Final answer:
The statement is false; natural selection can contribute to linkage disequilibrium when alleles are passed together due to selection on the level of the organism. This creates non-random associations between alleles at different loci, which can be detected as deviations from the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium in a population.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement 'Natural selection never creates linkage disequilibrium' is false. Natural selection can indeed contribute to linkage disequilibrium, which occurs when certain alleles at two linked loci are associated with each other more often than would be expected by chance. This can happen because natural selection works on entire organisms, which are carriers of whole sets of linked alleles, rather than on individual alleles in isolation. Thus, while natural selection selects for organisms with beneficial traits, those organisms' entire genotype, including linked alleles, may be propagated, leading to deviations from random association of alleles - that is, linkage disequilibrium.
Within the context of the Hardy-Weinberg principle, if a population is not influenced by evolutionary forces such as natural selection, mutations, migration, genetic drift, and nonrandom mating, the allele and genotype frequencies would remain stable over generations. However, in nature, these evolutionary forces, including natural selection, are often acting upon populations, causing allele frequencies to change and contributing to the evolution of the population. This evolution can be measured when allele frequencies deviate from those predicted by the Hardy-Weinberg equation.