A Leaky Faucet: Why Darwinian Evolution Leads to Loss of Information

In 2010 biochemist Michael Behe published a paper in the Quarterly Review of Biology in which he concisely stated the first rule of adaptive evolution: "Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain." By this he meant several things. First, there are indeed adaptive mutations -- that is, mutations that yield a benefit to the cell under a particular set of circumstances. Second, the primary way such adaptation occurs is by breaking or inactivating some...