Correcting a Quote Mine on Deleterious Mutations

[thoughtful (Valerie (non-scientist))]

@Rumraket

In total, more mutations are neutral and deleterious than are beneficial.

@Rumraket

That last sentence is the key point of contention that really matters to whether GE is true or not, and there is no evidence that it is true. Every word in the sentence matters. I’ll repeat it:
What is not supported by any research is that the distribution is skewered and fixed such that deleterious mutations of very small effect will accumulate indefinitely

Help me understand why what you’re saying is not contradictory with what @CrisprCAS9 says.

@CrisprCAS9

GE relies on the assumption that nearly neutral mutations are overwhelmingly deleterious. I mean that literally, in that the nearly neutral deleterious ones overwhelm all beneficial mutations (both nearly neutral and selectable). But for humans, the limit of detection is at least 200x the effect size of effective neutrality

I see you saying we do know DFE (more mutations are neutral and deleterious) and natural selection is relaxed in humans which explains why GE is not true.

I see him and others saying we can’t know DFE (therefore GE is wrong and you’re wrong) and natural selection also wont see those same mutations (so they will accumulate). But he also agrees natural selection is relaxed somehow and would normally see those mutations. To me, it seems like you contradict each other and sometimes yourselves.

@Rumraket

That’s what the tried to do with the H1N1 paper, but failed at doing. @dsterncardinale has this nice video that explains why:

I’ll try to watch it later, but it was already obvious from the thread he didn’t understand their argument so I’m not sure why I would be convinced of his critique of their paper.

@Rumraket

There’s that word “undisputed”. If someone, anyone, disputes it, that gives you some excuse to dispute it too? Can that someone be wrong?

It’s mildly amusing that we’re talking about an increase in fitness for 1 mutant out of 1000s and you see the need to argue that it matters whether it’s disputed or not. To me, this makes scientists look unscientific.

@Rumraket

It’s not clear what the question you’re asking even is. What is it scientists are supposed to “prove” about how they think natural selection acts?

@Rumraket

And bullet #1 was the factually unassailable reality that selection is relaxed in modern industrialized nations, so how does this confirm anything wrt GE?

Is there any research to show the extent to which it is relaxed? Or what would be expected if it was not?