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::: An analysis of the paper and the supporting information on Professor Lenski's website has led to the identification of significant flaws which, if not refuted, negate the claim that E. Coli bacteria underwent an evolutionary beneficial mutation in the experiment.

::: Flaws in the foregoing PNAS paper negate its claim that E. Coli bacteria underwent an evolutionary beneficial mutation in the experiment. See http://www.conservapedia.com/Flaws_in_Richard_Lenski_Study and the corresponding talk page.  In summary, the flaws are:

:::: 1. Figure 3 depicts an "historical contingency" hypothesis at about the 31,000th generation, but the abstract states that "some potentiating mutation arose by 20,000 generations."  The paper fails to admit that the Third Experiment disproved this hypothesis as depicted in Figure 3.

 

:::: 1. Figure 3 depicts an "historical contingency" hypothesis at about the 31,000th generation, but the abstract states that "some potentiating mutation arose by 20,000 generations."  The paper fails to state that the Third Experiment disproved this hypothesis as depicted in Figure 3.

:::: 2. Lenski's two alternative hypotheses suggest a fixed mutation rate, but the failure of the mutations in his experiments to increase based on scale tends to disprove both hypotheses.  If the Second and Third experiments were so dissimilar to the First Experiment that they cannot be compared for scale, then it was wrong to treat them as similar in the statistical analysis.

:::: 2. Lenski's two alternative hypotheses suggest a fixed mutation rate, but the failure of the mutations in his experiments to increase based on scale tends to disprove both hypotheses.  If the Second and Third experiments were so dissimilar to the First Experiment that they cannot be compared for scale, then it was wrong to treat them as similar in the statistical analysis.

:::: 3. Lenski incorrectly applied a Monte Carlo resampling test to exclude the null hypothesis for rarely occurring events.  The Third Experiment results are entirely consistent with the null hypothesis, contrary to the claim of the paper.  

:::: 3. Lenski incorrectly applied a Monte Carlo resampling test to exclude the null hypothesis for rarely occurring events.  The Third Experiment results are entirely consistent with the null hypothesis, contrary to the claim of the paper.