Prof. Behe's debate with Prof. Moran

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@evograd

That summary of Whites paper is inaccurate. The really probability is far higher. This is where Behe stakes his ground and it is based on a misreading of a single paper.

Can you expand on this?

This is pretty important, and @art keeps pointing to it.

@Art

Here is the part of White’s review from which Behe pulled the value 10^-20:

“Chloroquine resistance in P. falciparum may be multigenic and is initially conferred by mutations in a gene encoding a transporter (PfCRT) (13). In the presence of PfCRT mutations, mutations in a second transporter (PfMDR1) modulate the level of resistance in vitro, but the role of PfMDR1 mutations in determining the therapeutic response following chloroquine treatment remains unclear (13). At least one other as-yet unidentified gene is thought to be involved. Resistance to chloroquine in P. falciparum has arisen spontaneously less than ten times in the past fifty years (14). This suggests that the per-parasite probability of developing resistance de novo is on the order of 1 in 10^20 parasite multiplications.”

Recall that Behe equated one CCC with a double mutation, presumably based on other work showing that two point mutations in the PfCRT gene are associated with durable resistance in the parasite. But White is not talking about double mutations in PfCRT when he tosses out the number 10^20. Rather, he is speculating about the frequency of occurrence of a multigenic trait that involves two or three genes, and more (perhaps many more) than two mutations.

The bottom line is that the number bandied about by Behe et al. (1 in 10^20) is not really representative of the frequency of the CCC he discusses in the EoE.

As you can see here, Moran produces a large amount of evidence that counter’s Behe’s claims, and then Behe dismisses it based on this single number:

@swamidass

This is how Behe dismisses Moran’s points in the article linked:

So, too, with chloroquine resistance in Plasmodium falciparum . The best current statistical estimate of the frequency of de novo resistance is Nicholas White’s value of 1 in 1020 parasites. That number is now essentially fixed — no pathway to resistance will be found that is substantially more probable than that. Although with more data the value may be refined up or down by even as much as one or two orders of magnitude (to between 1 in 10^18-10^20), it’s not going very far on a log scale. Not nearly far enough to lift the shadow from Darwinism.

Except his 10^20 is based on misreading White’s paper. It is also only a single source, not validated, where Moran has a vast literature he is drawing upon, and demonstrates several places where Behe’s evidential claims are false. Behe just comes back to this saying that he must be right because of 10^20, except this was a misreading of the quote he is using.