Fisher incorrectly assumed that new mutations would guarantee unrestricted progress toward ever-greater levels of fitness. But the new study points out that if Fisher were correct, eventually evolution would come to a standstill once natural selection eliminated all harmful mutations. Additionally, Fisher failed to factor in the effects of new harmful mutations. He based his formula on the assumption that a population’s fitness would never decrease, a supposition scientists now know is false.

(WNS)–For more than a century, many scientists accepted Ronald Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection as mathematical proof of survival of the fittest, a cornerstone of Darwinian evolution. But a new paper, published in the Journal of Mathematical Biology, found “Fisher’s corollary was seriously flawed.” After the researchers corrected and expanded Fisher’s theory, their findings blew apart the traditional understanding of survival of the fittest.

“The new paper seems to have turned Fisher’s theorem upside down, and with it, the entire neo-Darwinian paradigm,” wrote David Coppedge, founder of the Creation Evolution Headlines blog.

Charles Darwin formulated his theory based on simple observations and conjecture before scientists understood genetics. Later, when Gregor Mendel, known as the father of modern genetics, conducted experiments that showed mutations were inherited, many said Mendelism had killed Darwinism. In 1930, Fisher rescued the theory when he devised a mathematical formula that showed natural selection could improve the fitness of a species by selecting desirable gene mutations and deselecting harmful ones.

Fisher incorrectly assumed that new mutations would guarantee unrestricted progress toward ever-greater levels of fitness. But the new study points out that if Fisher were correct, eventually evolution would come to a standstill once natural selection eliminated all harmful mutations.

Additionally, Fisher failed to factor in the effects of new harmful mutations. He based his formula on the assumption that a population’s fitness would never decrease, a supposition scientists now know is false.

The new, reformulated theory, which considers that genetic mutations can cause either an upward or a downward effect on a population’s fitness, shows that the odds far favor a fitness decrease. According to the researchers, “Only a narrow range of parameters can actually prevent fitness decline.”

If only a narrow range of events can prevent a population’s fitness from declining, doesn’t the fact that populations survive at all point to the fine-tuning of God?

© 2018 World News Service. Used with permission.