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From: Ernest Major <{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Lenski experiments: an important correction
Date: Fri, 10 May 2024 22:05:19 +0100
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On 10/05/2024 21:31, Arkalen wrote:
> I recently found out that Richard Lenski of the eponymous long-term 
> E.coli evolution experiment had a blog, and in it I found a correction I 
> thought was relevant to the way those experiments are typically invoked 
> as evidence in evolution/creationism debates:
> 
> https://telliamedrevisited.wordpress.com/2024/04/01/a-small-correction/
> 
> I hope we'll all have the integrity to take this new information into 
> account properly.

Did you look at the date? I suspect it's an April Fool. (Or did you 
identify it as an April Fool, and ran with it?)
> 
> 
> "Since transferring the LTEE to Jeff Barrick’s lab at UT-Austin in 2022, 
> we’ve been going over the old lab notebooks, making sure everything 
> looks good. It turns out, though, that I made a small error when I 
> started the LTEE back in 1988. I thought that transferring 10 ml into 10 
> ml was a hundred-fold dilution because there’s a 0 right there after 
> each of the 1s, and 100 has two zeros. QED: a hundred-fold dilution. Right?
> 
> Well, it turns out I was a bit off. That’s only a two-fold dilution 
> because, apparently, the correct way to do the math is 10 / (10 + 10) = 
> 1/2. Who knew? New math, I guess. Anyhow, everyone in the lab thought I 
> had figured it out, since I was the perfesser, and they just kept doing 
> the same thing all these years. So instead of 75,000 generations, it was 
> only something like 11,250 when we sent the ^H^H^H^H^H^Hstupid amazing 
> LTEE to Taxes. Oh well, still a big number.
> 
> We also discovered another tiny error. You know, I always thought some 
> ^H^H^H^H^H^Hsucker hard-working student came in and did the transfers on 
> weekends and holidays. I never quite knew who it was, but I figured 
> someone did the ^H^H^H^H^H^Hunpaid ^H^H^H^work transfers. Well, it turns 
> out, not so much. OK, never. Fridays were ok at 40%, and Mondays were 
> even better at 53%. On Tuesdays, we maxed out at 73%. Not bad! We 
> trailed off a tad at 59% and 47% on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
> 
> Anyhow, after correcting for these tiny oversights, the LTEE had gone 
> past 4,300 generations before we sent it down to Taxes. Speaking of 
> Taxes, I hope I don’t get audited again this year. But I hear you can 
> stall if you’re a big shot. Being a PI qualifies, right?"
> 

-- 
alias Ernest Major