Dr. James Tour-Why Long-Term Evolution Studies Might Be Overhyped

Dr. James Tour
Oct 23, 2025
Why Long-Term Evolution Studies Might Be Overhyped
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcCV0igIA0U
Dr. Tour hosts Dr. Rob Stadler to test a provocative claim: do long-term evolution experiments show genuine innovation or just clever re-uses of what organisms already have? Moving from E. coli in the lab to finches, yeast, guppies, fruit flies and peppered moths, the pair applies a “patent test” to argue that most changes reflect gene duplication, regulation, or standing variation—not new functions. It’s a brisk, point-counterpoint on what counts as evidence, and where the burden of proof should sit.
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00:00 Opening claim: “evolution is a fact” critique
03:10 Guest intro and topic: constraints in evolution
06:20 Tree of Life vs. Forest of Life model setup
10:40 Six criteria for high-confidence scientific evidence
14:50 Fossil record as low-confidence, indirect evidence
20:00 Why prospective experiments best test innovation
24:30 Nature review of long-term evolution studies
30:00 Lenski LTE: citrate metabolism headline result
36:00 Gene duplications, not new function, drive citrate
42:00 Yeast “snowflake” multicellularity experiment
48:00 Whole-genome duplication hype questioned
54:00 Guppies: fast change from standing variation
1:00:00 Fruit flies: decades of selection, few fixes
1:06:00 Peppered moths: regulatory RNA, not new parts
1:10:00 Patent test recap and invitation for counterexamples
1:12:00 Closing remarks and contact/faith invitation
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