Evolution in action.

[Angrboda]

So he found 47 moths... And what sample size was this of the total population?   Where was he looking?   I don't think that the issue is with natural selection here. The cause of the change in frequency may very well be related to the pollution.  The issue is with the explanation and the many assumption that are being made.


From http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/02/rev...56291.html

Yet during the seven years of Majerus's study, thousands of peppered moths must have passed through the woodland near his house, so 135 moths were a tiny fraction of the total. Furthermore, as he himself acknowledged in a 2007 lecture in Sweden, his results might have been "somewhat biased towards the lower parts of the tree, due to sampling technique."

Indeed. If peppered moths normally rest high in the upper branches, as several researchers concluded in the 1980s, then doing statistics on those visible to an observer on the ground (even one who climbs part-way up some trees, as Majerus did), is bound to suffer from sampling bias. Imagine someone looking over the side of a boat and concluding that most fish in the sea live within ten feet of the surface.

From an accusation of fraud to an insinuation of sampling bias. Those are some pretty agile goalposts.