Really not much math needed. When you have 31000 generations of bacteria adapting to a new diet, you are not seeing much change. Certainly no where needed, if you consider the gestation periods of larger animals, like the dinosaurs, and the massive changes which allegedly occurred...I actually just think it is humorous.

Let me rephrase things. If you have gestation periods similar to dinosaurs, take an elephants' for example, 22 months. Then you have 31000 generations(of course with no lab controlled environment)31000*22=682000; 682000/12 months=56,833 years to make a change in diet?To change the assimilation of 1 protein(if thats indeed what is being alleged) Oh thats right, what am I thinking?, there is_no_rate_of_evolution anywhere...why? Because there is no evolution. If you had evolution, you would have a rate of change because evolution = change. You also might need to know what proteins would have needed to be changed,which this article gives no indication.

Also the 20 year period (which you titled the thread)seems suspect,healthy e-coli can divide every 30 minutes. Something tells me that there are a lot of conditions and generations which were omitted.Just basic calculating 30 * 31000=930000; 930000/60 min = 15500; 15500/24hrs=645 645/365 days=1.7 years. Thinking about the reproduction rates of ecoli brings the conclusions of these massive massive numbers of them if conditions were optimal. Of course most of them die quickly or the whole earth would be quickly blanketed by them with 24 hours.

Nothing about this rate and these numbers seem plausible to me, so my guess is there is some sort of screw up with these experiments. they probably have some strange hybrid in their population, there are a lot of strange and undiscovered bacteria, and there is a lot about ecoli dna codes we dont know, they might have had the ability to digest this stuff inherent in thier existing genome.

A strange hybrid is the most likely possibility. Bacteria are everywhere. The likelyhood of some other species creeping into the line in a 20 year period is extremely high. Scientists cannot even identify some bacteria because others come in and take over before they can make a distinction. That happens all the time when dealing with extremophiles.

Some of these morons are getting funded so they have to show SOME results to keep their money coming in, so they have to show some results even faulty results to keep their meal ticket.

Also this citrate metabolism is not a beneficial mutation, so its not evolution at all, its de-volution.