Haldane's Dilemma

From: IThinkSo (science_at_minn.net)
Date: 01/27/05 

Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 11:41:50 -0500 (EST)

[moderator's note: Some of my long-time readers will remember Mr.
ReMine from years past; he's back with more discussion related to
Haldane's Dilemma (as distinct from "Haldane's Pub Rule"). I would
urge interested readers to comment, but I'm going to insist on
maintaining a cordial tone: this not talk.origins. Gratuitous
insults are not welcome. - JAH]

Haldane's Dilemma is an important evolutionary problem, because it
places a serious limit on the number of beneficial mutations that can
be substituted into a population in the available time.

Haldane's Dilemma was never actually solved, rather it was confused
into oblivion and prematurely brushed aside as "solved." Most of that
confusion occurs over the problem's central concept -- the cost of
substitution. For over a decade I have advanced that point, along with
a clearer view of the cost of substitution. As many of you know, my
cost concept has been ridiculed and denied widely on the Internet, even
on the evolutionary biology newsgroup, sci.bio.evolution, where I
discussed the matter with such opponents as Prof. Joe Felsenstein.
This is easily verified with Internet search-engines.

To remedy the situation, I submitted a technical paper to the
mainstream science journals, where it has been under review for over
two years. My paper clarifies the cost of substitution, eliminates
various confusion factors, and shows that many so-called "solutions" to
Haldane's Dilemma are false. For example, my paper refutes the very
common notion (advanced by Joe Felsenstein and many others) that the
cost of substitution is "zero," and various notions that the
"environment" or "soft selection" reduce the cost of substitution and
solve Haldane's Dilemma. You can easily verify that those are still
commonly promoted as "solutions" to Haldane's Dilemma. To put it
mildly, my paper runs contrary to the prevailing winds.

In a recently completed review (at the journal, Theoretical Population
Biology), my paper was rejected for an astonishing reason. Reviewers
Warren Ewens and James Crow (two renowned authorities in population
genetics) acknowledged my paper is CORRECT, which will come as a
surprise to many of you. But they rejected my paper for one, and only
one, central reason -- they claimed it is "not new" and was known at
least "twenty years ago" and therefore a clarification (such as my
paper) is not needed.

In other words, the field is now caught in a contradiction. Put
bluntly: Errors and confusion prevail in the literature and on the
Internet, while a refutation of those is rejected on the grounds that a
clarification is not needed.

For more details on this interesting story, see
http://www1.minn.net/~science/a_tale_of_peer-review.htm

-- Walter ReMine

Three stages in the acceptance of a new idea:
* First they ridicule it.
* Then they deny it.
* Then they say
        they knew it all along.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Felsenstein and reproductive excess
    ... > confusion in their own cost literature. ... >> You can't prove something about selection ... > 1) The cost of substitution is not primarily about selection. ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: Reproductive excess model
    ... When it comes to Cost Theory and the cost of ... substitution, evolutionists ALLOW confusion to thrive. ... I say, start with the simplest matters first, and RESOLVE SOMETHING! ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: The Cost of Substitution
    ... The cost of substitution remains EXACTLY deductive from what Felsenstein ... disallows extinction while providing a single measure of zero reproductive ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • RE: The Cost of Substitution
    ... ReMine's paper "Cost Theory and the Cost of Substitution ... I agree with ReMine that the cost of substitution cannot be zero. ... substitution requires reproductive excess. ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: Haldanes Dilemma - clarifications - and Felsenstein
    ... Walter fails to mention that they also recommended rejection, ... If someone here other than Remine (or one other poster to whom I am not ... Review of "Cost Theory and the Cost of Substitution ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)