Rabbits falsified it a long time ago. According to Sanford’s thesis, rabbits (and all animals with short generation times) should have gone extinct a long time ago due to genetic entropy.
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The field of population genetics. In addition to authoring the book Genetic Entropy and being the primary editor of the book Biological Information - New Perspectives, Sanford has published 21 papers since he entered the niche of theoretical genetics 15 years ago. Most significantly, he has led a team of research scientists in the development of a powerful new tool for studying population genetics, employing comprehensive numerical simulation. This tool, Mendel’s Accountant, is the first comprehensive and biologically realistic simulator of the entire mutation/selection process. This new program is the state of the art the field.
Where can we find this tool being used in a peer reviewed paper in a journal of biology?
Sanford’s idiocy was laughed at, then ignored. Do you realize Sanford is a born again YEC who offered the multi-hundred year ages of the Biblical patriarchs as part of his “evidence”?
Does that sound like science to you?
Mice have approximate the same sized genomes as humans but breed 60X as fast. Explain to everyone why haven’t mice haven’t gone extinct from genomic degradation yet?
If the human genome is “degrading” why has the human population gone from around 5 million 2000 years ago to over 7.7 billion now?
Sorry, Sanford is a kindly well meaning but complete nutter whose loopy claims on genetics don’t come withing a parsec of reality.
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LOL! Sanford’s silly “Mendel’s Accountant” program is a joke, an exercise in self-delusion. It was purposely written so no matter what initial values were input the population would “degrade” and die within a thousand years. It has absolutely zero connection to biological reality.
Just for fun some people put the starting population of 8 from Noah’s Ark in and humans died out in less that 100 years. 
Oops!
A number of us in my lab downloaded it and tried it. There is no combination of parameters possible which will not result in a population rapidly degrading and dying.
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The fact remains that when you plot the age of death of the patriarchs against the number of generations since Noah, you see a pattern that reveals a very clear biological decay curve that support genetic degeneration. Can you give an alternative explanation ?
That sounds like a bug. It would be interesting to see if you can replicate this.
Yes. The ages of the Biblical patriarchs are fictional if not most of the characters themselves. Science based on religious folklore isn’t science.
ETA: Sanford’s whole “genetic entropy” premise is based on his YEC belief humans were created with a “perfect” genome only 6000 years ago and have been degrading ever since. That whole YEC scenario was conclusive disproven centuries ago.
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What next? Plot the velocity of Superman flying through air at different altitudes?
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At the time Sanford allowed downloading of the source code. It wasn’t a bug, it was a purposely designed in feature to guarantee Sanford always got the results he wanted. Since I retired I no longer have access to the private company network the tests were run on. It was back when GE and Mendel first came out so I doubt it was archived anyway.
You didn’t answer my question. How do you explain that when you plot the age of the patriarchs, you see a pattern that reveals a biological decay curve?
Yes I did. The ages are fictional. If you claim otherwise then show us some independent evidence confirming those are accurate ages.
Now how about you answer my question and explain why mice haven’t gone extinct from genomic degradation.
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Gilbert,
You have totally misunderstood what I wrote. I do not question your sincerity, but you evince no comprehension of the biology being discussed in this thread. Instead of just repeating yourself, why not read what I wrote more carefully and think about it? I’m happy to have a real discussion, but a real discussion is not what we are having at the moment.
Thanks,
Chris
Yes, the ages have symbolic meanings. For example, the age at death of Mesopotamian nobility from the same time period was often proclaimed to be thousands of years. One prominent king, Alilum of Eridug, was deemed to be 28,800 years old at the time of his unfortunate demise. Clearly, Alilum’s putative age was not expected to be interpreted in a literal fashion.
There are good reasons to think that the Israelites from the same era had the same way of handling lifespans, as this article discusses:
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At the NIH by some creationistic people who work there, or by the NIH? Are creationists associated with the NIH renting an auditorium at Harvard and then pretending they’re “holding a conference at Harvard” again?
It is true that I have misread your question at the end of post 54. You asked “Would you like me to show you where in the paper’s equations these factors appear?” and I have read it as if you said “Would you like to show me where in the paper’s equations these factors appear?” Sorry for that.
However, it seems to me that in your answer below
…you are either out of scope or even wrong regarding the issue that was discussed, i.e. the proportion of beneficial mutations. Indeed, contrary to what you seem to be saying above, Lenski clearly gives an estimation of the proportion of beneficial mutations. Here the relevant passage:
"We have estimated parameters and from these
data by finding the point of intersection between the
solution curves of equations (8). The solution for this
system of equations is = 35 and = 2.0 109 beneficial mutations per replication. Given that the genomic mutation rate of E. coli is approximately 3 103
mutations per replication (Drake, 1991), one can infer
that the proportion of mutations that are beneficial is
roughly one in a million"
OK, I recognize some clumsiness in formulating my thoughts on this issue. Let me try to do better. My take is as follow:
- Mutations that are harmful for the entire organism are immeasurably more numerous than beneficial ones (also for the organism).
- Beneficial mutations for the organism can be reductive or constructive in nature.
- Reductive beneficial mutations outnumber constructive beneficial ones. Given the elusive character of true beneficial constructive mutations, it is even possible that reductive beneficial mutations could be immeasurably more numerous than constructive beneficial ones.
I didn’t. See post 78.