weight of evidence that all animals and plants - even humans - evolved by spontaneous genetic mutation and natural selection. The fossil record is extensive and very convincing. Human DNA is more than 95% like that of our ape "cousins" and Genesis has about a much evidence to support it as the peach tree theory. In fact, many elements of Genesis are easily proven false by even the most basic scientific analysis, robbing the text of credibility.

but short answer, yes, anything can be proven false - if it indeed IS false.

Answer 8

Sure, if God himself descends upon mankind and says otherwise. Of course, he'd have to be able to break a loaf of bread and feed thousands too... I'd like to see that.

Answer 9

Many things can prove evolution wrong: genomic studies, geology, fossil records, and even Noah's ark can do it. Or if someone can prove that dinosaurs and humans coexisted, it will do it.

Answer 10

A fully evolved, millions of years old, human, with straight spine and all