he validity of the common ancestry thesis which it is supposed to confirm.59
As Johnson makes clear, the complex-appearing calculations that so impress people cause them to believe that the molecular clock is a scientific hypothesis that actually illuminates extraordinary truths. The fact is, however, as we have already seen, that the concept of the molecular clock employs circular reasoning, and is incapable of providing any evidence for the theory of evolution. The NAS authors continue this "maybe-they'll-believe-it" logic throughout the chapter in question, setting out their so-called proofs one after the other.
The Purported Evolutionary Relationship Between Whales And Hippopotamuses
At the end of the chapter "New Proofs from Molecular Biology," a claim is made that flies in the face of the scientific facts. The NAS claims that comparisons of certain milk protein genes show that the ancestor of the whale is the hippopotamus, and that this claim is also supported by the fossil record. The truth, however, is that the scientists who actually carried out this research, as well as experts on the origin of whales, do not share the views of the NAS. Scientists at the Tokyo Institute of Technology who carried out the research, which was published in the August 14, 1997, issue of Nature, wrote at the end of their article that the hippopotamus origin of the whale is incompatible with both the fossil record and morphological comparisons:
The conclusions from our retropositional analysis are inconsistent with earlier morphologically based hypotheses. Paleontological and morphological data suggest that modern whales originated from the Archaeocetes (primitive aquatic cetaceans), which first appeared in the early Eocene epoch. The Archaeocetes are believed to have originated from mesonychians [a family of odd-toed ungulates], which appeared before the Eocene. However, the most primitive artiodactyls [even-toed ungulates] (Dichobunids) first appeared in the early Eocene, and the origin of nearly all the families of artiodactyls can only be traced back to the middle or the late Eocene. Such a sequence of appearance of these animals is inconsistent with our molecular data... We believe that recent molecular data will lead to the reinterpretation by palaeontologists of many fossil records of Artiodactyla to match our conclusions. Extensive morphological reversals and convergences, as well as large gaps in the fossil record, will then have to be acknowledged.60
Michel C. Milinkovitch, of the Molecular Biology Department of the University of Brussels, and J.G.M. Thewissen of Northeastern Ohio Medical School, wrote in the same issue of Nature that the Japanese scientists' findings on the origin of the whale conflicted with both morphological and paleontological data, contrary to the claims of the NAS:
The molecular analyses of Shimamura et al.3, reported on page 666 of this issue, further disrupt phylogenetic dogma. Indeed, not only do the authors confirm the close relationship between artiodactyls and cetaceans, but they propose that cetaceans are deeply nested within the phylogenetic tree of the artiodactyls. These results strikingly contradict the common interpretation of the available morphological data (supporting artiodactyl monophyly [common descent]) and, if correct, would make a cow or a hippopotamus more closely related to a dolphin or a whale than to a pig or a camel.61
Furthermore, these scientists acknowledge that this matter is still subject to debate saying:
But the issue is still controversial, because the exact means by which molecular sequence data should be analyzed remains debated.62
Analyses of other molecules have similarly produced contradictory findings. The zoologist John Gatesy states that analyses of sea mammals' blood coagulation protein have presented an evolutionary link between whales and hippopotamuses, but that this conflicts with the paleontological findings.63
As we have seen, the scientists who actually did the research openly state that the molecular comparisons performed in order to discover the orig