Re: Haldane's Dilemma
From: Jim McGinn (jimmcginn_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 01/27/05
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Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2005 16:50:42 -0500 (EST)
IThinkSo wrote:
> [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]
Like it matters . . .
>
> 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."
Business as usual.
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.
Well stated. It would seem that the reviewers realize that as long as
the confusion remains their jobs are secure.
>
> 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.
Yep.
Jim
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