Ants en't ents
Science advances by disproving previously-tenable hypotheses. For example, "The earth is <10,000 years old" was disproved by annual sediment layers long before we were able to estimate the actual age. Actually, Tom Kinraide and I argued in "Strong inference -- the way of science" that a hypothesis needs to be explanatory as well as falsifiable. So for a young earth to ever have qualified as a hypothesis, it would first have needed to explain at least some real world observations. Right off hand, I can't think of any actual data that an unbiased person would look at and say, "Well, these data would make sense, but only if we assume the earth is <10,000 years old."
Similarly, if someone wanted to convert "intelligent design" from religious whining into a scientific discipline, we'd need some falsifiable hypotheses. Suppose, for example, we hypothesized that current features of plants and animals (not just their single-celled, distant ancestors) were supernaturally-imposed designs to maximize their success. That hypothesis is consistent with the many examples of sophisticated adaptations (err, "design"), but what can we conclude from the many examples of maladaptation ("bad design")? Maladaptation is predicted by evolutionary theory (when current conditions don't match those under which past selection occurred, for example) but if some design team is continuously intervening in evolution, do maladaptations imply that they had a busy week? If so, should we expect the problem to instantly disappear, once they get around to it?
This week's paper is another example of the pattern we see repeatedly in biology: many sophisticated adaptations, but also serious "design flaws." In particular, Acacia trees can be fooled into feeding and housing ants that are harming them.
Breakdown of an Ant-Plant Mutualism Follows the Loss of Large Herbivores from an African Savanna was published this week in Science by Todd Palmer and five coauthors, three of whom I know from my years at UC Davis.