That’s pretty far off, because all conclusions are tentative.
A hypothesis is a mechanistic explanation, consistent with all the data we know, that makes predictions about what we will directly observe; such that if we observe something different, the hypothesis must be discarded or modified.
It is that, but so is a hypothesis. “Theory” is more accurately defined as a hypothesis that has survived a lot of rigorous testing of its predictions. It’s what we would all like our favorite hypotheses to graduate to, but it still can be modified or overturned.
Did you ever answer my question, which was originally @pevaquark’s question?
When you write this:
“The argument from “Allelic Multiplicity.” This was published several times since 2010, online and in print, but never peer-reviewed. “In fact, to generate the number of alleles we see in the present day from a starting point of just two individuals, one would have to postulate mutation rates far in excess of what we observe for any animal.” This is a fallacious argument that does not appear in the scientific literature.”
… I cannot remember why you say it is fallacious.
If somebody other than @swamidass has the answer, I’m eager to be reminded of the “why”!
Merely the number of leaves in a phylogenetic tree does not tell you anything about the dating of deep coalescence. Recombination and mutation can produces an unbounded number of leaves; just sampling more individuals will identify more alleles (following something called a collector’s curve). More fundamentally, this invalid methodology for inferring past populations size was presented as settled science™, but it has never been actually published any where, and that itself is a serious misrepresentation.
This is half an answer I guess. Which may explain why I didn’t remember your answer (assuming you offered an answer at the time).
What needs to be added to the hypothesis or assertion to make it non-fallacious? If I understand you correctly, the problem is that it is missing a timeframe?
“… to generate the number of alleles we see in the present day from a starting point of just two individuals, one would have to postulate mutation rates far in excess of what we observe for any
animal - - assuming the YEC timeframe of a "6,000 year Earth”
Would you consider my modified text (above) to be non-fallacious?
That revision does not resolve my two objections in any way. The original claim is just bad science, and spinning the qualifications does not help you in this case. Venema could have said,
I conjecture, but no one has yet demonstrated, that to generate the number of alleles we see in the present day from a starting point of just two individuals, one would have to postulate mutation rates far in excess of what we observe for any animal — assuming the YEC timeframe of a “6,000 year Earth”.
That is possibly true, but far from certain, and it is certainly not settled science.
Isn’t that what was concluded in your celebrated discussion with Prof. Bugg? Isn’t that the point of the 500,000 year threshhold? You and @Agauger concluded that Venema’s conclusion was supported as long as the hypothetical bottleneck was 500,000 or more years earlier?
If you are hoping to explain to your audiences what the nature of the “abyss of fallacy”, it would be very helpful to have more details about the edge of the abyss.
You have said several times that it is a fallacious argument - - and yet even @Pevaquark asked the same questions I am asking.
From my amateur standing in academia, it seemed pretty conclusive that based on the alleles you WERE discussing with Prof. Bugg, that the “argument from Allelic Multiplicity” was valid as long as the premises were confined to within a 500,000 time frame.
If this is insufficient to make this argument NON-fallacious, what exactly is needed to rescue the argument by allelic multiplicity?
Several years ago I was thinking about this basic argument (genetic diversity in humans in context of descent from a very small population) and it was clear that:
It is not alleles that matter but haplotypes, since the question is about genetic ancestry and not about genes or function;
Then, and perhaps now, we didn’t have enough data on haplotypes to answer the question.
I think you are misusing the word ‘fallacious.’ There is nothing fallacious, not even in the vicinity of fallacious, about the argument. Indeed the opposite is the case: given certain facts about human genetics (number of generations, recombination sites and rates, number of haplotypes per locus, number of loci in question), one can calculate the likelihood that current genetic diversity could arise from a certain number of progenitors at a certain time in history.
Dennis or others may be mistaken about the math, or (this is much more likely) mistaken about the extent of our knowledge of current genetic diversity. That’s not “fallacy.”
Sure we can discuss the suitably of that term, which was reviewed and approved by others back in 2018, perhaps in error. I’m open to changing it. What do you propose in its place? Invalid? Unsubstantiated?
The substance of my objection is intact. There is no published method that substantiates that claim.