The concept of vestigiality applies to genetically determined structures or attributes that have apparently lost most or all of its ancestral function in a given species. ... Douglas Futuyma has stated that vestigial structures make no sense without evolution.

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.

The argument from ignorance asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false (or vice versa). This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that there is insufficient investigation and therefore insufficient information to prove the proposition satisfactorily to be either true or false.

The problem I have with labeling a body part “vestigial” is that it implies an inflated level of knowledge and understanding on humanity’s part that I find to be unjustified. Scientists are notorious for reversing past discoveries, and it’s only a matter of time before we ascertain the hidden functions of “vestigial” anatomical features.

It is now widely acknowledged today that these teeth are not rudimentary or vestigial: they aid in chewing our food as do all of our other 28 teeth. The outdated vestigial organ conclusion, though, has influenced the extraction of billions of teeth, the removal of many which may have been unnecessary according to current research.

The coccyx is the remnant of a vestigial tail, but still not entirely useless; it is an important attachment for various muscles, tendons and ligaments...

Many modern biology textbooks give the erroneous impression that the human coccyx has no real function other than to remind us of the "inescapable fact" of evolution. In fact, the coccyx has some very important functions. Several muscles converge from the ring-like arrangement of the pelvic (hip) bones to anchor on the coccyx, forming a bowl-shaped muscular floor of the pelvis called the pelvic diaphragm. The incurved coccyx with its attached pelvic diaphragm keeps the many organs in our abdominal and pelvic cavities from literally falling through between our legs. Some of the pelvic diaphragm muscles are also important in controlling the elimination of waste from our body through the rectum.

We humans have many vestigial features proving that we evolved. The most famous is the appendix.

The appendix serves as a storehouse for probiotics and also provides a variety of immune-related functions, helping to produce and train white blood cells, as well as playing an important role during fetal development.

In humans, body hair is utterly useless. It serves no useful purpose because we have lost most of our body hair during the last few million years of our evolution.

Androgenic hair provides tactile sensory input by transferring hair movement and vibration via the shaft to sensory nerves within the skin. ... Androgenic hair extends the sense of touch beyond the surface of the skin into the air and space surrounding it, detecting air movements as well as hair displacement from contact by insects or objects.

Goosebumps are a physiological phenomenon inherited from our animal ancestors, which was useful to them but are not of much help to us.

When a person is confronted with fear or cold, muscle fibers contract in the skin, forming goose bumps (also called goose flesh). This muscular activity produces heat, and thus raises the body temperature. (Source: Marshall Cavendish Illustrated Encyclopedia of Family Health, vol. 19, p. 2052.)

It is a remarkable fact that the greater part (95 per cent in the case of humans) of the genome might as well not be there, for all the difference it makes.

The DNA of higher organisms usually falls into two classes, one specific and the other comparatively nonspecific. It seems plausible that most of the latter originated by the spreading of sequences which had little or no effect on the phenotype. We examine this idea from the point of view of the natural selection of preferred replicators within the genome.

Despite all the questions that this research has raised, one thing is clear: scientists need to review their ideas about junk DNA. Professor Chris Ponting, from the UK Medical Research Council's Functional Genetics Unit, told BBC News Online: "Amazingly, there were calls from some sections to only map the bits of genome that coded for protein - mapping the rest was thought to be a waste of time. It is very lucky that entire genomes were mapped, as this work is showing."

Initially, a large proportion of noncoding DNA had no known biological function and was therefore sometimes referred to as "junk DNA", particularly in the lay press. However, it has been known for decades that many noncoding sequences are functional.

These results demonstrate that gene regulation is far more complex than previously believed.

Researchers linked more than 80 percent of the human genome sequence to a specific biological function and mapped more than 4 million regulatory regions where proteins specifically interact with the DNA. These findings represent a significant advance in understanding the precise and complex controls over the expression of genetic information within a cell. The findings bring into much sharper focus the continually active genome in which proteins routinely turn genes on and off using sites that are sometimes at great distances from the genes themselves. They also identify where chemical modifications of DNA influence gene expression and where various functional forms of RNA, a form of nucleic acid related to DNA, help regulate the whole system.

Researchers report on a new revelation about the human genome: it’s full of active, functioning DNA, and it's a lot more complex than we ever thought.

Skepticism has arisen spontaneously from all over the scientific blogosphere, facebook, and twitter. You see, most of us scientists know that ENCODE is using an extremely liberal and dubious definition of “function”, basically meaning “some detectable chemical activity”. ... All the evidence for relative nonfunctionality which has been known for decades is still there and hasn’t really changed. ... But I'm beginning to think that certain parts of molecular biology and bioinformatics are populated with people who are very smart, but who got through school with a lot of detailed technical training but without enough broad training in basic comparative biology.

University of Toronto biochemistry professor Larry Moran is not happy with the results of the ENCODE project, which report evidence of "biochemical functions for 80% of the genome." Other Darwin-defenders are trying to dismiss this paper as mere "hype". Yes that's right - we're supposed to ignore the intentionally unambiguous abstract of an 18-page Nature paper, the lead out of 30 other simultaneous papers from this project, co-authored by literally hundreds of leading scientists worldwide, because it's "hype." Larry Moran and other vocal Internet Darwin-activists are welcome to disagree and protest these conclusions, but it's clear that the consensus of molecular biologists - people who actually study how the genome works - now believe that the idea of "junk DNA" is essentially wrong.

Textbooks rarely inform students about the important functions of these allegedly vestigial organs and instead simply cite them as evidence for common ancestry.

Maybe it's time to correct the textbooks ... Many biology texts today still refer to the appendix as a 'vestigial organ.'