"Scientists claims about the natural world have been right about 17% of the time."?

@'NDMA": I'm glad you've tried to defend your claim. I'll try and point out some of the errors you have made... Lamarck's ideas are STILL largely considered correct (things that aren't used are lost, things that are used get passed on, and traits are inherited from ancestors), but was wrong about some of his suggestions regarding change (there is no evidence at all that the kinds of changes during a creatures lifetime that he suggested are inherited, and good evidence that they are not). He way only wrong about the details leading to inheritance. There is very little that Darwin put forward that is science now considers to be incorrect, in fact, when you discount some of the ideas he suggested as purely hypothetical guesses, there is virtually nothing that he is considered to have been wrong about - and then it is only minor details. Presumably you mean the law of segregation when you refer to "Mendel's Law"? Regardless, nothing Mendel disc

...discovered had a real effect on the understanding of evolution, it just increased understanding of which inherited features appear in later generations. Inheritance of acquired characteristics was only ever dropped from evolution because of a lack of evidence that it did occur (but note that scientists never stopped testing the idea). Mendelian inheritance was included because of the evidence that it happens. "Unlimited" variation has always been dependant on existing characters, and is only unlimited when given a considerable amount of time. Still nothing much overturned as being "incorrect". The discovery of DNA did is not even slightly problematic to the idea of unlimited variation (again within reason). Studies of DNA have demonstrated that various types of mutations occur, some beneficial. Again, nothing rejected. I have no idea why you consider "The Selfish Gene" to be science, it is a book ABOUT science published for the general public, giving

...OPINIONS of the author. If anything it contained was intended to be anything more then the details would have been published in peer reviewed literature. Regardless, none of the three "base claims" you list have been disproven (2 and 4 are basically the same thing). 1). There is no evidence that most mutations are NOT random. Some may not be, but no one has claimed that they always have to be random. 2). 4). Many acquired traits are known to NOT be inherited. There is some evidence that CERTAIN traits can be, but the details are still largely untested. Does "The Selfish Gene" argue that there is no possibility whatsoever of ANY acquired traits being inherited? 3). This has never been a mainstream scientific view, but it has also NOT been disproven. The hypothetical mechanism for evolution remains what it has always been: Organisms change over time because they inherit characteristics from their ancestors that are beneficial to survival in their environment. The

...only changes over time have been to refine the details. We now know that the main 'units' that allow features to be passed on are contained in genes in DNA - but that there may be more to it than that. Mutations can cause random changes (which the environment may select for or against), with the possibility of other, perhaps not random, changes being introduced by things like viruses. In your example I would suggest that less than 17% of the scientific "claims" made were "wrong".