What I’ve said is that most laypeople who do accept evolution do so because of obvious fossil evidence that is easily seen by naked eye.
Specific knowledge of DNA and RNA are a little above paygrade of most people.
Show me evidence of this? Several studies have been done on what persuades people and this does not appear to be a common theme…
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Huh, really? It persuaded most people I’ve talked with.
Can you link me to some of those studies?
As a layman, (and I’m assuming by evolution, you mean common descent), I would have to say DNA. I’ve seen no creationist give a reasonable explanation for pseudogenes.
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Persuasion is usually driven by trust and community, not specific lines of evidence.
I’m trying to do one better, by getting some sociologists to join us for office hours. A lot on my plate now thought. Give me time.
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Have you read the article linked here? This is very important, and has a very long review of relevant studies. Let me know if you find anything that discusses the unique persuasive power of the fossil record, okay? AAAS: Scientists in Civic Life: Facilitating Dialogue-Based Communication.
Darwin seemed to think that the distribution of different species across the geographic landscape (i.e., biogeographic patterns) was one of the most powerful lines of evidence. At the very least, biogeography seems relatively simple to explain to people who aren’t biologists.
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@swamidass, are we talking about common descent?
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Has there been any sort of consensus yet on the strongest evidence for common descent?
I intend to take up the subject again and would like to have something on which to focus.
HT: to Paul Nelson tor suggesting
Of possible interest:
Depends. Common descent of what?
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You might find that rough going as well as not quite relevant to what you’re interested in. I could be wrong. Joe Felsenstein’s book Inferring Phylogenies, while still rough going, might be more on-topic for you.
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Alfred Russel Wallace independently discovered evolution because of biogeography, specifically in the islands around Australia and Indonesia. In science we often talk about the consilience of evidence, and in this case there were two men who both discovered the process of evolution (or at least parts of it) completely independently of each other at around the same time.
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Reading through the first part of The Ancestor’s Tale. Considering how sequence data is so important nowadays I think that is now considered the strongest evidence.
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Sure, by the majority of biologists, particularly those who work with sequence data. By me, for example. But not by everyone. Anyway, it’s like arguing about which is the greatest Beatles album. (The White Album, incidentally.)
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Upon thinking more on the matter however, it could be that sequence data has become more popular not because of its value in providing evidence for the theory of common descent but rather because of its value to practitioners in creating phylogenetic trees and for attempting to resolve the “true” tree of life.
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What’s the distinction between those two? Are not phylogenetic trees the very evidence for common descent that sequence data provides?
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Not in my mind. Perhaps you could provide a brief description of how software creates a tree given a set of sequences and the conditions under which the software would fail to produce a tree.
Would the software still work given sequences that do not come from living organisms?
Sorry, I was being sloppy. It’s not the fact of a tree that’s the evidence. It’s that the data force a particular tree that is statistically significantly a better fit to the data than any other tree; that is, that the data are organized in a nested hierarchy. Isn’t the nested hierarchy of sequence data the very evidence for common descent that sequence data provides? Again, what’s the distinction?
As opposed to what? Dead organisms? Rocks? Not sure what you’re asking.
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