  It has been observed recently that a consistent LO BFKL gluon evolution leads
to a steep growth of F_2(x,Q^2) for x -> 0 almost independently of Q^2. We show
that current data from the DESY HERA collider are precise enough to finally
rule out a pure BFKL behaviour in the accessible small x region. Several
attempts have been made by other groups to treat the BFKL type small x
resummations instead as additions to the conventional anomalous dimensions of
the successful renormalization group ``Altarelli-Parisi'' equations. We
demonstrate that all presently available F_2 data, in particular at lower
values of Q^2, can not be described using the presently known NLO (two-loop
consistent) small x resummations. Finally we comment on the common reason for
the failure of these BFKL inspired methods which result, in general, in too
steep x-dependencies as x -> 0.
