So Sanford is ignoring all those other evolutionary processes.
No, he is not. But he understand that in the final analysis, all evolutionary processes converge towards the mutation/selection magic martingale.
What is your basis for this statement? Please supply statements by Sanford which indicate an up to date understanding of contemporary theory. Otherwise, it is justified to characterize his position as ignoring other processes.
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[quote=āGiltil, post:156, topic:11736ā]
Given that you agree that young age is false, that would be a strike against GE, wouldnāt it?
How do you know that these commonalities are deleterious mutations? Couldnāt they result from common design?
Sanford is arguably one of the worldās expert on genetic in general and genetic degeneration in particular. He may eventually be wrong, but his expertise cannot be denied. And I will bet that another expert in the field such as @Joe_Felsenstein would agree with me on this.
The genes can be identified, we know what they are supposed to do if they were intact, but they are non-functional and so do squat. So these are certainly deleterious with respect to their intended function.
They could indeed result from common design. They could have been independently created as broken genes, broken in the mostly the same way, as per the attached papers. Is that what you think?
The loss of the vitamin C gene correlates with a diet abundant in vitamin C, so that what would be a scurvy curse in one environment is only slightly deleterious in another. Nature does not care about the platonic ideals. What is important is what is conserved, and what is important is defined by the environment.
Another argument supporting the suggestion that species which have lost their GLO gene were under no selective pressure to keep it, is that all species which have lost their GLO gene have very different diets but all of them have diets rich in vitamin C. The diets of GLO -less anthropoid primate species contain plants that are rich in vitamin C.
Anymore than it can be denied that Iām the Sultan of Istanbul.
This is a pointless appeal to authority, but if you insist on going there, substantiate your hagiography with at least his citation influence outside of plant biology, and any prizes and citations indicating widespread recognition of contribution to genetics in general, or graduate textbooks he has authored in widespread use throughout universities. Other than that, the less said about Sanfordās relevant expertise, the likely more charitable.
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Really? Iām interested. How much are you willing to bet?
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I would use a different wording and say that the scientific evidences point to old age for life.
No. As I told you, there is no logical connection between old age and GE. Too illustrate this point, here is how Sanford responds to the objection that the persistence of various forms of life disprove GE:
These objections do not reflect a clear understanding of what I am saying about genetic entropy. My primary thesis is not that everything is going extinct (although I do hold that view), but is that many levels of evidences show that the neo-Darwinian theory is false. The mutation /selection process cannot create the genome, it cannot even stop the genomeās continuous degeneration. Given only mutation /selection (given only neo-Darwinian theory) / all species must go extinct. I realize that conceivably there may be a counter-force to genetic entropy other than natural selection. That counter-force might be God, or aliens, or some unknown natural force. But if we are given only strict neo-Darwinian theory - yes, all life forms are doomed to extinction.
Genetic Entropy, appendix 5.
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Are you denying that Sanford is an expert in genetic and highly competent in population genetic.
Of course, if you ignore most of the evidence. 
He has learned some population genetic[s]. But if I were putting together a panel discussion on mutational deterioration, Iād staff it with Brian Charlesworth, Michael Lynch, and Andrey Kondrashov, with a backup list including Peter Keightley and Adam Eyre-Walker.
And too bad you werenāt interested in taking my bet, which seemed like easy money.
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Not to toot my own horn but my thesis was on lethal mutagenesis and error catastrophe. Iām basically a nobody, but to the extent Iām a world expert in anything itās this exact thing.
More to the point, Sanfordās understanding is not the problem. The problem is that the case he makes reduces evolutionary processes to mutation and selection, which does not accurately reflect the totality of evolutionary processes. One more flaw to add the long list of problems with his work.
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Did you perhaps mean Alexey Kondrashov?
If so, why did Cornell never promote him to full professor?
Gilbert, a certain degree of civility and decorum could be softening the more blunt opinions.
Good enough. I suppose you would go on to say that your reading of Genesis overrules all conceivable scientific evidence. Is that it?
But if there is a counter-force, we wouldnāt observe GE, right? If Sanford claims to observe GE, there can be no counter-force. So his supposed observations of GE must be wrong. Especially his claims about flu viruses, which must be wrong even if the world is only 6000 years old. Given his supposed rate of deterioration, no viruses could have survived that long.
The reasonable alternative to this ācounter-forceā is that Sanford has modeled evolution poorly. Perhaps the ācounter-forceā is just the real distribution of fitnesses in nearly neutral alleles. Or perhaps soft selection predominates. Or any of the other explanations of the supposed genetic load problem that have been proposed over the years.
The main point is that GE canāt rely for its validity on the assumption that life is young, since all the evidence falsifies that claim.
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Especially since he fudges the data, falsely labeling genetic changes caused by segment reassortment as mutationsāwhen he clearly describes reassortment, no less!
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Yes, of course.
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