Page 176 - The Errors the American National Academy of Sciences

The Errors of the American National Academy of Sciences

dating for a robust rejection of a generalized molecular clock hy-
pothesis of DNA evolution. 55
Even evolutionist researchers thus accept that the results ob-
tained from the molecular clock are not trustworthy.

Another reason why the molecular clock hypothesis is not to be
trusted is that the techniques used to measure the molecular distance
between living species are not accurate. Professor James S. Farris of
the Swedish Museum of Natural History states:
It seems that the only general conclusion one can draw is that noth-
ing about present techniques for analyzing molecular distance data
is satisfactory . . . None of the known measures of genetic distance
seems able to provide a logically defensible method, and it appears
that some altogether different approach will have to be adopted for
analyzing electrophoretic data. 56

Farris's criticisms of the techniques in question are widely re-
spected because he himself developed one of the most frequently em-
ployed techniques for measuring genetic distance.
Professor Siegfried Scherer, director of the Institute of

Microbiology at the Technical University of Munich, emphasizes the
unreliability of the molecular clock in these terms:
Considering the strong demands usually applied in experimental bi-
ology, it is hard to understand why the [molecular clock] concept sur-
vived such a long period at all. It can neither be used as a tool for
dating phylogenetic splits nor as reliable supportive evidence for any
particular phylogenetic hypothesis. . . . Areliable molecular clock with
respect to protein sequences seems not to exist. . . . It is concluded that
the protein molecular clock hypothesis should be rejected. 57
In short, the evolutionists' molecular clock does not work.

According to Denton, the concept of the molecular clock consists of
"apologetic tautologies." Denton criticizes the theory of evolution in

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