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If I understand the theory correctly, evolution revolves around the process of adaptation of a being to its environment which results in the increment of survival and reproduction chances for that being.

But I constantly hear debates around whether the mutations that trigger these evolutionary changes result in the loss of genetic information or acquisition of new genetic information. The existence of these discussions gives the impression that if genetic mutations only resulted in the loss of information, evolution, as understood today, wouldn't work.

Is this a valid way to falsify evolution theory?

sergeidave
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    Can you point to one of these debates that you hear? I most often see this sort of arguments put up as some misguided critique of evolution, to make wrong arguments like "evolution can't result in gain of information." – Bryan Krause Mar 08 '19 at 23:11
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    Your representation of the theory of evolution (that we call the modern evolutionary synthesis) is very biased and very lacking. You might want to have a look at a very short intro to evolutionary biology such as evo101 for example. – Remi.b Mar 08 '19 at 23:14
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    @BryanKrause Well I watch (and read) a lot of internet debates between creationists and scientists, but the recent one I'd like to refer to is this one between AronRa and Grady McMurtry. Almost right out of the gate the discussion revolves around the question I'm posting here. This is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvnW6N3oy5k – sergeidave Mar 09 '19 at 01:11
  • @Remi.b Usually people ask these questions when they actually don't know and want to see if more knowledgeable people can provide valuable insight. If my position seems to be biased in some way, it's probably because I'm not a scientist and therefore I came here looking for help by asking the question. But thank you very much for the link. I will for sure go through it. Thanks! – sergeidave Mar 09 '19 at 01:15
  • It would be so amazing if downvoters were required to express why they are downvoting a question. People come genuinely looking for an answer to a site that's populated with a lot of learned individuals. It's rather disappointing that genuine questions just get stepped on instead of answered. – sergeidave Mar 09 '19 at 02:00
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    The issue with the question is that the concept of information of a sequence is very much undefined (see Calculating Shannon Entropy for DNA sequence?). If you'd wish to offer a good working definition for the amount of information of a genetic sequence, we could talk about whether new mutations tend to increase of decrease it. – Remi.b Mar 09 '19 at 02:02
  • On a sidenote: I have no downvoted but I can picture why it has been downvoted from the comments you have received. I agree that forcing commenting when down voting would be a somewhat pleasant policy. – Remi.b Mar 09 '19 at 02:04
  • @Remi.b I have rephrased my question just to clarify that I'm not trying to push a bias. I've sincerely googled for quite some time and I haven't found an answer. I would think that evolution theory works whether the mutations are only losses of information or not. But I don't know for sure. Any ideas? Thanks you! – sergeidave Mar 09 '19 at 02:21
  • @sergeidave Don't worry, I meant that your representation of the theory of evolution is quite wrong but never did I mean that you had bad intentions. – Remi.b Mar 09 '19 at 04:15
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because the concept of information content is very much undefined (see for example Calculating Shannon Entropy for DNA sequence?). If the OP can offer a working definition (a metric) for quantifying information from a genetic sequence, then the question would be on-topic. – Remi.b Mar 09 '19 at 04:17
  • As @Remi.b says, you have to first clarify what you mean by information otherwise your question would be considered unclear. – WYSIWYG Mar 09 '19 at 07:36
  • Does "information", presumably as encoded in DNA, even make that much sense in evolutionary terms? Say you have the complete genome of a creature, for instance a mammoth: can you use that alone to create a new mammoth? Or do you need a female mammoth? And if you did somehow create a baby mammoth, would it be able to survive without being taught by other mammoths? – jamesqf Mar 09 '19 at 17:12
  • You also need to define what you mean by Evolution theory. Evolution is just a change in the genetic composition of a population during successive generations, its is an observation a factual statement not a theory. There are mechanistic theories explaining how it works (such as the theory of evolution Via natural selection) but no "Evolution theory" – John Mar 09 '19 at 19:41
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    This question may already answer your question, https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/16106/how-does-the-creative-process-of-biological-evolution-work – John Mar 09 '19 at 19:59
  • This is parroting the claims in Behe's latest book. They have been refuted many times. Rich Lenski has recently put up a series of blog posts starting here, with extensive references, further refuting Behe's claims, and clearly showing how dishonest Behe is in continuing toput forward these claims that he must know are lies. – iayork Mar 11 '19 at 17:21

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This might not have a purely objective answer. For example:

Most people lose the ability to digest milk by their teens. A few thousand years ago, however, after the domestication of cattle, several groups of people in Europe and Africa independently acquired mutations that allow them to continue digesting milk into adulthood. Genetic studies show there has been very strong selection for these mutations, so they were clearly very beneficial.

Most biologists would see this as a gain in information: a change in environment (the availability of cow’s milk as food) is reflected by a genetic mutation that lets people exploit that change (gaining the ability to digest milk as an adult). Creationists, however, dismiss this as a malfunction, as the loss of the ability to switch off the production of the milk-digesting enzyme after childhood.

And if you go read a review paper on beneficial mutations (as opposed to a popsci article), it never gets to the topic of information loss/gain. The latter seems to be most a concern for creationists (and those debunking their silly claims).

The closest thing that is of concern to biologists is whether a mutation causes a loss or gain of function of the affected protein. There exist ways to score a mutation as gain-, loss-, or switch of function.

I also note that you've substantially edited your question (toward an emphasis on whether that issues invalidates the theory of evolution) after I answered it. As a brief and obvious addendum: no, the argument doesn't invalidate the theory of evolution.

After some searching I found that the argument in question has been put forth by Lee Spetner. Dembski has a somewhat similar argument but not exactly this one. Anyway there seems to be countless variations to it:

An especially good example of silliness is the ID assertion that natural processes cannot create new genetic information. ID advocates have recently been pushing this line heavily as of late (Meyer 2009), even in the science standards of some states (see Matzke and Gross 2006, for discussion and refutation of the information argument), and in the ID movement’s new textbook, Explore Evolution (Meyer et al. 2007). Interestingly, this talking point, at least in the form of a seemingly technical chemical/mathematical conclusion (there are older, more informal versions throughout the creationist literature), was invented in the 1984 proto-ID book The Mystery of Life’s Origins (Thaxton et al. 1984), as a modified version of the creation scientists’ Second Law argument (Matzke 2009). It has since grown into one of the top two or three arguments made by ID advocates.

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  • Thank you for your answer. You are correct, I modified the question because from the comments I received, it seemed it wasn't clear enough. Hopefully I left the essence of the question still intact. Thank you very much for your answer. – sergeidave Mar 09 '19 at 02:31