If we're going to base our views on a scientific study on quotes in a Talk comment associated with the development of a Wikipedia article - two can play at that - from your link:
Perhaps Coyne and you should have read this Wikipedia article, or any of the rest of the scientific literature. The photos weren't "faked" -- they weren't supposed to be evidence that moths rest on tree trunks, they were only for the purposes of showing the contrast in color between the moths and their background. And the theory of evolution is extremely well established, as Coyne would be the first to tell you, and the peppered moth has nothing to do with it; it's just a particularly striking example of adaptive evolution in response to natural selection. -- Jibal 11:11, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
OB
nice cover article...
here is another one
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from:
The moth files - creation.com
"The story concerning England’s Peppered Moths (
Biston betularia) originally seemed very straightforward. The research is attributed to one H.B. Kettlewell, who is reported to have said that Darwin would be overjoyed to see the vindication of his theory. The insects used to be mostly of a light form, with occasional darker (melanic) forms. Light-coloured lichen growing on tree trunks meant that the light forms were very well camouflaged, while the dark ones would ‘stand out’ to the eyes of hungry birds.
"Therefore, it made sense that hungry birds would eat more of the lighter ones, so the dark ones would become the dominant form.
Pollution from the Industrial Revolution is said to have killed off much of the pale lichen covering the tree trunks, thus darkening them, so that now the dark forms were better camouflaged. Therefore, it made sense that hungry birds would eat more of the lighter ones, so the dark ones would become the dominant form.
"Kettlewell’s experimental observations were supposed to have shown that this is indeed what happened. Then, as pollution began to be cleaned up, the tree trunks became lighter again, so light moths resting on the tree trunks would now be less easily seen, thus the ratio shifted the other way.
Photographs were taken of the dark and the light forms resting on the tree trunks, showing how obvious the camouflage differences were. To further ‘clinch’ the case,
birds were filmed preferentially ‘picking off’ the less camouflaged forms."
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Maybe one more "The famous evolutionary biologist L. Harrison Matthews,
writing in the foreword to the 1971 edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species, pointed out that the Peppered Moths observations showed natural selection, but
not evolution in action. Selection is an important
part of evolutionary theory, but it is not the same thing. However, most evolutionists, including H.B. Kettlewell, write as if they were the same thing, muddying the waters for the lay public "