Talk:Extended evolutionary synthesis/Archive 1

Latest on the extended synthesis
This is the latest paper on the extended synthesis published in August, 2015, obviously this source could be expanded. Any help on that would be appreciated. A little angry (talk) 22:34, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Citation needed for article title case
I'm not sure why this article deserves title case. Modern evolutionary synthesis doesn't have this. Neither does this article's own lead. What makes it All So Very Important? &mdash; MaxEnt 01:19, 12 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Doubt if it deserves it; like many other names of movements, it has probably passed from the double-quotes italics title case "Special Name of a Doubtful New Theory" to the simple accepted name of a work in progress. Paradoxically, that makes it rather more important... I've moved the article. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:57, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Questionable assertion?
I'm not too sure about the assertion "Proponents of Extended Evolutionary Synthesis state that there are many adaptation mechanisms, while most of biologist [sic] maintain that there is only one - natural selection."

The main dispute with Neo-Darwinists is over the sources of the variations that Natural Selection operates on. DaveApter (talk) 17:55, 23 February 2017 (UTC)


 * I looked at the source and it didn't say quite that. I removed the preceding stray claim too. While statements without citations are generally rubbish, the camouflaging presence of a citation doesn't prove ...Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:03, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for cleaning that up. I notice that you also removed my note about the Royal Society event. Possibly as it stood, that brief entry was not significant enough, but I was intending to add more material about the content of the debate there. I should have thought that presentations from some of the world's leading scientists on the extended synthesis at one of the world's foremost academic institutions would have been notable enough to mention. DaveApter (talk) 17:56, 28 February 2017 (UTC)


 * My thanks. I removed the note because a single event is not very likely to be worth mentioning - there are meetings at famous academies, societies, and universities in many countries every year, so we wouldn't normally mention one unless there's something very unusual and pioneering about it, like the famous 1860 Oxford evolution debate which is still commented on 150 years later. I'm afraid I've also felt it necessary to remove your recent uncited additions; it really is essential that these articles on evolutionary biology remain within the realm of the objectively verifiable, with reliable citations ab initio - several of us have spent hundreds of hours in the last few months playing catch-up with poorly cited material ranging all the way to WP:OR, not to mention frank creationism. It is much simpler to do things by the book, with each claim (sentence) verifiable with a supplied reliable source, per the verifiability policy. Since you seem to have your facts at your fingertips, you'll no doubt be able to supply such sources quickly and easily. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:57, 28 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks; my style is generally to compose entries so that the thought process flows and then add citations as a separate exercise. I take your point that with a topic that is as adversarial as this, it is probably preferable to do it by the book and include the references as the assertions are inserted. I hadn't thought that I was proposing anything particularly controversial, bearing in mind that each of the mechanisms I mentioned already have their own Wikipedia articles, nor did I think that it was a matter of dispute that the issues I summarised are an accurate précis of the differences in outlook between Neo-Darwinists and supporters of the Extended Synthesis (regardless of the merits of either position). DaveApter (talk) 16:12, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
 * All assertions can be challenged, so the Wikipedia approach is to require all claims to be cited. Wikipedia cannot be assumed to be a reliable source, so you must never rely on other articles. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:18, 2 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Your point is taken. I will add the areas of dispute one at a time with suitable refs. DaveApter (talk) 16:28, 2 March 2017 (UTC)


 * And regarding the RS conference, obviously we cannot know how it will be regarded in 150 years time! But there is a case to be made that "there's something very unusual and pioneering about it". I'll see whether I can find references which pass muster to support that position. I'd say it was certainly more significant than many things that are noted in Wikipedia articles! DaveApter (talk) 16:29, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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Too much hot air
I'm sorry, but Massimo Pigliucci is the type of hyper-aggressive self-promotor that is increasingly dominating academia. There is less here than meets the eye.137.205.100.161 (talk) 12:29, 14 December 2017 (UTC)
 * If the article relied exclusively on his work, that would indeed be problematic, but given that he was author or co-author on only 4 of 47 cited works here, and that even in those cases the works of other authors are cited in evidence, there is a consensus that a further synthesis is needed. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:26, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Creationist sources not reliable
"The principal focus of dispute with Neo-Darwinists is over the source of variation on which Natural Selection can operate (supporters of the Extended Synthesis deny that these always arise from "random copying errors" in DNA replication). In fact they often assert that development of an improved organism by a non-standard mechanism - even occasionally - would violate Shannon's principles of Information Theory."

Complete nonsense. This was taken from a young earth creationist crank source Werner Gitt and an unreliable source on evolution, Hubert Yockey - I have removed it. Skeptic from Britain (talk) 11:01, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Predictions of the EES
This link is useful Skeptic from Britain (talk) 13:49, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

New sources
The article has many scientific papers from 2011-2014. It would be nice to add to some recent papers on the EES (2017-2018). I will try and locate a few and add to the article. Dumping some here for now. ,, , , , Skeptic from Britain (talk) 14:19, 29 July 2018 (UTC)

Guardian article
For an article more accessible to (some) lay people, see:

Peaceray (talk) 01:49, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

Inaccurate info on funding
There are some inaccurate statements in the "testing" section here that I'm about to fix, citing a web page that is many years old for funding info that is now out of date. The EES Front got a 7.5 million USD (not British pounds) grant from Templeton in 2016. You can look this up by searching "extended evolutionary synthesis" on the Templeton web site grants database (https://www.templeton.org/grants/grant-database). They do not fund any grants more than 5 years (https://www.templeton.org/grants/grant-faq). This originally funding is now gone and that is why Templeton came out with a final report on their project cited elsewhere in this article. Dabs (talk) 23:20, 1 December 2023 (UTC)