Page 175 - The Errors the American National Academy of Sciences

The NAS's Error in Portraying Molecular Biology as
Evidence of Evolution

clock method is unreliable was reported
in an article in Science in 1996. The article
described how the biochemist Russell
Doolittle and his team had used the mol-
ecular clock method to propose that sin-

gle-cell creatures with a nucleus
(eukaryotes) split off from those without
a nucleus, such as bacteria (prokaryotes),
some 2 billion years ago. However, using
a different clock, the evolutionist micro- Norman Pace
biologist Norman Pace suggested that this event took place 3 to 4 bil-
lion years ago (even though it is generally accepted that life on Earth
goes back no further than 3.7 billion years). On the other hand, the
microfossil expert William Schopf rejected both results and claimed

that the oldest fossils of bacteria are 1.5 billion years older than the
date given by Doolittle. In the face of this claim, Doolittle expressed
53
his doubts as to whether these fossils were real. As we can see, the
use of the molecular clock produces results that not only are inter-
nally inconsistent, but also openly conflict with the fossil record.
In addition, the biochemists C. Schwabe and G. W. Warr state
that their analyses of relaxin (a hormone secreted in the final days of

pregnancy) are not compatible with the "evolutionary clock model." 54
The DNA analyses by the researchers L. Vawter and W. M.
Brown produced results that were totally outside evolutionists' ex-
pectations; as a result, these researchers call for the molecular clock
hypothesis to be totally abandoned:
[The] disparity in relative rates of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA
divergence suggests that the controls and constraints under which
the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes operate are evolving inde-
pendently, and provides evidence that is independent of fossil

173