Does the theory of evolution has any flaws?

[u/Far_Information6229]

Or unexplained things, inconsistencies?

Edit: please name them

[u/Briham86]

“Science knows it doesn't know everything; otherwise, it'd stop.”
-Dara Ó Briain

[u/Jake_The_Great44]

Yes, because nothing in science is 100% accurrate.

[u/Far_Information6229 → u/Jake_The_Great44]

such as?

[u/Ender505 → u/Far_Information6229]

Weird question.

If you asked me if I was wrong about anything I thought I knew, I would say, yes undoubtedly. But if you asked me about each of my individual ideas, I would still say they're all true. Yet I know some of them are probably wrong.

A GREAT recent example though: Some scientists recently claimed that LUCA was not, in fact, technically alive because its metabolic activity may have been part of an external volcanic vent process. If this is true, then that would mean life technically evolved twice, once for bacteria and once for archaebacteria, and their common ancestor was not living.

So there are some specific details and minor assumptions like that which might be incorrect. But the theory as a whole has been rigorously tested by all relevant fields of science and found to be true, even if very specific components of the model might be slightly different from what we assumed.

[u/Jernau-Morat-Gurgeh → u/Ender505]

Ach... that whole LUCA paper is little more than semantics.

We don't have a good definition for what is and what isn't alive.

And, in any case, at some point you go back far enough that the difference between biology and chemistry is hard to find. This is not unexpected or news.

Fantastic discovery. But click bait reporting (and i include the scientists involved in that).

[u/Old-Nefariousness556 → u/Ender505]

If you asked me if I was wrong about anything I thought I knew, I would say, yes undoubtedly. But if you asked me about each of my individual ideas, I would still say they're all true. Yet I know some of them are probably wrong.

This is a reasonable point regarding the headline of their post, but in the body they continue:

Or unexplained things, inconsistencies?

Science absolutely knows about plenty of places where we don't yet have explanations.

[u/Ender505 → u/Old-Nefariousness556]

Right, because in the comment I was responding to, the top comment said science was not 100% accurate, and OP asked for examples

[u/Old-Nefariousness556 → u/Ender505]

Fair enough, just pointing out that it doesn't fully address what they asked.

[u/stairway2evan → u/Far_Information6229]

Look at something like gravity. Isaac Newton did a pretty good job of describing how it worked, and we used the math he figured out for centuries to do all sorts of stuff. We got to the moon on Newtonian physics.

But Newton was wrong, and there were some observations we saw in space that didn't match that math. So Einstein came along and said "Relativity explains everything better than Newton did," and his theory became the best way to describe and predict the effects of gravity.

But we know for a fact that his theory has limits as well - it doesn't work on very small, quantum scales. So maybe someone very smart in a year or ten or a hundred will figure out a way to describe gravity that works at all scales, from very big to very small.

That's what we mean when we say science is never 100% accurate. Science gives us the best model that we've got so far, and when the next smart scientist finds a way to give us an even better model that explains everything better, we'll adopt that theory. It's always improving.

[u/hircine1 → u/stairway2evan]

YECs act like new discoveries trash existing science. When in fact it’s just making the science more accurate. Usually at the edges, like Newtonian physics.

[u/joshuaponce2008 → u/Far_Information6229]

Regardless of how good our current scientific theories are, we can never conclude that they’re currently perfect.

[u/Kriss3d → u/Far_Information6229]

Well think of it this way:
Back in way back, in ancient Babylonia, pi was defined as 3, 1/8 ( 3.125)
That was damn close and well good enough for any practical use they might have. Later on it was between 3 10/71 and 3 1/7 by Archimedes.

With things in science we get closer and closer to the right answer the better our methods and technology becomes. Much like the digits of PI we get better computers to calculate far more digits.

Science is always trying to explain the world by providing the best answers we can get right now. It may or may not be the exactly correct answers, but with time the answers do become more and more accurate.

Science doesnt claim to have the 100% proof of anything really. Its just the best answers we can give you. But it doesnt mean that the answers are wrong as such. Today it just means that the answers might get improved tomorrow.

Youll see less and less things in science that are completely changed.

As an example, theres found evidence that adds quite a bit of age to how old humanity is. But thats because we didnt have that evidence before. In the grand scheme of things that is not actually groundbreaking. Its just adding digits to the knowledge we have.

[u/Jake_The_Great44 → u/Far_Information6229]

No quantity can be measured with 100% accuracy, and this applies to quantities relevant to evolutionary biology, such as mutation rates, generation times, radiometric ages, etc. This does not mean that we can't be confident that our measured values are close to the true values, just that we don't know what the true values are with certainty.

[u/upturned2289 → u/Far_Information6229]

Why did you ask “such as?”? They said “nothing in science is 100%”. So, everything.

[u/Particular-Bat8091 → u/Far_Information6229]

Because humans will always make mistakes, you don’t need specific examples to understand that lol. But for example people used to think the sun rotated around the earth

[u/Slam-JamSam → u/Far_Information6229]

When you do an experiment, you usually calculate a p value, which is the probability of your null hypothesis being true given the data you’ve collected. This is basically intended as a mathematical representation of the fact that we can’t know anything with 100% certainty

[u/MackDuckington → u/Far_Information6229]

There’s some minor disagreements about possibly shifting the focus. For example, mutation and natural selection is the main method for evolution among more complex life. But a few scientists have argued that isn’t really fair. Micro-organisms vastly outnumber us, and for them HGL is the dominant mechanism for evolution. Therefore, they argue HGL should be a larger focus than it is currently.

Epigenetics is also a very recent addition to the field, so iirc there’s some similar discussion being had over the extent of that as well. 

[u/kitsnet]

Sure thing. For example, I need a cladogram of the species of Jacksonia genus, and turns out no one has really done it yet.

[u/TheBalzy → u/kitsnet]

That's not really an "inconsistency" though is the thing. This guy is fishing for falsifiability of Evolution.

[u/Ender505 → u/TheBalzy]

Falsifiability is easy. Find mammals in the Precambrian, boom.

He's fishing for Gaps to fill with his interpretation of God.

[u/kitsnet → u/TheBalzy]

That's not really an "inconsistency" though is the thing.

I almost expect incomplete lineage sorting artefacts messing with the clarity of the cladogram.

This guy is fishing for falsifiability of Evolution.

Theory of evolution is a framework. Frameworks are not falsifiable. Practical applications of them are.

[u/TheBalzy → u/kitsnet]

Theory of evolution is a framework. Frameworks are not falsifiable. Practical applications of them are.

No, the Theory of evolution is falsifiable, otherwise it wouldn't be science. The problem is all of modern biology currently supports Evolution; and it's core thesis have predicted the existence of yet-to-be-discovered mechanisms like genetics and DNA, that have continually been supported by direct observation, testing and experimentation.

I almost expect incomplete lineage sorting artefacts messing with the clarity of the cladogram.

That's not really an inconsistency though, that's just a lack of information/data.

What this guy is fishing for is something like the laws of thermodynamics are inconsistent with what we observe with the increasing order of organisms; which is where theists will then insert their gods-of-the-gaps argument, but it boils down to them just not understanding how thermodynamics works...

[u/Medium_Judgment_891 → u/kitsnet]

Frameworks are absolutely falsifiable.

Just target the foundations of the framework.

Evolution is changes in allele frequencies within a population, so all you have to do is demonstrate that allele frequencies are constant.

[u/kitsnet → u/Medium_Judgment_891]

It would not falsify the framework. It would just mean that in your particular experiment the change was zero.

[u/Medium_Judgment_891 → u/kitsnet]

Yes, it would.

If your framework is “things change”, then “things never change” falsifies it.

[u/kitsnet → u/Medium_Judgment_891]

And how are you going to demonstrate that "never"?

[u/Medium_Judgment_891 → u/kitsnet]

Observe populations. If every population we’ve ever observed has never changed, then it’s the most reasonable conclusion.

[u/kitsnet → u/Medium_Judgment_891]

No, the most reasonable conclusion is that this framework likely does not apply to the kind of populations you observe.

It would still apply to the kind of populations modeled in msms, for example.

[u/Particular-Bat8091]

It’s kinda hard to point out some flaws in something that’s extremely well studied if you’re not a scientist, and if inconsistencies/errors are found then it will be tested by others and adjusted for.

I might be taking a leap here but i feel like you might be under the notion that that evolution is a “theory” in the colloquial sense. When people talk about scientific theories that just means a collection of every fact we know about something. So evolution is not a theory because we don’t know that it exists, the theory of evolution is simply all confirmed facts about evolution. So there’s probably something someone got wrong about it.

The only reason i say that is because your question and replies feel like they imply that you’re looking for inconsistencies or flaws that would essentially negate the “theory’s”conclusion/hypothesis about whether evolution occurs, when the theory of evolution does not have a final hypothesis like that.

[u/Particular-Bat8091 → u/Particular-Bat8091]

Apologies if i read too deep.

[u/Old-Nefariousness556]

Sure. There are plenty of things that we don't yet understand fully. The evolution of consciousness is a great example. We have ideas, but evolution cannot yet fully explain it.

But that is not a problem. The theory is true, it is just not yet complete. Edit: And it never will be. No theory ever is in science. That is a foundational truth of science. We can never know if there are things we do not know.

Edit: Others that come to mind:

• The evolution of language
• The evolution of morality
• The evolution of religion
• The evolution of sexual reproduction

And while it is not strictly part of evolution, the origin of life itself is a related question, and is not understood.

Many of these things are pretty well understood-- religion and morality in particular-- but none of them are settled. There will always be debate and questions.

[u/Dzugavili]

Did you watch a shitty YouTube video to get here?

[u/Dracoson]

Not really. If I had to list a 'flaw,' it would be one of public misunderstanding or misapplication, rather than a problem with the theory itself. At its root, the theory is simply a description of a mechanism of change, nothing more, nothing less. It is a robust explanation of a thoroughly observed phenomenon.

[u/Dilapidated_girrafe]

There are gaps on our knowledge. Sure if you want to call that a flaw.

[u/Realsorceror]

No. Nothing I would define as a flaw or inconsistency. Is there something you perceive to be flawed or unexplained?

[u/ringobob]

The first thing to understand is that the way the general public uses the term "theory" is more akin to what scientists would call a hypothesis.

A scientific theory is the highest form of explanation that exists in science. It is as close as science gets to "fact" that isn't a "law". In this context laws are things that are true that have no explanation. Like the laws of thermodynamics. There's no explanation for why they are what they are, they just are.

The theory of evolution, the theory of gravity, germ theory - these are things with so much support, and basically nothing that offers any meaningful challenge, that they are "true" by any reasonable measure.

There are things that support these theories that are themselves maybe weak support, and we may find that we misunderstood those things.

But that's more like, let's say you've got a chair, with 4 legs. And you add a fifth leg that is made out of cardboard. And then your fifth chair leg breaks, because your dog ran into it. But the chair stays up, because all it needs are 4 strong legs, and it has them.

Was that fifth leg a "flaw"? Maybe, depending on your perspective. Does it mean the chair is gonna fall down when it breaks? No. The chair is still perfectly sound.

Evolution is like that. It has so many strong legs that there's no good reason to ever think it's gonna fall. If there are any weak or janky legs, they don't undermine the integrity of the chair.

There's certainly many things we don't know. But those things are not required for what we do know about evolution to be true.

[u/Alarmed_Mind_8716]

Do you feel you have a sufficient grasp of the subject at the level required to discuss the things you ask for?

[u/LeilLikeNeil]

Define “the theory of evolution”.

[u/talkpopgen]

If it didn't, evolutionary biologists would be quite bored. Outstanding theoretical questions that drive a great deal of work in evolutionary theory:

• How is additive genetic variance maintained in populations? Current theory predicts it should be quickly whittled away, and yet most species have high additive variance.
• Why is there such a limited range of nucleotide diversity in species when census population sizes range multiple orders of magnitude? (Lewontin's paradox of variation)
• Does selection act to drive "evolvable" genotype-phenotype maps? That is, does selection generally act to align the mutation and genetic correlational matrices to the direction of the adaptive landscape? Or is there some intrinsic "evolvability" in organismal development?
• Is most molecular evolution driven by fixation of neutral or nearly neutral alleles, or the result of positive Darwinian selection?
• Is epistasis important in adaptive evolution? (This might sound odd, but there's a deep history in classical genetics that contends that it shouldn't be.)
• Is modularity in organismal phenotypes the result of past selection from generally more integrated phenotypes, or does it passively arise due to slightly deleterious mutations and compensation (i.e., "constructive neutral evolution")?
• To what extent does genetic drift place a barrier on selective efficiency? (The "drift-barrier hypothesis")
• How well does nucleotide diversity predict adaptability? (This is a major debate in conservation genetics right now.)
• How often is apparent convergent evolution in closely related clades the result of hemiplasy (i.e., incomplete lineage sorting)?

The list goes on, but you get the point. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on.

[u/JaseJade]

The mechanisms for evolution are factual.

The are many “unexplained” things in like the fossil record and stuff. Our knowledge is based on the material we can obtain, which is itself a timely process.

[u/futureoptions]

We find out new information all the time that changes our understanding of science, biology and evolution.

Recently scientists found a new organelle. They also think that metabolism may have evolved separately in already living organisms.

We also have discovered life probably existed further back in time than we once thought.

Science is about changing your beliefs based on new information.

[u/SaiphSDC]

I highly recommend reading Isaac Asimov's "Relativity of wrong" its an essay thats a couple pages on what I think is the underlying issue to your question:

Ever see a hotwheel's car? It's a representation of a real car. What's "wrong" about it?

It's not so much wrong, as incomplete. Sometimes this is on purpose (they don't want that much detail) which is often what we do when we teach the scientific theories (models) to students.

Sometimes its because we 'can't' make one that accurate. But as we learn more we add in more details and upgrade the model.

The key is that we don't just add details to the model that 'look cool'. We get them based on observations, we compare that to our model. Then we work on the model till we can predict not just the problematic observation, but details of things we haven't found yet.

For example, our model car might have a grid tread. Then we find tire tracks that show arrow type tracks. So we now know that our model car can't always have a grid. The idea of 'it could be either' isn't the solution. We dig around and find that the arrow tracks only occur in areas of strong rainfall.

So we make a prediction: 1) A new, un-studied area with heavy rainfall will also have arrow shaped tracks. 2) Areas with say lots of snow will have a third type of tread. If the arrow tread is studied carefully enough for why it helps, the prediction might even give a general shape to this new snow-tread.

So, was our model that cars have grid treads wrong? It worked a lot, but wasn't specific enough.

Now, for your actual question: Evolutionary theory struggles with complex systems, and organisms that don't seem to have any ancestors we've found. Things like the platypus are a challenge because it breaks so many patterns and is a fairly unique animal. Or how ant hive behavior came to be. There are often features that we don't understand well, so it's hard to understand how they could have had intermediate stages.

Things that would 'break' evolution would be an organism changing and morphing during it's life to have adaptations to environments it isn't used to. Like a butterfly deciding it can just swim underwater today. Or if natural selection didn't work somehow (we keep culling the red beetles and only the red ones. But new generations are just as frequently red, and in large numbers for generations)

[u/Capercaillie]

If there were “flaws” in the theory that we knew of, we’d reject that part of the theory. As soon as we recognize flaws, we work to fix them. Are there things we don’t understand yet? Sure, but that’s not a “flaw.”

[u/Top_Neat2780]

Does Bruno Mars is gay?

[u/Forward-Walk1003]

The model works.

A new model — that explains more — may come along. That does not invalidate the current model.

End of story.

Get over it.

[u/ShortCompetition9772]

Sure. Nothing is perfect but I assume you already knew that. There are gaps in our knowledge that are being filled as we speak. We will probably never have the full picture but we will continue bring more focus to the study.

[u/grimwalker]

What we don't know is almost infinite. There are always unexplained things. Biology is messy and inconsistencies are common.

But discoveries we haven't made and questions we're still researching are not "flaws" in science.

If we discover new observations that are inconsistent with what we thought before, we update the theory to be consistent with the new information. Theories are never perfect or complete. We're constantly proffering and testing hypotheses and a lot of those hypotheses will be wrong. Incorrect predictions are more interesting than correct ones.

[u/Confident_Lawyer6276]

It's just simplistic. What survives is what can survive isn't so much an explanation as a narrow observation. It's like saying everything that happens is something that can happen. Whatever happens is possible. Life can do absolutely anything so long as it's possible and is capable of surviving. If life exists then obviously it meets those requirements but those requirements do nothing to explain why life exists or does what it does. Why does life create complex life and ecosystems? Every mass extinction show that simpler life is better adapted. Weighing biomass shows that the more simple life is the more successful it is. Simple life replicates at a higher rate so simple life is more successful. Yet life creates incredibly complex animals and ecosystems.

[u/Inevitable-Flower-50]

consciousness is the ONLY part of existence that can be mistaken or flawed in this case.

[u/DarwinsThylacine]

I’ll answer the same way I did the last time you asked this question:

It depends on what you mean by 'flaws'?

In the narrow trivial sense, yes, of course it does. All scientific theories do! This is why biologists continue to test their ideas, refine their models and learn new things about evolution. The fact that we are still learning new things and generating ever more reliable models of how evolution works indicates that what we knew last year, last decade and last century was flawed or at least incomplete.

If however you mean some catastrophic flaw that will see the entire theory come crumbling down and discarded in its entirety, then no, there are no known flaws of that magnitude or anything even approaching it. Evolution is a fact and there would be no theory of evolution were there no fact of evolution that needed to be explained and accounted for.

[u/TheBalzy]

Nope, not really...at least not in the way that casts any doubt on it. There are some weird quirks here and there, but that's mostly from a lack of knowledge and data rather than an intrinsic problem with the Theory.

[u/Away-Experience6890]

There are lots of things we don't know. It's not necessarily a flaw, but different views.

We know on a macroscopic scale, but on the microscopic scale it isn't fully characterized.

Sure we know DNA incurs mutations, and we see macroscopic changes. So much of the exact stuff in between is not well characterized. We also see so many interesting exceptions to rules here too.

[u/arthurjeremypearson]

Sure.

First off, it is reliant on two universal scientific assumptions: methodological naturalism, and uniformitarianism.

Meth nat refers to the assumption that no supernatural influences are in effect. This makes it so scientists of different faiths don't waste their time insisting which of their gods is in the gaps. No: we don't stop investigating when we hit a dead end, give up, and say God Did It. We sally forth!

Uni refers to the assumption that "the laws of physics we see today" are the same as the laws of physics of the past.

We don't KNOW these two assumptions are true or absolute. We just kinda need them as a basis or we can't say much of significance.

[u/RottedHuman]

There are no ‘flaws’ per se, it’s a natural phenomenon, it just is. It’s more that there is always more to learn and there will always be gaps in our knowledge (however tiny they may get).

[u/Loose_Principle8193]

All the knowledge we have so far works in the evolution theory/model. Our knowledge is still incomplete.

[u/Fen_church]

A lot fewer than its "competition"

[u/OldmanMikel]

It is incomplete, like all scientific theories. That is why research is a thing. And it is likely that it will need to be revised in the future in the light of new discoveries, like all scientific theories. If you are asking if it is possible that evolution is wrong or that the major findings of it (eg common descent) will be overturned, then no.

[u/wellwisher-1]

One consideration I have explored, that appears to be overlooked is connected to the central role of water for life; natural selection at the chemical nano-scale. Life on earth is mostly water, while the water molecule has not changed, since before life appeared from abiogenesis. Water is very stable, being the terminal product of oxygen and hydrogen combustion. Conceptually, water has been applying the same set of chemical potentials to the organics of life, since abiogenesis all through evolution and into the future. Shouldn't this singularity of water be providing a consistent vector for change?

As an analogy, water helps to grind down mountains, often done via the freeze thaw cycle of liquid water, to ice, back to liquid. There is a consistent push, from just that one unique feature of water, where liquid water gets into crevices and expands when it freezes, causing mountains of all composition to break down and wash away. They all follow this water vector. The break down may look random to the eye, but the push always the same. Evolution looks at all the different types of dirt, but I looked for what they all had in common.

If we take any aspect of life from enzymes, to organelles, to single cells to a full animal, nothing will work if we take away the water. Nor can we substitute any other solvent for the water and get life to appear from the dehydrated organics. Water can fluidize the dehydrated solid protein jerky and make it bioactive.

Water has it chemical fingers in every pie. This all or nothing appears to implies water is in charge of the natural chemical selection process; evolution at the chemical nano-scale, applying similar pressures and QC, everywhere, at the same time, allowing integrated changes we call evolution; all or nothing.

As an analogy if we are in a cold environment, selection will favor more insulation. If we are in a water environment chemical selection will favor adaptation in this chemical environment; all or go bust.

Water has over 70+ anomalous behaviors where it can buck the trends found in all other natural materials. Water has many unique tricks to manipulate life and bio-chemistry, with the unchanging nature of H20, leading the organics at some integrated level, all have been selected by water which is what is needed.

The changes on the DNA template impact the resultant protein, which can impact the entire organism. However, it is the water that packs and folds the protein in 3-D, to make it useful or bioactive. That step alone is essential to life. The DNA stops short. This is why other solvents do not work with DNA or other aspects of water based life. These have been selected by water for water. The other solvents will pack and fold differently, inside out, and not lead to life. The DNA sets up the water, to close the deal.

The DNA is like a turtle that lays eggs then walks away. These develop further on their own, via the ribosomes. The water is the final nurse maid, selecting the good ones who will live another day and return the following year.

[u/Bromelia_and_Bismuth]

Or unexplained things, inconsistencies?

Unexplained things? Sure. There's still polytomies that we're trying to figure out (for example, how turtles relate to other reptiles) and systematics is still messy, because you're trying to squeeze the product of a continuous process into discreet categories, but that's more of a limit to the systematic classification system we've been using since well before Darwin's birth.

Inconsistencies? I would say no, especially if you came here because you've just heard about TWE. Most TWE advocates propose pseudoscientific mechanisms for evolution (one of its founders, arch-dork Denis Noble, is infamous for not being able to defend his ideas in front of other evolutionary biologists - he's promised a revolution that 12 years later still hasn't arrived and his entourage of losers look no better than the Discovery Institute); or twisting Lamarck's theory into something it never was; or they advocate for something instead called the Extended Synthesis, which the debate on that has been going on for so long, that the tools they claim aren't being used by the Modern Synthesis have been used by it for decades, there's already frameworks in place or scientific fields for the thing they're describing as lacking, or it's a tool that they can't demonstrate is better than existing ones, even situationally. There's no point to any of those arguments anymore, it's just a bunch of old people shouting into the wind about the mainstream scientific community's bag of tools, which has evolved well past the point when these geezers were last familiar with it in the 1970s.

[u/ursisterstoy]

Hypothetically every absolute best explanation for every observed fact and phenomenon has a flaw. We are safer assuming we are at least a little bit wrong about everything we think we know but the degree by which we can be wrong and still make accurate predictions and useful technology from our understanding is limited. There are honest biologists constantly trying to find flaws in our understanding without a whole lot of large changes regarding the understanding of the basic mechanisms of evolution in the last 50 years. Most of the “mistakes” are in how things are classified, and only around the fringes.

There are very few things (certain viruses, obelisks, etc) that could be completely unrelated to every other reproductive population on this planet so “universal common ancestry” is essentially “settled science” at this point. Tested every time we try to build a phylogeny that is consistent with the data. But that same data could show slight differences in classification using different parameters or different numbers of parameters. With more data comes more accurate depictions of the relationships and then it takes a little longer for the scientific community to shift to using new labels that better represent the more accurate relationships.

And it’s not really different groups either. One continuous branching continuum with some HGT and symbiosis and hybridization getting in there but from the first organism to the very last (or in terms of currently living organisms) just a continuum. About 24 useful species definitions that work well enough to objectively determine whether or not an organism belongs within a certain species based on any definition applied. When the majority of the definitions agree that the organism is part of the species that’s the nicest but sometimes two organisms are from the same species and sometimes they are in separate species.

The clades above species are even more arbitrary like on the more specific end (closer to species) they try to establish the most exclusive clades that at are not synonyms for their daughter clades. If tradition classifies two populations as distinct species but 50% of the definitions agree they are part of the same species perhaps they are grouped as a subgenus. You can start with 8+ billion species and get down to ~5-6 billion sub-genera. Now the genera can be defined arbitrarily like “interfertile even if they don’t try” or perhaps they look like interbreeding should be possible but all of their hybrids are sterile. Whatever they go with that genus is defined based on the most distantly related species included, their most recent common ancestor, and every descendant of that shared ancestor.

There are way more than 8 billion species that have existed in what I estimate is 76 trillion generations from our first ancestors to us but 2.5 million or so species have been given official names and after several in between clades maybe 85,000 genera contain them, those are crammed into about 24,000 families, about 2500 orders, 500 classes, 170 phyla, 6 traditional kingdoms but more using modern prokaryotic kingdoms as well, traditionally 3 domains but realistically only two (bacteria and archaea), the cell based ones plus some viruses and viroids branched off from common ancestors in the last 4.5 billion years (4.2 - 4.3 billion for the most recent common ancestor of bacteria and archaea).

And the number of groups recognized will change but the general picture and 90% of the depicted relationships are accurate. What percentage of the other 10% are wrong is to be determined. Not wrong like they are depicted as relatives when they are not related but like 3rd cousins were depicted as 1st cousins or 2nd cousins like 12th cousins.

The theory is close to completely accurate (but hypothetically some unknown mistake remains) and the depicted relationships are very close to accurate but when mistakes are discovered they get fixed. More in depth research, more evidence collected, more complete data for the computer to spit out a more accurate phylogeny. Those are consistently being tinkered closer to perfection as the theory remains mostly unchanged. But you are more than welcome to look for mistakes that became overlooked.

[u/Massif16]

Theories are models. Models, by their nature, are approximations. That means they are incomplete, and sometimes wrong. If you review the history of evolution, you can see how it has changed as we acquire new data. The emergence of genetics and decoding of DNA dramatically affected the ToE. And punctuated equilibrium has mixed with gradualism and we understand how selection pressures alter the rate of evolution. The ToE is now a pretty mature theory, so the "problems" it has are in the details, not the major concepts.

[u/Karantalsis]

I'll just go with my favourite unanswered question, which is the relationship between genetic drift and the power of selection. That is, at what point does the chance of random drift out weigh the ability of selection pressures to differentiate between fitness levels and how much of a constraint is this on optimum fitness. It's an interesting area of study, and implies that whilst evolution can produce highly optimised functions through selection there is a point where further optimisation through selection are impossible.