Your guess would be wrong.
Peer reviewed articles are very carefully worded. When they say "decisively refuted", they mean it.
As has been pointed out already, a particular evolutionary pathway for a particular enzyme in a particular species of fruit fly was the "decisively refuted" thing. From the article you've quoted,
"There is no doubt that D. melanogaster did adapt to high-alcohol food sources during its evolution, but not because of changes in the Adh enzyme. "The Adh story was accepted because the ecology, physiology, and the statistical signature of selection all pointed in the same direction. But three lines of circumstantial evidence don't make an airtight case," Thornton said. "That's why we wanted to test the hypothesis directly, now that we finally have the means to do so."
They clearly state that evolution carried on just fine, so all the mechanisms of the Theory of Evolution are left perfectly in tact.
If you're suggesting "We found that the accepted wisdom about the molecular causes of the flies' evolution is simply wrong." is just a minor adjustment, you're wrong. This challenges the accepted wisdom about adaptation, a fundamental principle of Darwin's theory. They plan on testing more cases and I wouldn't count on it getting better.
Again, to correct your understanding, the "molecular causes of the flies' evolution", being the Adh enzyme pathway was the "simply wrong" bit, the pathway that evolutionary change occurred in is somewhere else in this fly's genome, just not where they had that close look. In no way were they stating that the flies' genome didn't change at all, or that evolution is wrong by any stretch!
Nowhere did I conclude this refutes the theory of evolution. Species evolve and adapt over time, duh. Their results refute the "accepted wisdom" about molecular adaptation. They said "The Adh story was accepted because the ecology, physiology, and the statistical signature of selection all pointed in the same direction. But three lines of circumstantial evidence don't make an airtight case,"
So all the people who think natural selection acting on random mutations is an "airtight case" to explain everything are simply wrong.
Again, wrong as stated above. Natural selection acting on random mutation is Exactly an "airtight case".
What exactly do you think I'm implying?
It isn't just about fruit flies.
"Our experiments strongly refute the predictions of the adaptive ADH hypothesis and caution against accepting intuitively appealing accounts of historical molecular adaptation that are based on correlative evidence."
No, as stated earlier, the accepted science regarding one evolutionary pathway of one particular enzyme in one particular species of fruit fly was examined in great detail, and was found to be wrong. They accept it happened via evolutionary mechanisms and even say this, just not in the way that it was thought to have happened.
In plain english, they're cautioning about the creative force of random mutations.
Nope, again, one particular evolutionary pathway of one particular enzyme in one particular species of fruit fly was examined in great detail, and found to be wrong.
Considering you accused me of blasphemy for doubting Darwinism, what did you think about this part of the peer reviewed article:
" ..and caution against accepting intuitively appealing accounts of historical molecular adaptation that are based on correlative evidence."
Intuition can be as unreliable at findings of fact as faith is. Intuition should therefore always be applied sparingly, if at all, and only where absolutely unavoidable. Always seek to verify correlation with experimentation to be absolutely sure, and this is an excellent method to do so.
my contribution to this thread's Point Refuted A Thousand Times.... anyone keeping count?
