Human Devolution

[Pulse]

Sanford’s Genetic Entropy, on the other hand, is simply wrong from beginning to end. It misrepresents everything it touches: beneficial and deleterious mutations, gene duplication, natural selection, and synergistic epistasis. In all these areas, Sanford avoids engaging the large body of work which directly refutes his viewpoint, and instead cherry-picks a few references that seem to point his way, usually misinterpreting them in the process.

https://letterstocreationists.wordpress.com/stan-4/

Sanford repeatedly asserts that mutations, by which he seems to mean simple point substitutions or single point insertion/deletion events, do not increase net information. That is generally true for point substitutions or indels, but irrelevant. By “increase net information” I assume Sanford means “increase size of the functional genome” or “increase the number of distinct genes.”  This obviously will not be accomplished by just substituting one amino acid for another at a given point.

However, there is a whole other class of mutations which are common and which do increase genomic size. These are duplications and insertions of genetic material, ranging from small chunks of DNA to complete genes and to duplication of entire genomes.  As usual with major mutations, most of these duplication/insertion events will be deleterious to the organism, but a small fraction will be beneficial, and some will be effectively neutral. In my letter of July [“STAN 3”] I cited three studies showing beneficial gene duplications [9, 40, 41]. Gene duplication followed by further, normal mutations provides a clear path to increasing genomic complexity. Creationists are unable to demonstrate that this path is not viable. This rebuts their claim that natural causes are inadequate to account for the increase in genomic complexity in the evolution of vertebrates from simpler organisms.

https://letterstocreationists.wordpress.com/stan-4/

More creationist claptrap.

Dr Sanford has responded ; 

  I do not normally spend my time responding to bloggers, but several people have asked me to respond to Scott Buchanan’s polemic1 against my book Genetic Entropy. This article is a one-time clarification as I cannot afford the time to be drawn into the blog-o-sphere and its associated ‘death by a thousand emails’.

Scott’s lengthy essay is certainly not an objective review of my book; it is an ideological attack based upon a commitment to the standard Darwinian theory. He does not acknowledge any of the legitimate concerns I raise regarding the Darwinian process, not even the many points widely acknowledged by my fellow geneticists. Shouldn’t even ardent Darwinists honestly acknowledge the known problems with current Darwinian theory? I will only briefly touch on each of his arguments.

Scott gives his arguments in this order:

First, he claims, that my book is all about deliberate deception, and I am fundamentally a liar (but perhaps I am otherwise a nice Christian man).
He then spends three pages expressing how annoyed he is with the exact way in which I cite a Kimura reference—as I try to make clear the actual distribution of mutational effects.
He argues that, while beneficial mutations are rare, they are not as rare as I suggest. Since beneficial mutations clearly happen, and since adaptation clearly happens, he imagines the Primary Axiom—that man is merely the product of random mutations plus natural selection—must then obviously be true.
The Primary Axiom:

Man is merely the product of random mutations plus natural selection.

Scott cites a series of flawed ‘mutation accumulation’ experiments, which he thinks demonstrate extremely high rates of beneficial mutation.
He points out that duplications can have real biological consequences.
He also points out that we cannot generally see measurable degeneration in extended lab experiments. He argues that, if I were correct, then in just the last few thousand years all forms of life having short life cycles (bacteria, mice) should have gone extinct. Since we do not see obvious degeneration happening, the Primary Axiom must be true, according to him.
Scott suggests that, since human life spans have increased in the last several centuries, this proves that man is not degenerating.
He argues that Crow’s conclusion that the human race is presently degenerating at 1–2% per generation2 does not mean he stopped being faithful to the Primary Axiom.
He also argues that synergistic epistasis3 really happens (at least to some extent), and cites those who feel this might aid in mutation elimination.
Finally, he casually dismisses all the papers I cite in Appendix 1 of my book, where the leaders of the population genetics field acknowledge all of the basic problems with the Primary Axiom.
It seems to me that Scott makes his arguments in the wrong order, starting with the trivial, and at the end simply waving off the most crucial issue.

Let me begin by going to the very end of my book (Appendix 1), where I quote key papers written by the leading experts within the field of population genetics. Scott refers to this as my “final shotgun-blast of misrepresentation to the gullible reader”. This seems grossly unfair, since I am simply quoting the leaders in the field where they acknowledge major aspects of my thesis. In my introduction to that section, I am careful NOT to imply that those scientists would agree with my personal viewpoint, but I point out that they all very clearly acknowledge the major problems which I outline in my book regarding the Primary Axiom.

[img=200x0]http://creation.com/images/fp_articles/2013/9164-mutational-meltdown.jpg[/img]
These experts in the field provide strong support for all the main points of my book …

1. Is man presently degenerating genetically? It would seem so, according the papers by Muller, Neal, Kondrashov, Nachman/Crowell, Walker/Keightley, Crow, Lynch et al., Howell, Loewe and also myself (in press). Scott suggests this is foolishness and dismisses the Crow paper (1–2% fitness decline per generation). But Kondrashov, an evolutionist who is an expert on this subject, has advised me that virtually all the human geneticists he knows agree that man is degenerating genetically. The most definitive findings were published in 2010 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science by Lynch.4 That paper indicates human fitness is declining at 3–5% per generation. I personally feel the average mutational effect on fitness is much more subtle than Lynch does—so I think the rate of human degeneration is much slower than he suggests—but we at least agree that fitness is going down, not up. Can Scott find any qualified geneticist who asserts man is NOT now degenerating genetically? There is really no debate on current human genetic degeneration—Scott is 100% wrong here, and is simply not well informed.
   virtually all the human geneticists he knows agree that man is degenerating genetically
   
   
2. Is there a theoretical problem associated with continuously growing genetic load due to subtle un-selectable deleterious mutations? Yes, according to Muller, Kondrashov, Loewe, and many others. Population geneticists all seem to acknowledge the fact that a large fraction of deleterious mutations are too subtle to be effectively selected away. The question is, what is that fraction? At what point does the fitness effect of a deleterious mutation become too small to be selected away? I have been studying this for about 7 years. Our numerical simulations indicate that for higher organisms, up to 90% of all deleterious mutations should be un-selectable (in press). This manuscript was previously sent to Scott, but it seems he did not read it. Can Scott explain away this theoretical problem?
   
   
3. What is Dr. Ohta’s view on genetic degeneration? Dr. Tomoko Ohta was a key student of Kimura, and published extensively with Kimura. Dr Ohta came to be known as the ‘Queen of Population Genetics’, and is now an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an associate of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. She is the world’s authority on the topic of near-neutral mutations. One of my co-authors went to Japan to spend several days discussing with her a manuscript in which we used numerical simulation to clearly demonstrate that near-neutral deleterious mutations generally escape selective removal and lead to continuous and linear accumulation of genetic damage. She acknowledged that our numerical simulations appeared to be valid, and that our conclusions appeared to be valid. This clearly reflects a profound evolutionary paradox (it is the same paradox Kondrashov addressed in his paper “why have we not died 100 times over?”5). When asked about synergistic epistasis, she immediately acknowledged that synergistic epistasis should make the problem worse, not better, just as I argue in my book. Using numerical simulations, we have confirmed that synergistic epistasis fails to slow mutation accumulation and accelerates genetic decline (in press). I think Dr. Ohta would like me to clarify that she is a faithful Darwinist and remains committed to the Primary Axiom, and that she is in fact hostile to the thesis of my book.
   
   
4. The other quotes: I encourage Scott to read all the other quotes in the appendix. It is clear that the leading population geneticists have recognized major theoretical problems with the Primary Axiom for a long time. Why try to deny this?
   

Scott and I corresponded briefly before his posting, and I tried to explain to him why his criticisms were not correct. I did not find him to be a very good listener as I tried to explain how he was misrepresenting me. I then sent him a series of preprints (in press), which extensively and conclusively addressed all his objections. Upon reading his essay now, I can see he did not bother reading those preprints, which are very rigorously written scientific research papers. I also see from his current arguments, that he really did not give my book a fair read. If Scott has misrepresented both the book and myself, then which of us is lacking in integrity?

Dr J Sanford


Emphasis mine.

Dr Sanford's full rebuttal; please Google "Critic ignores reality of Genetic Entropy"