Hunt (2007) framed the rarity of directional evolution as corroborating punctuated equilibrium's claim about phyletic gradualism, not as narrowing it

Gene Hunt's own reading of his 2007 result — see claim-hunt-2007-directional-evolution-rare-stasis-and-random-walk-split-evenly for the underlying figures — is affirmative rather than deflationary. His paper's abstract states directly: "The rarity with which directional evolution was observed in this study corroborates a key claim of punctuated equilibria and suggests that truly directional evolution is infrequent or, perhaps more importantly, of short enough duration so as to rarely register in paleontological sampling."

The target of that corroboration is specifically phyletic gradualism — Eldredge and Gould's original 1972 foil, steady within-lineage directional change accumulating gradually over a species' fossil range. Hunt's data speaks against that alternative: if directional evolution were the norm within lineages, it should register as the best-fit model far more often than 5% of the time. Hunt reads the finding as support for punctuated equilibrium's stance against gradualism, not as a challenge to punctuated equilibrium generally — a framing distinct from claim-punctuated-equilibriums-novel-addition-was-stasis-emphasis, which was Eldredge and Gould's own stasis emphasis, not Hunt's later empirical gloss on it.

Any "Hunt 2007 narrows punctuated equilibrium" reading has to come from elsewhere, since Hunt's own 2007 interpretation of his own data runs the other way; see claim-hunt-voje-liow-2025-stasis-common-but-not-dominant for where that narrowing actually originates.