Re: Lenski experiments: an important correction

On 10/05/2024 21:31, Arkalen wrote:

I recently found out that Richard Lenski of the eponymous long-term E.coli evolution experiment had a blog, and in it I found a correction I thought was relevant to the way those experiments are typically invoked as evidence in evolution/creationism debates:
 https://telliamedrevisited.wordpress.com/2024/04/01/a-small-correction/
 I hope we'll all have the integrity to take this new information into account properly.

Did you look at the date? I suspect it's an April Fool. (Or did you identify it as an April Fool, and ran with it?)

  "Since transferring the LTEE to Jeff Barrick’s lab at UT-Austin in 2022, we’ve been going over the old lab notebooks, making sure everything looks good. It turns out, though, that I made a small error when I started the LTEE back in 1988. I thought that transferring 10 ml into 10 ml was a hundred-fold dilution because there’s a 0 right there after each of the 1s, and 100 has two zeros. QED: a hundred-fold dilution. Right?
 Well, it turns out I was a bit off. That’s only a two-fold dilution because, apparently, the correct way to do the math is 10 / (10 + 10) = 1/2. Who knew? New math, I guess. Anyhow, everyone in the lab thought I had figured it out, since I was the perfesser, and they just kept doing the same thing all these years. So instead of 75,000 generations, it was only something like 11,250 when we sent the ^H^H^H^H^H^Hstupid amazing LTEE to Taxes. Oh well, still a big number.
 We also discovered another tiny error. You know, I always thought some ^H^H^H^H^H^Hsucker hard-working student came in and did the transfers on weekends and holidays. I never quite knew who it was, but I figured someone did the ^H^H^H^H^H^Hunpaid ^H^H^H^work transfers. Well, it turns out, not so much. OK, never. Fridays were ok at 40%, and Mondays were even better at 53%. On Tuesdays, we maxed out at 73%. Not bad! We trailed off a tad at 59% and 47% on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
 Anyhow, after correcting for these tiny oversights, the LTEE had gone past 4,300 generations before we sent it down to Taxes. Speaking of Taxes, I hope I don’t get audited again this year. But I hear you can stall if you’re a big shot. Being a PI qualifies, right?"
 

--
alias Ernest Major