The traditional peppered moth story is no longer supportable (Talk.Origins)

Claim CB601:

According to the traditional peppered moth story, cryptic coloration confers protection to the moths from predators, and as the habitat changed due to industrial pollution, natural selection caused the frequencies of different color varieties of the moth to change. As the trees became darker, the lighter moths stood out more, so the darker ones became more plentiful, and vice versa as the pollution cleared. That story is no longer supportable because of flaws found in the experiments, such as where the moths rested, and the occurrence of contrary data, such as unaccountable frequencies of uncamouflaged moths in areas.

Source:
 * Wells, Jonathan, 1999. Second thoughts on peppered moths. This classical story of evolution by natural selection needs revising.
 * Wells, Jonathan, 2000. Icons of Evolution, Washington DC: Regnery Publishing Inc., pp. 137-157

CreationWiki response:

It needs to be noted that the traditional peppered moth story is no way a threat to creation science. Not only do the peppered moths remain peppered moths but it does not even represent a change in the peppered moth gene pool but only a temporary shift in populations. The fact that Evolutionists even consider this evidence for evolution is a sign of desperation.

Talk Origins has a strange definition of “not fatally flawed.” The conditions of Kettlewell experiment were simply too unrealistic to give reliable results. Since the moths are nocturnal, doing a daylight release is doing the experiment under conditions opposite of those in nature. This is a sufficiently large difference to at least render the results questionable.

The problem in this case is that a key condition (the time of day) was totally wrong. The difference between day and night could have any number of effects on the moths that would cause invalid results.

The cited sources discuss these experiments and they had the same flaws. They also discuss other studies of peppered moths in the wild and they do not support the traditional story.

No one is questioning that there is a relationship between moth melanism and pollution levels; rather they question the cause of the changes.

The flaw in this reasoning is that there are studies of peppered moths in the wild which do not support the traditional story.


 * 1) At no point does Wells accuse any one of fraud or misconduct.
 * 2) To claim that no one familiar with the literature doubts the traditional story is an over generalization.

While this true, if the omitted “complexities” raise questions about the results, that is a problem.