Yes, it is a subjective appraisal, and a wrong one. The truth is at the opposite for Sanford was sincerely eager to engage in a dialogue with evolutionary biologists about his work, but he reaped only a deafening silence. To set the record straight, here is a relevant passage in GE : Given its technical nature, this book has been relatively well read and well-acclaimed within conservative circles. I have to believe that many evolutionary biologists have also read it - as it is one of the principle works that openly challenges their paradigm in a meaningful way. Have I heard any serious refutation of this book’s conclusions? From the scientists in the field who are qualified to respond - I have only heard deafening silence. This true even though I have politely requested fair-minded feedback, after sending out complementary copies of this book and my related scientific papers. The relevant scientists, even the ones that were previously willing to dialogue with me to a limited extent, will not even respond to a friendly inquiry. This is very hard for me to understand, since science can only be advanced through open and honest dialogue. I am aware that some Darwinist blog sites have made some response - primarily resorting to personal insults and name-calling. However, to my knowledge, there have been no serious rebuttals. I have certainly not heard any scientific response from respected people in the field.
Question: who’s shown a truly scientific attitude here, one that’s both open and honest? Is it Sanford or the evolutionists?
Well, I know I’ve told him why his idea is wrong. His core idea (the multitude of very slightly deleterious mutations) has no basis in theoretical or experimental biology. Ignoring fringe ideas is often a necessary part of a scientific attitude.
I believe him when he says this. The problem is known as Morton’s Demon. Here Sanford is proving that he’s actively cognitively impaired due to a special form of religious psychosis that makes him completely unable to see responses to his gibberish.
Thus was born the realization that there is a dangerous demon on the loose. When I was a YEC, I had a demon that did similar things for me that Maxwell’s demon did for thermodynamics. Morton’s demon was a demon who sat at the gate of my sensory input apparatus and if and when he saw supportive evidence coming in, he opened the gate. But if he saw contradictory data coming in, he closed the gate. In this way, the demon allowed me to believe that I was right and to avoid any nasty contradictory data. Fortunately, I eventually realized that the demon was there and began to open the gate when he wasn’t looking.
However, my conversations have made me aware that each YEC is a victim of my demon. Morton’s demon makes it possible for a person to have his own set of private facts which others are not privy to, allowing the YEC to construct a theory which is perfectly supported by the facts which the demon lets through the gate. And since these are the only facts known to the victim, he feels in his heart that he has explained everything. Indeed, the demon makes people feel morally superior and more knowledgeable than others.
Why didn’t he engage in a dialog with virologists before writing that silly paper and the much more silly followups on the creation.com site?
Only about 10% of the genome is functional, and many mutations to even the functional portion are not deleterious. Recalculate. Around 1/3 of mutations to protein-coding exons are silent and very close to neutral. A portion of non-silent mutations code for similar amino acids in regions of the protein where those substitutions are also neutral. Non-protein-coding, functional sequences are usually even more tolerant of mutation.
Agreed, but the greatest resistance comes from the larger population size. But aren’t viruses even more so?
Yes, for some parts of the genome, like basic metabolic genes. But other parts are under selection only in the developing embryo or adult and so would experience selection only once per individual generation.
Then he should have published it in the scientific literature.
Consider the D4Z4 repeat of about 3Kb. A normal human has in the ball park of 100 of these repeats. If someone loses 1 repeat and there are 99 left, no observable phenotypic changes has been yet detected. If someon loses another and 98 are left, same thing…
However once one goes all the way down to 11, then muscular dystrophy suddenly emerges. So, we can have slight functional compromise without any noticeable phenotypic change because of all the redundancy in a system.
There is a lot of margin of safety built-in the genome.
A lot of DNA regions provide scaffolding for molecular machines. A mutation here and there on an ERV may not make an immediate impact, but at some point the changes in affinity and specificity can become important as mutations in these regions accumulate.
That presumes the scientific community will accept it. You’re placing the fault on him rather than an orthodoxy that refuses to correct itself.
But thankfully, some other geneticists are publishing on related topics, like Kondrashov.
and
Contamination of the genome by very slightly deleterious mutations: why have we not died 100 times over?
Has he even tried?
What is the explanation for that? Why haven’t most metazoan species died 100 times over? Did you perchance read past the abstract?
Congratulations Sal. That’s the identical excuse the Flat Earthers and the Geocentrists use for not publishing their “science”.
Looks like Sal didn’t even read to the end of the abstract of that 25 year old paper.
Several possible resolutions are considered, including soft selection and synergistic epistasis among very slightly deleterious mutations.
Kondrashov suggests Synergistic Epistasis. But if life is young, that solves some of the problem, but if life is young, evolution is wrong.
As Dan Graur said:
If ENCODE is right, evolution is wrong.
I think ENCODE is right, especially in light of followon projects like 4D nucleome, and the Cats Cradle hypothesis, the Origami code, etc.
But ENCODE wasn’t right. The head of the project even admitted they used far too broad a definition of biological function.
You sure have your quote-mining machine cranked up to 11 tonight Sal. Careful it doesn’t overheat. 
So where’s the evidence that this is a slightly deleterious mutation in Sanford’s sense? And where’s the evidence that these mutations are accumulating in humans?
Here you are confusing Sanford’s idea which is supposed to be a general principle, with a single particular example.
Are there examples of deleterious mutations with small fitness effects practically invisible to selection in small effective populations? Sure.
Does that mean the overwhelming preponderance of mutations are of that nature, and/or that beneficial mutations are so rare and infrequent they cannot counterbalance them? Nope.
In effect Sanford is basically confusing his simplistic model with reality. He thinks reality has to follow his curve(instead of the other way around) where almost all mutations are those of infinitesimal deleterious fitness effects in the “no selection zone”, and that beneficial mutations are so rare as to be basically outside consideration.
Endogenous retroviruses have indeed been implicated in genetic related diseases. Should you assert that they function as very useful genetic evidence to definitively establish and confirm phylogenetic evolutionary relationships, I could accept that. But you are suggesting that influenza can hide out in reservoir genomes for generations and then re-emerge as an infectious disease? Influenza epidemics emerge from an complex interplay of genetic shift, genetic drift, immunity levels in the host population, and activity linking a reservoir population with humans. The dormancy suggestion as a source for an epidemic is flat out wrong. Sanford’s idea that virus maintain some optimum fitness for thousands of years and then experience genetic decay over the course of an epidemic remains ridiculous. Disagree? Find me a paper anywhere supporting or even contemplating influenza infection from endogenous retrovirus. In the meantime, here are a couple of bone fide background papers for influenza which are not on a secret mission to establish genetic entropy.
But life isn’t young, and it doesn’t solve enough of the problem even if it is. Long-lived species might be OK, but short-lived ones should all be extinct by now. Yet we see no signs of such a thing. Genetic entropy is apparently not credible, even in a YEC universe.
The evidence shows that you are wrong in this too, your argument by buzzphrase notwithstanding.
This could be the tip of the iceberg:
Evidence for Widespread Degradation of Gene Control Regions in Hominid Genomes - PMC
Evidence for Widespread Degradation of Gene Control Regions in Hominid Genomes
By combining data on polymorphism levels in human noncoding DNA and the corresponding human–chimpanzee divergence, we show that the proportion of adaptive substitutions in these regions in hominids is very low. It therefore seems likely that the lack of conservation and increased rate of gene expression divergence are caused by a reduction in the effectiveness of natural selection against deleterious mutations because of the low effective population sizes of hominids. This has resulted in the accumulation of a large number of deleterious mutations in sequences containing gene control elements and hence a widespread degradation of the genome during the evolution of humans and chimpanzees.
HOWEVER, there is a point where Ne (effective population sizes) will not matter if the mutation rate is high enough and the functional genome size is large enough. This was echoed by evolutionary biologists Dan Graur:
If ENCODE is right, evolution is wrong.
This means if the functional genome is of sufficient size, evolution is wrong.
Graur and others swear by a something like a 10% functional genome size. That would imply something as complex as a human is coded by a mere 80 megabytes of Shannon information. Cell phones have way more information that that! One should be entitled to be skeptical that such a low number is adequate, not to mention the 4D nucleome project, the continued discovery of the utility of ERVs and Alus and L-1’s and other non-coding DNA is casting doubt that the genome is 80-90% junk.
That’s your faith belief, and I accept you believe that.
It’s what the evidence shows. That’s not faith. Radiometric dating shows it. Stratigraphy shows it. Fossils show it. Phylogeny shows it. The consilience of all manner of independent observations shows it. And you ignore all that in favor of a few misunderstood scraps. YEC cannot survive contact with the real world.
No, you’re not the one with a “missing logic” problem here.