EVIDENCE-BASED. “Genomic complexity is far easier to quantify than phenotypic complexity (even if the latter is easier to recognize intuitively). Indeed, the remarkable progress of genome sequencing, combined with the development of computational methods for advanced comparative genomics, provides for increasingly reliable reconstruction of ancestral genomes which transforms the study of the evolution of complexity from being a speculative exercise to becoming an evidence-based research direction.”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/full