D&M’s reported value of .00228 for p_S should raise questions in the minds of readers. Why would a targeted evolutionary algorithm require 100 times as many queries as random sampling?

Why indeed? This is symptomatic of people running a “research” program that has a pre-defined desired outcome. When a counter-intuitive (to the rest of the world) result is observed that’s consistent with the preconception, that’s a clear signal to look very very closely at the model. In 15 years of modeling market systems with evolutionary algorithms I’ve run onto a number of such outcomes — results consistent with what I wanted that were too good to be true. In every instance so far they were due to a bug in the model. It’s when data most closely agree with one’s preconceptions that they require the closest scrutiny.

It’s also often symptomatic of ignorance on the part of the people doing the “research.” Not knowing the substantive domain of inquiry (in this case, evolutionary models), they can’t detect when a result is at least superficially weird and therefore requires close examination.

RBH

In fact, today is the seventh anniversary of the unregarded notification of that error. This is the standard for unacknowledged errors that Dembski has set. Time will tell as to whether Robert Marks will be an apt pupil…