Drs. Sanford and Carter respond to PS Scientists

[PDPrice (Paul Price)]

@glipsnort

I don’t know what you’re trying to say here. If you have evidence that most mutations of very small effect are deleterious, present it. You’ll be the first to do so.

There’s nothing more I can say to this; Drs Carter and Sanford addressed this gaslighting (?) in the article itself. All the data we have on mutations strongly and clearly show a massive skew toward deleterious. That’s why:

“In summary, the vast majority of mutations are deleterious. This is one of the most well-established principles of evolutionary genetics, supported by both molecular and quantitative-genetic data.”
Keightley P.D. and Lynch, M., Toward a realistic model of mutations affecting fitness, Evolution 57 (3):683–5, 2003

Consider the dead horse beaten.

@Rumraket

But here @glipsnort’s analogy with using toner to print letters on pages shows why, at least with respect to junk DNA, the mutations that occur in junk DNA will have an equal distribution of deleterious and beneficials.

I’m not going to debate Junk DNA; it was handled in the article. But even if I grant junk DNA, it doesn’t solve your problem. Dr Schaffner has already stated that he is not arguing that all effectively neutral mutations happen in junk DNA. That fact alone means the distribution can’t be even; there will certainly be more damaging than beneficial mutations in the spectrum. And that is not something that can be handled by evolutionary theory–it is fatal, both literally and metaphorically. I also happen to think Dr Schaffner is both educated and intelligent enough that he already knows this fact. Maybe he’s holding out for future discoveries to come to the rescue?

@Rumraket

At some point it will not be physically possible to improve some aspect of an organism in a way that contributes to it’s reproductive fitness, without that either compromising some other aspect of it’s physiology, or hitting some hard, fundamental physical limit.

That silly claim has already been addressed and debated on this forum. No need to repeat myself, other than to simply say again that there is no limit to how engineering solutions can be creatively applied to improve things. If you can’t get any faster in a car you can invent an airplane. And so forth.

@Michael_Okoko

Yeah he should answer it, because if GE leads to the eventual extinction of life forms, then it makes no sense that life has persevered for billions of years.

It hasn’t.

@structureoftruth

I think his answer to that would be that genetic entropy is evidence against the idea that life has persisted for billions of years.

There’s a right answer.

@structureoftruth

Of course, that just takes the discussion back to all the solid evidence we do have for the antiquity of life, earth, and the universe…

Not if we’re going to stay on topic it doesn’t.