Obsolete Dawkinsian evidence for evolution
For the public understanding of phylogenomics, an argument used by Richard Dawkins should be retired
Richard Buggs
Professor, Queen Mary University of London
Published Mar 23, 2021
It is with hesitation that I pen a blog post that could be construed as critical of Richard Dawkins FRS. Many members of this Nature Ecology & Evolution Community may have first come to understand the Darwinian mechanism through his lucid prose. His books have sold by their millions and feature on many an undergraduate reading list. School science teachers around the globe teach what they have learned from him. In the public imagination he is our greatest living evolutionary biologist.
But for these reasons it is important to point out where he has erred. Or at least, where scientific progress has discredited his claims. Because of his wide influence, it is in the interests of the public understanding of science that any mistakes he has made should be explicitly corrected.
In seeking to do so, I am encouraged by statements that Dawkins has often made about willingness of scientists to have their ideas disproven. With that in mind, I can have no doubt that he himself will welcome and seriously consider this post, should he happen upon it.
My concern is that Richard Dawkins has made very public statements that, if taken to be true today, seriously misrepresent the field of phylogenetics in the era of whole genome sequencing.
Take a look at this video hosted by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science YouTube Channel. In the video (8:40 minutes in), Dawkins is asked to name the single best piece of evidence for evolution. His response is to claim that phylogenetic analyses of different genes and pseudogenes each independently give us "the same family tree" for the species that carry them. This congruence between gene trees is "overwhelmingly strong evidence" for evolution - the only alternative being a deceptive creator.
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