Hypothesize, predict, test...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/25/AR2005092501177_pf.html

....

If Darwin was right, for example, then scientists should be able to
perform a neat trick. Using a mathematical formula that emerges from
evolutionary theory, they should be able to predict the number of
harmful mutations in chimpanzee DNA by knowing the number of mutations
in a different species' DNA and the two animals' population sizes.

"That's a very specific prediction," said Eric Lander, a geneticist at
the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., and a
leader in the chimp project.

Sure enough, when Lander and his colleagues tallied the harmful
mutations in the chimp genome, the number fit perfectly into the range
that evolutionary theory had predicted.

Their analysis was just the latest of many in such disparate fields as
genetics, biochemistry, geology and paleontology that in recent years
have added new credence to the central tenet of evolutionary theory:
That a smidgeon of cells 3.5 billion years ago could -- through
mechanisms no more extraordinary than random mutation and natural
selection -- give rise to the astonishing tapestry of biological
diversity that today thrives on Earth.

Evolution's repeated power to predict the unexpected goes a long way
toward explaining why so many scientists and others are practically
apoplectic over the recent decision by a Pennsylvania school board to
treat evolution as an unproven hypothesis, on par with "alternative"
explanations such as Intelligent Design (ID), the proposition that life
as we know it could not have arisen without the helping hand of some
mysterious intelligent force.

....

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