Have evolutionary biologists stopped caring about mutation and natural selection?

[T_aquaticus]

@davecarlson

Now, leaving aside the strange and inapt distinction between mutation/selection and common descent, do you agree with Tour’s unnamed geneticist friend that evolutionary biologists are no longer “pushing random mutation and natural selection”, or do you think that Tour, perhaps, should have done a bit more due diligence before repeating what other people apparently told him?

There are plenty of papers using sequence conservation to find functional sequences in the human genome and the genomes of other species. Geneticists are still very interested in random mutations and natural selection because they hold to key to understanding the connection between genotype and phenotype.

To use an analogy, most gold miners will tell you that most rocks don’t have gold in them. Does this mean gold miners are not interested in finding gold?