Oh dear, yet another disappointing reversal for Richard Dawkins — can he get anything right?

Seems Dawkins not only gets Christianity and religion badly wrong, but evolution too:

Far from random, evolution follows a predictable genetic pattern, Princeton researchers find

Evolution, often perceived as a series of random changes, might in fact be driven by a simple and repeated genetic solution to an environmental pressure that a broad range of species happen to share, according to new research.

Princeton University research published in the journal Science suggests that knowledge of a species’ genes — and how certain external conditions affect the proteins encoded by those genes — could be used to determine a predictable evolutionary pattern driven by outside factors.  Scientists could then pinpoint how the diversity of adaptations seen in the natural world developed even in distantly related animals.

“Is evolution predictable?  To a surprising extent the answer is yes,” said senior researcher Peter Andolfatto, an assistant professor in Princeton’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics.  He worked with lead author and postdoctoral research associate Ying Zhen, and graduate students Matthew Aardema and Molly Schumer, all from Princeton’s ecology and evolutionary biology department, as well as Edgar Medina, a biological sciences graduate student at the University of the Andes in Colombia.

Perhaps Dawky should shut up and retire to the countryside and breed bees or something, while he still has a few shreds of academic reputation left.