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>The neo-Darwinian synthesis has never been subjected to a comprehensive empirical audit in which every proposed evolutionary mechanism operates simultaneously under observation. Defenders of the theory have constructed what we term the post-Darwinian polythesis: a shifting constellation of supplementary mechanisms — neutral drift, parallel fixation, supermutation, hitchhiking, epistasis, clonal interference, compensatory mutation — each invoked ad hoc to answer a specific mathematical objection, but never tested collectively. The Long-Term Evolution Experiment (LTEE) with Escherichia coli, now in its fourth decade, is the only experiment in existence where every one of these mechanisms operates simultaneously under controlled conditions. We analyze the total fixation throughput of the LTEE using two independent public datasets: Tenaillon et al. 2016 (clone-pair sequencing through 50,000 generations, 264 genomes) and Good et al. 2017 (metagenomic frequency trajectories through 60,000 generations). The resulting average for non-hypermutational populations is 1,322 generations per fixation at 60,000 generations. Applied to the human-chimpanzee divergence, the shortfall is 1,075,000-fold, and three independent lines of genomic evidence confirm that no hypermutational phase ever occurred on the human lineage. The post-Darwinian polythesis fails comprehensively by six orders of magnitude under the most favorable experimental conditions ever constructed.

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Source: https://zenodo.org/records/23003785