I disagree. And the reason why I disagree are exactly the same I gave to @RonSewell at 136.
Growth rate.
This is objectively false. The empirical study was bad when it was published, but is laughable 10 years later.
False. The study did not measure “actual mutation accumulation.” It measured sequence differences, most of which come from reassortment of the 8 genome segments.
No, they did not.
False.
False.
This, to me, is deliberate dishonesty. There is no single “human H1N1 lineage,” because such lineages don’t really exist due to the segmented genome reassortments.
This is false, as they did not measure accumulation of mutations. The graph that they misrepresented is simply genome differences, most of which are produced by reassortment.
Moreover, there’s nothing “perfectly linear” about that graph. That, IMO, is additional deliberate dishonesty.
False. Most weren’t mutations. You can see the jumps in Sanford’s own paper caused by reassortments. This is more deliberate dishonesty.
This is not how viral fitness is measured.
This is simply false and represents more deliberate dishonesty. H1N1 is still with us. There are thousands of isolates from humans that have been isolated since 2009.
I am as well. There is solid evidence, the most obvious of which is that H1N1 is not extinct.
If Sanford truly believed that the “apparent extinction” of H1N1 in 2009 was evidence supporting his hypothesis, the fact that it is still with us 10 years later should be treated as far stronger evidence falsifying his hypothesis, by both Sanford and you, Gil.
Gil, here you’re appearing to be deliberately dishonest. You obviously haven’t even looked at the virological evidence–you’re just regurgitating words. H1N1 returns every year:
Flu vaccines are updated to better match viruses expected to be circulating in the United States.
The A(H1N1)pdm09 vaccine component was updated from an A/Michigan/45/2015 (H1N1)pdm09-like virus to an A/Brisbane/02/2018 (H1N1)pdm09-like virus.
pdm09 happens to be the very strain (H1N1 is a serotype) that Sanford falsely claimed was “apparently extinct” in 2012, Gil.
Please quit dealing in hearsay and deal directly with the evidence.
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No, Graur’s paper is not about mutations that are affected by natural selection, not at all. Here is a quote taken from the paper that illustrates the point:
« Thus, the mutational load does not depend on the strength of selection against any particular mutation. This surprising result comes from the fact that alleles under strong selection are relatively rare, but their effects on mean fitness are large, whereas the alleles under weak purifying selection are common, but their effects on mean fitness are small. As a result, the effects of these two types of mutation neatly cancel out. To understand the magnitude of the mutational load in a population, we need only determine the deleterious mutation rate, not the distribution of fitness effects. »
Quoting is not engaging with the evidence. Please engage with the evidence YOURSELF or stop pretending that your position has any evidentiary basis.
I hypothesize that you lack sufficient faith in your position to get into the evidence.
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How is it quantified? i.e. What is the standard by which they determine the degree to which the population has become more or less fit?
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You have not demonstrated that there is any fact to change.
You have not defined if impactful is “loss of information” or a positive mutation, or if it has any meaning at all.
You use the term fitness in a non-conventional way. As has been repeatedly stated above, fitness is an established term in the biological context, and you cannot just up and redefine it to your liking and expect to engage in a constructive conversation with the rest of the world. For the umpteenth time, virulence is not fitness.
How did the supposedly original robust influenza virus get started in 1917? Was it created then? So no of course. Was it incubated, protected from all those slightly deleterious mutations, for 6000 years, before being unleashed on the human population and promptly commencing to get all deleteriated and extinct?
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Gil, I suggest that you read the quoted paragraph again (and perhaps the entire paper). It is absolutely referring to mutations subject to natural selection. Graur is summarizing a theoretical finding that dates back to at least 1950 (Muller’s “Our load of mutations” paper).
In this simple (simplistic) scenario, strongly deleterious mutations are quickly removed by selection and therefore do not rise to high frequencies, while less strongly deleterious are more numerous, persist for longer, and reach higher frequencies before being removed by selection. The effect of this is that the total genetic load (i.e. reduction in mean fitness) of the population is not effected by the selection coefficients of the mutations in question but only by the deleterious mutation rate.
But, again, we’re discussing deleterious mutations, which by definition have a non-zero selection coefficient and are influenced by natural selection.
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And you then proceed to quote part of the paper that talks about mutations that are affected by natural selection – specifically, weak purifying selection. Sanford’s mutations are ones that are not affected by purifying mutations.
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And many people have patiently explained to you a dozen times why that is wrong. You won’t deal with your error or the refutation, you just keep repeating the same demonstrably false claim. You’re getting to be as bad as the “mind! magic! POOF!” guy.
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Graur says that the mutation load is entirely determined by the deleterious mutation rate, independently of the distribution of fitness effects. So it seems wrong to say that the paper talks only about mutations that are affected by natural selection.
Despite having followed your advice, I still don’t think that the paper is mainly referring to mutations subject to natural selection. See my answer to @glipsnort at 151.
Gil it seems you agree with Sanford all genomes were created “perfect” only 6000 years ago. Why then is it we have sequenced DNA from out hominid ancestors (Neanderthals, Denisovans, earlier anatomically modern humans) back to 430,000 years ago and none show this “perfect” genome?
430,000 Year Old Human DNA Revises Our Family Tree
What would a “perfect” original genome even look like anyway?
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Yes, I did see you repeat yourself. But saying the wrong thing twice doesn’t make it less wrong. Graur’s paper is entirely about mutations that are subject to natural selection.
The reason that (in Graur’s simplistic scenario) mutation load is independent of the distribution of fitness effects is because selection is removing deleterious mutations at a rate that is approximately proportional to their fitness effect. The total contribution to mutation load of comparatively rare mutations of large effect is balanced by the collective contribution of common mutations of small effect.
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Right. And he makes clear – in the paragraph you quoted – that these deleterious mutations can be divided into those undergoing strong selection and those undergoing weak selection. So all the mutations he’s talking about are subject to selection. If he wanted to talk about effectively neutral alleles, he’d say so.
Stop and think for a moment – you’re trying to tell one population geneticist what another population geneticist means in a population genetics paper when you don’t know any population genetics. Doesn’t that strike you as at least a little silly?
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Creationism, in essence, is one giant exercise in demonstrating the Dunning Kruger Syndrome.
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@Giltil - This is worth pondering carefully.
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I didn’t know that you were a population geneticist. So, yes, I am going to follow your advice and stop and think more carefully about Grau’s paper to try to understand what I am missing here. Maybe I will need your help in the process.
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Start by figuring out what the distribution of fitness effects (DFE) actually means, and why saying “we don’t need to consider the DFE of mutations” is not equivalent to saying “we’re not talking about mutations affected by natural selection”.
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Maybe you could examine the evidence instead of what people say about it, Gil, if you’re not afraid to…