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Member (Idle past 4886 days) Posts: 310 From: Broomfield Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Page's misuse of Haldane's Dilemma | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fred Williams Member (Idle past 4886 days) Posts: 310 From: Broomfield Joined: |
I have posted a refutation of Scott Page's latest claims on my web site:
http://www.evolutionfairytale.com/articles_debates/page_refutation_2.htm I've been pretty busy, but I hope to find time to engage evolutionists here when I do find time. Sorry Mark that I haven't gotten back to you, I realize you have posted a few things that I just didn't have time to address.
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Fred Williams Member (Idle past 4886 days) Posts: 310 From: Broomfield Joined: |
Scott, I would specifically like to see you address the errors I listed in the summary that I've pasted below. Comments from others also welcome.
* Mistakenly claiming that Haldane based his substitution estimate on the observation of peppered moths (Haldane did the opposite, see Haldane 1957, p521) * Implying that a large population is a bad assumption for evolution (Haldane did the opposite; see Haldane 1960, p351) * Claiming that a wild-type allele can still persist in a population even after its mutant allele reaches 100% fixation in the same population! * Because of his previous error, reaches the erroneous conclusion that a dominate allele does not need to be replaced, which implies it has no reproductive cost. * Claiming that a beneficial mutation will spread through a population in a sexual species "as well" as it would in an asexual species, even given an environment free of deleterious mutations. I wonder if there is even one population geneticist in the world who would agree with him. * Claims that Wu's study dos *not* assume human/simian ancestry in its determination of the substitution rate. * Re-visits circular reasoning by asking why 620,000 substitutions from the Keightley study is not sufficient to account for simian/human shared ancestry, given the 500,000 he believes Remine set as a minimum. The problem is, the Keightley study also arrives at its numbers by first assuming simian/human shared ancestry. Thus, it is circular to use their numbers when contrasting against any arbitrary guestimate of mutations that would separate simian/man. [This message has been edited by Fred Williams, 02-26-2002]
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Fred Williams Member (Idle past 4886 days) Posts: 310 From: Broomfield Joined: |
quote: My pleasure. The graph is from Futuyma's Evolutionary Biology textbook, 1998.
Futuyma believes that "the great majority of mutations are deleterious or nearly neutral". Not neutral, nearly neutral (ie, slightly harmful). It is false to claim most mutations are purely neutral, especially as we uncover more and more examples of non-coding DNA that serves some function.
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Fred Williams Member (Idle past 4886 days) Posts: 310 From: Broomfield Joined: |
I finally found time to refute Scott Page's latest installment in our informal debate:
www.evolutionfairytale.com I'm still pretty busy, but will watch this thread and try to post responses as best as my time allows. Thanks for your patience. Fred Williams
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Fred Williams Member (Idle past 4886 days) Posts: 310 From: Broomfield Joined: |
quote: Good point. My intentions that it will be the concluding post may be short-sighted indeed! quote: Thanks, I did see your comments. However, I do think our latest debate does invite outside dialog. For example, Page’s first citation was a backfire, as it is clearly evidence against evolution. This is an exciting point for creationists and should be enticing for evolutionists to try to challenge.
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Fred Williams Member (Idle past 4886 days) Posts: 310 From: Broomfield Joined: |
Here again is the relevant passage from the citation Page thought supported his cause:
The genomic deleterious mutation rate in humans was previously estimated to be at least 1.6 on the basis of an estimate that 38% of amino acid mutations are deleterious. The genomic deleterious mutation rate is likely much larger given our estimate that 80% of amino acid mutations are deleterious and given that it does not include deleterious mutations in noncoding regions, which may be quite common. [emphasis mine] A straight extrapolation yields a mutation rate of U=3.4. Using a Poisson distribution from statistics 101, the required offspring per breeding couple to produce a pair without a new defect is B=2e^u. Plug in the mutation rate, and you end up with a requirement of 60 offspring per breeding couple!!! This number is actually extremely conservative as many other factors are ignored. When more realistic (and still conservative) numbers are used, the number exceeds 200! Evolutionists have no explanation for this. Creationists do. My recommendation to evolutionists? Stop determining the mutation rate by comparing simians to humans. The number of nucleotide differences are clearly demonstrating that we are not related.
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Fred Williams Member (Idle past 4886 days) Posts: 310 From: Broomfield Joined: |
I thought I’d address a few key items here from Page’s latest rebuttal.
quote: What Page failed to notice is that D for a dominate is based on a starting frequency p of 5x10^-5, while p for a recessive is assumed a starting frequency of .01 (which means huge costs have already been paid to get it there)! Why did Haldane assume a much higher starting frequency for a recessive? He wanted to show that D is largely dependent on p, and wanted to start recessives at a point where they may be recognized by selection (p 514). Haldane expands on this in his subsequent 1960 paper, More Precise Expressions for the Cost of Natural Selection. On p 358 Haldane writes Thus the cost may be enormous if the gene selected is completely recessive, and it seems doubtful whether completely recessive genes are ever selected. [emphasis mine] (Haldane goes on to say that recessives only have a chance to spread in small isolated populations) Other things of note: 2) I think it is important to note that Page still refuses to acknowledge that the Wu study assumes human/simian (specifically OW monkeys) ancestry. 2) Page continues to insist that Haldane’s model is premised on evolution being true. This is precisely equivocation, and he is flat wrong to engage in it. Allele replacement is part of the YEC framework, as is selection (which creationists espoused even before Darwin). Page knows this, but would still try to have you believe that selection is an evolutionary idea, and allele replacement is exclusive to evolution. Using Page’s logic, I could just as easily write Haldane’s model is premised on creation being true. What is ironic is that in the past Page has used Haldane’s model to argue against YEC rapid speciation since the flood! How can Page do this if he really believes the model is built off of evolutionary assumptions?!!! I have always said that Haldane’s model, since it is not formulated on how life originated, can be applied to the YEC framework. When Page and other evolutionists use it to argue against YEC, they are actually using valid logic. That is what led our debates in the past to such topics as adaptive mutations, among others. My point then and now is that evolution has no reasonable explanation for the Haldane problem, whereas the YEC model has several reasonable explanations available to it. 3) Page continues to claim the Rice study is evidence that sex is beneficial to evolution:
quote: Despite having this pointed out to him now on numerous occasions, he continues to conveniently forget a very important factor. The above is only true when the ENVIRONMENT CONSISTS OF A HUGE FLOW OF HARMFUL MUTATIONS EACH GENERATION! Since a huge flow of harmful mutations is anti-evolution, it is very misleading to claim that the Rice study demonstrates the benefit of sex for evolution. Page’s explicit claim, and Rice’s implicit claim, is nothing short of intellectual dishonesty. Let’s try something. I ask Page to show us how the Rice study demonstrates that sex is a benefit for evolution in an environment where there is a nominal rate of mutation per organism per generation. Feel free to use any rate that does not deteriorate a species. A rate that keeps the genetic load at equilibrium would be fine. Use their charts and data. Show the readers and I where in their data, recombination increases beneficial mutations while decreasing harmful ones when the rate of mutation is equilibrium. If you cannot achieve this, then your original claim that their study supports evolution is intellectual dishonesty and you should retract it. (I’ll remind Page that anything less than equilibrium is deterioration, which is anti-evolution, which is the only section of the graph the Rice study works! For my analysis, see: http://www.evolutionfairytale.com/articles_debates/page_refutation.htm and page down to "Sexual Recombination and the Power of Natural Selection") 4) Questions from Page:
quote: I cannot comment on the 500,000 until my Remine book is returned to me.
quote: I think you are the only evolutionist biologist I’ve debated who refuses to understand my point, yet I have been debating it with you longer than any other scientist, so you have no excuse. I do not rely on Walker/Keightley paper for an accurate mutation rate. I have stated over and over again that their rate is WRONG. It MUST be wrong because it is ridiculous to assume that our alleged chimp/man ancestor produced 40+ offspring. Thus, since I conclude that their concluding rate of mutation is wrong, that something must be amiss within their study. Is it their math? No. Is it their data points from sequence gathering? I seriously doubt it. Is it their assumption that chimp and man share a distant ancestor? Yes, I think this must be where the problem lies, and why they end up with such a ridiculously high mutation rate.
quote: Time constraints. If it’s the question you asked in this thread, I’ll try to get to it shortly [This message has been edited by Fred Williams, 07-05-2002]
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Fred Williams Member (Idle past 4886 days) Posts: 310 From: Broomfield Joined: |
Haldane's Dilemma boils down to the required number of deaths that must occur in a population to fix a new allele under positive selection (beneficial mutation). Haldane showed that at best 1 substitution could become fixed in a population every 300 generations. Using conservative assumptions, he showed that the cost for allelic substitution was roughly 30 generations (and thus 30 populations). He then estimated the cost of selection per generation to be about 10% (that is, he assumed that 10% of the offspring would be available to pass on the new mutation, while the other 90% would pay for random deaths, lethal mutations, prudes, ugly ducklings, etc). With 10% of reproductive excess available for the new allele, he arrived at a total cost of 30/.1 = 300 generations per substitution.
Remine then put this figure in plain English. Assuming 10 million years for human evolution (a favorable assumption, since the current number is ~6My) this means at most only 1667 mutations under positive selection occur in 10 million years from our alleged simian/man ancestor. Where many go astray with Haldane's Dilemma is on the cost issue. Case in point, Page recently wrote this:
quote: Haldane showed that strong selection is an *enemy* of reproductive cost! (see p521, and plug in a high value for n; in the example Haldane gave, he called intense selection hardly compatible with survival). To illustrate this point it is convenient to go all the way to one end point. Imagine a population of 100,000 asexual animals, where a new mutation has such powerful selection that every organism without it dies. To replenish the 100,000 in one generation the organism would need to birth 99,999 offspring. Thus, the reproductive cost is huge (99,999). Apply this to any mammalian sexual species (say two receive the mutation and 99,998 die). The payment for the 99,998 deaths obviously cannot be paid in one generation (by any mammalian species I know of), but instead would require many generations to rebuild the population to 100,000 because of the reproductive limitations, provided it could even survive such an intense selection episode! (the first generations would surely be on the endangered species list!) By slowing the pace over time, Haldane was able to reduce the reproductive cost to a reasonable level. He showed that cost was essentially independent of selection (p 524). One last thing regarding Page’s citation. Evolutionists always forget the other side of the coin. Small founder populations are the enemy of evolution because genetic drift will invariably work to *remove* information from the genome. In addition, genetic drift will move many of the low-frequency deleterious mutations toward higher frequencies.
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Fred Williams Member (Idle past 4886 days) Posts: 310 From: Broomfield Joined: |
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Percipient:
...the model seems the obvious suspect since no significant problems with evolutionary theory have been identified... In other words, even if Haldane's model had right up until the present been considered completely correct, and even assuming that ReMine has correctly applied Haldane's model, the wrong answers it provides only raise questions with the model and its application, and not with the theory. --Percy[/B][/QUOTE] Where we disagree is when you say "no significant problems with evolutionary theory have been identified". We're obviously going to have our biases here. I think there is no tangible evidence whatsoever for large-scale evolution and that to me is a "significant problem! There's the obvious design of nature, there's the fossil record that is remarkably anti-evolutionary, the mutation rate problem as described in my article (note that Hadane's model need not be correct for my article to be valid), and of course, the information problem which is a serious nail in the coffin of evolution. How did the DNA code arise by chance? Etc Etc. There are many significant problems for the theory. Again, I know we have our biases, but when I started researching this some 7 years ago I expected there to be at least some evidence, and was floored by the total lack of evidence for large-scale evolution. It amazed me that I had been brainwashed for over 30 years into believing otherwise. I've stated before that I don't really emphasize Haldane's problem that much. It's an interesting model that could be wrong (though I have yet to see a convincing argument that it is). I instead emphasize the mutation rate problem that is somewhat related to Haldan'es model but does not rely on the model's accuracy. Current mutation rate data and statisticis 101 clearly contradict evolution in easy-to-understand terms. Here again is my article on this:
http://www.evolutionfairytale.com/articles_debates/mutation_rate.htm Note to Page: Several studies have substiantiated the Keightley study, more reason why it is unlikely there is a flaw in their math.
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Fred Williams Member (Idle past 4886 days) Posts: 310 From: Broomfield Joined: |
quote: No such clarification is required, death is apropos. The qualifier genetic is not needed.
quote: Page continues to demonstrate he does not have the foggiest idea what Haldane’s paper says. Page implies intense selection is a way out of the Haldane problem, and implies that Haldane ignored its impacts or was mistaken not to accommodate it. Yet Haldane recognized intense selection for what it was, an unrealistic and rare event that actually made matters worse for evolution! (specifically the cost of substitution). I again refer Page to page 520. Notice that fitness is e^(-30n^-1), and intensity is I=30n^-1. As intensity increases, n (number of generations to fix one gene) decreases, causing a logarithmic decrease in fitness! To illustrate this, Haldane gave an example of n=7.5, which represents an enormous intensity of 4. This yields a fitness of .02, which Haldane calls hardly compatible with survival (it means that 100 offspring are needed just to get one without a new harmful mutation). The relationship between intensity and substitution cost really only manifests itself as you start moving intensity above .1 (which is even considered atypically high selection by biologists). That is why Haldane said that cost and selection are essentially independent provided you don’t plug in ridiculously high values for selection. As I said earlier, intense selection is an enemy of reproductive cost. Finally, Page confirms he is confused on the implications of intense selection when he takes the following quote from Haldane completely out of out-of-context:
quote: I hope I don’t have to scan the appropriate page (p 359) to prove Page is taking Haldane out of context. Early in the paragraph Haldane writes The results given in 1957 are however accurate enough for most practical purposes. Haldane then goes on to comment that Kimura’s substitutional load cannot be readily compensated by gene substitution, because it would require 100 of millions of years. He proceeds to give an example of unrealistically intense selection, then notes in the sentence directly preceding Page’s quote: Organisms which produce many offspring permit of rapid artificial selection only if they can be protected from natural causes of death. What Haldane is saying is that in assumed scenarios of intense selection, it is unrealistic to ignore the impact of natural causes of death, which themselves incur a cost because they reduce the number of offspring available for beneficial substitution. Page believes that Haldane is admitting that he used unrealistic assumptions, which is simply not true and actually is quite the opposite. Haldane is arguing that one should not apply his model to situations that are unrealistic (Note that Haldane actually used assumptions favorable to evolution, such as atypically high selection I=.1; What if he had used the more generally accepted value of .01? Then it would have taken 3000 generations per substitution!) Its ironic what Page wrote regarding the above passage: One should hope that the creationists that like to hang their hat on "Haldane's Dilemma" would have read and understood this at some point... Let’s hope Page finally read the passage and now understands what Haldane really was saying. I would hope a retraction from Page regarding his out-of-context quote is forthcoming
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Fred Williams Member (Idle past 4886 days) Posts: 310 From: Broomfield Joined: |
quote: You are actually doing me a favor here by supporting my claim that evolution is not falsifiable! I have a short article on how the term evolution is equivocated to make it true by default:
http://www.evolutionfairytale.com/articles_debates/evolutiondefinition.htm quote: I actually started one here some time ago. It was a discussion regarding this article I wrote:
http://www.evolutionfairytale.com/articles_debates/fossil_illusion.htm What occurred in that thread was what almost verbatim what I predicted in the sidebar in my article! I realize the article is a bit offensive ( IMO, if the fossil record supported evolution, punctuated equilibrium would never had seen the light of day.
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Fred Williams Member (Idle past 4886 days) Posts: 310 From: Broomfield Joined: |
quote: Technically it does have to die, because technically for an allele to be fixed every organism has to have it. Non-technically speaking, we are both hairsplitting.
quote: Nice strawman. Haldane’s 1 per 300 generations is an average over time.. Multiple genes can be moving toward fixation, but over time an average of 1 per 300 generations will become fixed.
quote: So do you agree that Haldane did not believe as you do, and would not claim that constant pop size and weak selection are inapplicable in many if not most circumstance? BTW, nowhere in Haldane’s paper does he think constant population size is a risky assumption for his model. Why do you think it is a risky assumption? Merel'y because in natural population sizes aren’t constant? Another point worth repeating. Haldane showed that STRONG SELECTION ACTUALLY MAKES MATTERS WORSE FOR EVOLUTION. HE SHOWED THAT STRONG SELECTION PUTS TOO HIGH A BURDEN ON THE COST OF SUBSTITUTION! He later argues that strong selection is a rare biological situation, so don’t extend his model to it. He doesn’t want you to because evolution becomes even less tenable!
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Fred Williams Member (Idle past 4886 days) Posts: 310 From: Broomfield Joined: |
quote: I just saw this. Don't know why I missed it when writing my last response. This answers the question I asked in my last post. After reading Scott's original claims, I can see how this could easily fit with what he wrote above, that his claims were not based on what Haldane believed. Therefore, I HEREBY RETRACT THAT SCOTT TOOK HALDANE OUT OF CONTEXT, AND OFFER MY APOLOGIES. Fred
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Fred Williams Member (Idle past 4886 days) Posts: 310 From: Broomfield Joined: |
quote: As you are aware, leading geneticist Dr Crow in a personal email exchange did not think it was a strawman, and in fact admitted it was a serious problem that deserves serious attention. It’s a problem that is clear to see, and has hard data to back it. If you think 40 offspring per couple is a reasonable possibility, I think the onus is on you to make a case for it.
quote: Ironically, this thread was started to refute two citations you made! I only have time to refute so much! quote: Uh, I may be mistaken but I don’t recall a limit to Haldane’s model. In fact, his model works best as the pop size goes to infinity. The bigger the population, the less strain on substitution cost. Regarding your constant size protest, I think you are grasping at straws. Scores of evolutionists since Haldane, including Kimura, Crow, and GC Williams did not believe it was a weak or damaging assumption.
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