"Let's put it this way. What would have been your reaction had this been YEC's who were having to backpedal on a key piece of data? Would you have been so cavalier in your dismissal of it as insignificant?"
I really cannot honestly answer that question, since I cannot imagine a YEC equivalent. For one thing, the peppered moth example is not a key piece of data. Fifty years ago it might have been, as the only study of its type outside a laboratory, but now it is simply one of many studies that confirm the basic principles of natural selection. Even if it were to be proven totally false, this would not refute natural selection, or how it applies to evolution as a whole. For another, it's not backpedaling, since the study still confirms the power of natural selection. Even Majerus asserts this. It's just a matter of uncovering the real cause of the selection, and it's still likely to be some form of predator selection, just one more heavily modified by the moth's true behavior. Finally, neither evolution as a whole nor Darwinian natural selection in particular will crash and burn based solely on the outcome of this re-evaluation; there is just too much other evidence supporting evolu
tion for this one example to jeopardize it (assuming of course that the cause wasn't a bored Deity who amused Himself for a 100 years playing with moth genes).
"This is the major example in every biology textbook of how evolution works."
True, and as I've already said it needs to be modified. But as long as it still describes how evolution works, there is no need to get rid of it.
"If it is not correct, that ought to be cause for something besides a stifled yawn...."
Only if it were to contradict evolution, and the review doesn't make that sound likely at all.
Kevin L. O'Brien