Uncommon or Common Descent?

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@colewd

This may not be accurate. We are dealing with bits here which is an exponent 2^n. A difference to 111,111 bits means 2^111111 times more likely to be the fit then the smaller number. This is hard to imagine as we are dealing with enormous numbers to start with.

If this all is accurate then this should reject the tree, however there is a lot of work to do to validate this level of difference.

I’m sorry @colewd, that is not how it works. It is just as I said:

@swamidass

It is a very low improvement, that might vanish entirely if any of the factors we’ve pointed out above are addressed more carefully. A 1.7% improvement on noisy data is not going to be enough to convince people

Moreover, even if it is correct, it does not deal with the strong evidence for common descent. He has a lot of work ahead of him. He is doing great, but for example, this is an example of a pattern we are much less convinced will work.

@Winston_Ewert

So, yes, dealing with the exact sequence (instead of just gene family) and in particular the more neutral elements of that sequence is really key. If that can’t be done my proposal fails. It remains to be seen whether a model can be developed here.

He is being honest here. Give him some space to figure it out, and also legitimize his work by acknowledging he is tackling an important and unsolved problem in ID. Let’s see how far he gets with this. Even if it ultimately does not work, we will give @Winston_Ewert credit for being honest about negative results. Maybe the next time around he will do better.