Flaws Of Nature: The Limits And Liabilities Of Natural Selection

Leon Vlieger at The Inquisitive Biologist:

Most popular accounts of evolution focus on the amazing adaptations of organisms to their environment. But, Dobson counters, “whilst there seems no end to evolution’s artistry, it is all too easy to be blinded by the pyrotechnics on display” (p. 14). To better understand natural selection it is equally instructive to consider what it can not do. Though on paper it is a relentless mechanism to weed out the evolutionary unfit, in practice the process often results in suboptimal adaptations, cumbersome traits, evolutionary dead ends, and runaway selection that in the end is costly to all parties involved.

More here.