Long-held scientific consensus that pseudogenes are functionless genetic junk has been further discredited by the discovery that some pseudogenes code for proteins. Does this unexpected finding support the evolutionary paradigm—or creation models?

During the course of the football season, sports pundits fill the airwaves with predictions about the outcome of games to be played each week. Little agreement exists, and when the prognosticators do reach a consensus, invariably an upset occurs. No matter how much you know about the sport, it’s difficult to predict the outcome of a football contest. As the adage goes, “That’s why the game is played.”

Like armchair quarterbacks, scientists make predictions about the outcome of experiments and observational studies. In fact, making and evaluating predictions defines the scientific enterprise. As new work by researchers from Sweden attests, however, making successful predictions—particularly when they deal with so-calledjunk DNA—can be just as tricky as forecasting…