Dr. Kozulic has requested UD to post the following response to Dr. Torley’s recent retraction vis-à-vis the fixation issue:
Since my reputation is at stake, I kindly ask you to make my position public in another post at Uncommondescent under the title: ‘When I am not wrong’, with the following text:
Dr. Kozulic would like to state the following:
There is nothing wrong with the arguments and questions put forward in the post “Branko Kozulic responds to Professor Moran”
In his reply “On being “outed” as a closet Darwinist” Professor Moran has not answered any of the questions and arguments raised. Until that happens, his claim that 22,000,000 million neutral mutations can be fixed in 5,000,000 years cannot be but considered impossible, together with all the implications. Should Professor Moran answer the questions and arguments posed, I will reply to him at any public forum of his choice.As it relates to the retraction of Dr. Torley, his change of mind is the consequence of confusion, as for example illustrated here:
“The fallacy in the logic here should now be apparent. There is no reason to suppose that one singleton has to be fixed in the population before another one can be. The paper has therefore failed to demonstrate that speciation is an event that lies beyond the reach of chance.”
The issue with singletons – in contrast to nucleotide mutations – is not fixation, but their origin.If any issue related to this request is in need of explanation, please let me know.
Sincerely yours,
Branko Kozulic, Ph.D.
Shades of Salvador Cardoza!
What did Dr. Torley retract and why does Dr. Kozulic disagree?
I don’t get how there can even be a discussion on 100 mutations of any kind fixing every generation. It’s impossible.
It takes many generations for a single mutation in an organism to fix in a population so how can we say that every generation 100 mutations can fix in a population. It’s just insane to even say it, forget believing it.
Is moran assuming that the same 100 mutations occur in every organism every generation? Because otherwise what he is saying is impossible.
Hi Mung,
Dr. Kozulic is referring to my recent post, When I’m wrong. You’ll find the answer to your question there.
Creationsgardener, I think that Dr. Moran presumes that it’ll take at least 100,000 years to fix a non-directed mutation. However, I think that he proposes that there are many, say a billion such mutations in the population. This does not require 100 mutations in every organism, it requires at least 100 new mutations in every population. (Actually a lot more than that because non-directed mutation get lost at a ferocious rate until they happen to settle into the population.)
There are complications in this discussion, not the least of which is that a highly respected segment of the ID community in some respects agrees with Dr. Moran. Moran last year responded to my assertion that fixation rate equals mutation rate, and I was merely passing on the viewpoint of a segment of the ID community:
On Beating Dead Horses
Moran’s argument: neutral evolution is true as evidenced by the genome being mostly junk
Mendel Team argument: selection is absent as a matter of principle, so then why ISN’T the genome mostly junk and why aren’t we dead 100 times over? The Mendel team are creationist and they argue that with a gametic mutation rate of 100 per generation, we should be dead by now, hence the human line hasn’t been around for 5,000,000 years, otherwise we’d be dead. “Why aren’t we dead 100 times over?” was Kondrashov’s question. Kondrashov was a researcher at Cornell, the same institution as John Sanford. The Mendel Team composed of about 10 researchers tried to highlight Kondrashov’s question.
Central to all this is whether DNA is really Junk. If DNA is really junk then the Mendel Team has been falsified because of neutral theory. If DNA is not junk, then Moran has been falsified by neutral theory! Neutral theory is then a two edged sword, and both the creationists and Moran are wielding the same two edged sword against each other.
That is why, oddly, I was having to disagree with some claims against neutral theory since in a strange way opposing arguments put forward by the Mendel Team.
In small well-stirred inbreeding populations, the fixation rate will approach the gametic mutation rate, and in fact in such small population selection becomes mostly ineffective relative to chance events for most (not all) nucleotide positions. I tried to explain why here:
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....es-part-2/
I should point out, Dr. Moran didn’t criticize the content of what I, Rupe and Sanford asserted. He didn’t disagree, but he just had to find a way to call us stupid.
The situation is: Moran and Mendel Team agree selection is mostly absent from the genome, that fixation in small populations would happen, but they disagree as to what it means, and the answer hinges on whether DNA is mostly junk.
Neutral fixation is a two edged sword and both Moran and the Mendel Team are using it against each other.
Arguments against elements of neutral theory then, will oddly disarm the parties in Moran vs. Mendel Team fight. I certainly don’t want the Mendel Team disarmed of one of its best weapons, and that is neutral theory!
That’s why this whole exchange may look a little strange because we have 2 ID parties and 1 anti-ID party in odd situations of agreement and disagreement.
Scordova I’m not expert in this area, but when you said that “”Moran’s argument: neutral evolution is true as evidenced by the genome being mostly junk””
That’s when I knew that Moran was wromg as we are finding out more and more each day that so called junk DNA isn’t really junk DNA, and it keeps getting worse every day for the JUNK DNA advocates as we keep finding more and more function in this area .
Professor Moran is playing “god” and most of you here have fallen victims to his twisted and perverted desires. He is a very disturbed individual, who draws an unnatural pleasure from calling people names, such as “IDiots”, from attempts to destroy one’s reputation, insisting on “his way or the highway” at any cost and the list goes on. Moran’s arrogant pride is driven by his unrestrained narcissistic pursuit of gratification that has nothing to do with evidence based science.
As Dr. Kozulic and others have pointed out, Moran doesn’t care where the “truth” is or whether he has evidence to back up his claims…. To him, forum debates are just a game that he loves to play due to his above mentioned issues and as most of you know, most games can be very addictive, especially if they provided instant and continued gratification.
Moran’s claim that 22,000,000 million neutral mutations can be fixed in 5,000,000 years is a perfect example of his mind game that he enjoys to play…. He has not provided any evidence for his claims but he believes that the burden of proof is on others, like Dr. Kozulic, to prove him wrong and the list goes on. All one has to do is read just a few of Moran’s recent posts, such as:
Jonathan Wells proves that life must have been created by gods
and
Junk & Jonathan: Part 4—Chapter 1
which help one to realize that Moran is not interested in true scientific discussions. But rather, his goal is to uphold his own views that have little or no scientific support. Just look at Moran’s correction regarding Coyne’s view of speciation that I linked above:
“As Jerry Coyne points out, reproductive isolation is mostly due to accident (random genetic drift) and not natural selection [The Cause of Speciation]. That’s in line with modern evolutionary theory and Coyne should know because he’s one of the world’s leading experts on speciation. [UPDATE: Coyne and some commenters have corrected me. Coyne actually does think that most speciation is due to natural selection. I’ll stick with Futuyma as my authority. He’s much more open to the idea of speciation by random genetic drift (Evolution 2nd ed. p. 447)]”
However, it is also very unfortunate, that reputable scientists, such as Dr. Kozulic, Dr. Wells, and many others have fallen victims to Moran’s mind game. I believe that it is even more unfortunate that some, like Dr. Kozulic, have fallen victim of some non-specialist on the theme trying to do science, who were easily persuaded by Moran’s clever cunning and deception. Why? I just hope that it was not to gain a bit of applause from Moran and his camp of so-called scientists.
No worries there. Professor Moran admitted that he is not an expert on the subject, which had not prevented him from lecturing Dr. Kosulic, who is. Now, Moran is finally trying to get educated on the subject first by Joe Felsenstein who gave him not only straightforward answers, but also proof:
Joe: “…the differences between the reference sequences are in fact most probably fixed in both populations…”
Who can ask for better proof than this?
On the frustration of trying to educate IDiots
No need to go to a comedy club to have a good laugh. Sandawalk has it all.
I’d like to point out to Dr. Moran that Darwinism is different from other theories of evolution. But if he hasn’t figured that out “for over twenty years,” I suppose there’s not much hope for him. 😉
-Q
The fact that a few people fell victim to Morans little games doesn’t mean most if us here fell to them.
I’m glad we have some very passionate posters like Mung, BA77 and many others that didn’t fall for his little BS.
As for me I have seen the way evolutionists try to ridicule, and dodge any good critiques to evolution . Since I was on the other side of the coin myself as a believer in evolution for 41 years it’s not too hard to see through the veil of their dishonesty.
Thank. God for the knowledgeable ID posters here who didn’t give in to his little childish mind games .
Funny to think of Professor Moran effectively calling Einstein, not to speak of the other great giants in the history of science, an ‘IDiot’…
The front-page headlines of any newspaper on the day of his demise will surely live longer in the memory of man, than his own name, with its infelicitous overtones in the context.
Perhaps his name embarrasses the life out of him, and he has to overcompensate. Ironical, though, that a poster to the liberal and often loopy site, Democratic Underground, used to have an ikon of a protestor holding a large sign, with the misspelt word, ‘moran’, on it.
kevnick.
I think you’ve misunderstood what Joe Felsenstein is saying. He’s making the point if you want to know why there are 35 million SNPs different between a particular chimp and a particular human then you don’t have to use the fixation equuatios, you can just point out there is a single line on descent onto which mutations fall. This also deals with a slight quibble you could make about within-species variation effecting the calculations since they are based on individuals.
As it happens, and as Joe points out, almost all the differences between any human and any chimp are indeed fixed differences (“are in fact most probably fixed in both populations…”) so there is no saving Kozulic for his mistakes.
I find it pretty extraordinary that Kozulic want’s to stake his reputation on something he obviously knows so little about, and that others seem to want to line up behind him.
wd400, I find it interesting that you think population genetics gives conclusive support for unguided evolution, when in fact it is nothing more than a futile exercise in mathematical wish fulfillment that has next to nothing to support it terms of actual empirical evidence:
OK- someone needs to take a population of 1000 fruit flies, sequence every genome, let the fruit flies have at it and keep checking until we see a neutral mutation become fixed.
1000 is too many? Start with 10, 5M, 5F. See how long it takes. Then keep increasing the starting population and see what happens.
The Fate of Darwinism: Evolution After the Modern Synthesis – January 2012
Excerpt: We trace the history of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, and of genetic Darwinism generally, with a view to showing why, even in its current versions, it can no longer serve as a general framework for evolutionary theory. The main reason is empirical. Genetical Darwinism cannot accommodate the role of development (and of genes in development) in many evolutionary processes.
http://www.springerlink.com/co.....03g3t7002/
Experimental Evolution in Fruit Flies (35 years of trying to force fruit flies to evolve in the laboratory fails, spectacularly) – October 2010
Excerpt: “Despite decades of sustained selection in relatively small, sexually reproducing laboratory populations, selection did not lead to the fixation of newly arising unconditionally advantageous alleles.,,, “This research really upends the dominant paradigm about how species evolve,” said ecology and evolutionary biology professor Anthony Long, the primary investigator.
http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.....ruit_flies
http://eebweb.arizona.edu/nach.....l_2010.pdf
Quick answer: 1000 is too many to run a direct experiment quickly, the fixation time would be 4000 generations if 1000 is the effective population. 10 flies are better. 🙂
One study that had a different aim, but did indirectly confirm that after a few generations, a small fruitfly population fixes. Evidence of this is the lack of heterozygosity.
In breeding depression not random
Again, to emphasize, the reason YECs promote some of the findings of neutral theory is for different reasons than why Moran advocates neutral theory. As I pointed out, the irony is the YECs are in partial agreement with Moran.
YECs promote neutral theory because it is non-Darwinian, and part of that is the fixation argument for SMALL populations.
I obviously believe the mechanism of fixation was not neutral evolution, but special creation. But it takes a differently line of reasoning than just attacking neutral fixation. Mendel’s Accountant work provides that alternate line of creationist reasoning using neutral theory.
Moran said:
If Moran changed his claim ever so slightly and said:
He’d would have essentially made the argument the Mendel Team was making.
Is it relevant now to introduce once again into the discussion the term “genetic entropy”?
I will admit I’m a bit confused.
Is the human genome constantly accumulating more junk, a la the “genetic entropy” argument?
Is “junk in the genome” evidence for genetic entropy and thus for young earth creationism, or is it the lack of junk in the genome that is evidence for young earth creationism?
How much “junk” does young earth creationism predict was introduced into the human genome in 6000 years according to “Mendel’s Accountant” and the “genetic entropy” argument?