Potential falsifications of the theory of evolution

I thought when I read your previous post that you might be confusing inbreeding depression with genetic meltdown, and now I am sure of it. Inbreeding depression is what you get if you have a breeding population of close relatives. Being closely related, they are more likely to share alleles. This, of course, includes alleles which are harmful in a double dose. This means that their children are statistically likely to be less healthy than if they had outbred.This can lead to a population crash in extreme cases. Imagine a brother and sister marooned on an island, sharing (let's say) five lethal recessives. Then only ~24% of their children will survive, and we may well suppose that the colony would fail before it could get started.However, it need not do so. The population can putter along being genetically inferior to the rest of the species, but still managing to scrape by, just with more deaf people with hare-lips than would be ideal.Note also that unlike genetic meltdown this only happens in species which do in fact reproduce sexually. Genetic meltdown is the progressive accumulation and fixation of harmful genes in a population.How can this happen? you may ask. Doesn't the very fact that the mutations are harmful mean that so far from becoming fixed in the population, their ultimate fate will be to be weeded out.Well, besides selection, there's the random component known as genetic drift. As Ecclesiastes says, the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong; by dumb luck, a bad gene might persist in individuals who are simply lucky. The only thing that selection is guaranteed to wipe out are alleles for being completely sterile or for dying before puberty.Every other allele has a chance. But how much of a chance?Well, that depends on the population size. Bad alleles have much smaller odds to overcome in order to achieve fixation in small populations.Here's a graph showing this. I produced it by averaging the results of multiple computer simulations. It shows the chances of a newly arisen mutation going on to achieve fixation as a function of its selective advantage. As you can see, slightly harmful mutations are much more likely to be fixed in the smaller population.---Got that?---You may now understand my original point about genetic meltdown. Have a look at the following graph, another of my computer simulations. It follows the (average) fate of populations of different fixed sizes under the assumption that bad mutations are four times as likely as good ones. Now, you can see that the population of 5 is doing badly. If it stays at 5 for a long time, so that fitness keeps on declining, then after a certain point this is going to start hitting the actual viability of the population, which will reduce the population, which will speed the meltdown, which will speed the reduction of population, culminating ultimately in extinction. But this will happen only if the population size stays at 5 for a long time. Imagine instead that the 5 are the founder population of a population with ample resources. Then before the meltdown effect has done much damage, the population size will have climbed above the break-even point (which looks to be about 50) and whatever meltdown has taken place will then be reversed.Now this is what we see in the lab. If you start with a population of just one bacterium on a Petri dish, and let the population grow unchecked, you don't see extinction. If, on the other hand, you continuously cull the population to keep it at a size of about 50 individuals, you eventually drive the population extinct by genetic meltdown.---Any questions?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

... and made-up assumptions contrary to reality. Why do you think that? In what way? It's higher than that. Guess what, most of 'em are neutral. This is why you, personally, are not dead. You might have read the bit of the paper you actually quoted. Especially the bit where he says: "Several possible resolutions are considered, including soft selection and synergistic epistasis among very slightly deleterious mutations.". Er ... we aren't. Therefore, any assumptions which lead to this conclusion are wrong. And again, you managed to ignore what they wrote even though you quoted it.How do you do that? We are not all dead. They propose: "This problem can be overcome if most deleterious mutations exhibit synergistic epistasis [...] the results presented here indicate that some form of positive epistasis among deleterious mutations is likely."

If you still don't understand what I wrote, I suggest that you read it again. I have explained the difference between inbreeding depression and genetic meltdown quite carefully, and it should not be beyond the grasp of the average adult.If, having re-read it, there is then still any part of it you don't understand, I suggest that you ask me, politely, to explain it to you.If, on the other hand, you don't want to understand genetics ... then you might just be a creationist.---Oh, and a general tip as you wend your way through life. If, instead of being rude and stupid simultaneously, you at least try to alternate between them, then at any given time you will only look 50% as much of a jerk as you do right now.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

No.Let's try again.First, do you understand that genetic meltdown and inbreeding depression are different things, which is why they have two different names? I do grasp the difference between inbreeding depression and genetic meltdown. It is what I have been trying to explain to you. But ... it ... doesn't.It may eventually cause inbreeding depression. But it can initiate when you have a founder population none of whom are closely related and which carry no harmful recessive / overdominant genes.This is one of the many ways that you can tell that they're two different things.Another is that genetic meltdown can occur in haploid species which reproduce asexually and therefore, by definition, cannot suffer from inbreeding depression.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

You are neglecting one important imaginary factor, namely magic. Prominent magicologists have determined that in the imaginary presence of large quantities of magic, such as are imagined to have been present during the imaginary magic flood, everything magically works out so that creationists are magically right ... or so they imagine.

Does Polly want a cracker?Back in the real world outside your head, "evos" are the ones that attribute things to non- magical causes. That's basically our whole schtick. No, because this is a lie that you made up. Which is why you can produce no evidence for the lie that you made up. Because it's a lie that you made up.I say a lie that you've made up because this is not even a conventional creationist lie. Indeed, I am hard put to know what you are lying about, unless perhaps it is the occasional global rises in sea level which have never ever flooded the entire world.Please could you add some substance to your lie.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Which landmasses were flooded 4bya?Oh, right, there weren't any.You are, then, lying about the time when the Earth was originally covered with ocean and there was no land to be flooded.You are a funny little man.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

And this you wish to refer to as a "global flood". Well, if you want educated people to have no idea what you're talking about, and creationists to be deceived, then I advise you to continue to do so. ... is a stupid lie that you've made up in your head, since geologists (I presume that that's what you mean by "evos" --- did you take a vow to be wrong about everything?) ascribe real things to real non-magical causes.Now that you've finished being wrong about this, could I remind you that you were meant to be being wrong about genetics? Your latest drivel seems no more than a smokescreen to escape the point that your fantasies about genetics contradict your fantasies about Noah's Flood.

Well, if you wish to be misunderstood ...... then you might just be a creationist. And like many of the things that you are certain of, you are of course completely wrong. Am I to gather from your latest whining that you still don't understand the difference between inbreeding depression and genetic meltdown?This is amusing.Let's take it step by step. Do you notice how these two phenomena have two names, which are different? That they are not, for example, both called "genetic meltdown"?If you can get your head round that, then we can continue.---I note that you still haven't begun to explain how your fantasies about genetics can be reconciled with your fantasies about Noah's Ark.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

You really think he can understand the difference between area and volume?Good luck, pal.

Similarly, if I suddenly grow a luxury hotel and casino out of my ass what would be the problem of it going back into my ass?I admit that if you can solve the problem of how I grew the hotel out of my ass in the first place, then the problem of why there is no longer a hotel growing out of my ass can be well explained by a reversal of the original process.On the other hand, I would suggest that there is a more parsimonious explanation of why there is not at present a hotel growing out of my ass, namely that there never was.

If there is some lie that you would like to tell about punctuated equilibrium, perhaps you could have the guts to tell it outright.Making cryptic allusions to standard creationists errors will not be informative except to those of us already familiar with the ritual lies of creationists. * takes a good look around, giggles *

But you see, that's not a result. That's a lie.Now, there is nothing in the theory of evolution that predicts that creationists won't lie. Indeed, it is a minor corollary of the theory that anyone who needs to defend creationism will pretty much have to lie.

The prediction that any attempt to defend creationism will be ignorant, stupid, dishonest, or all three simultaneously is once again confirmed.

If it is, as you claim, "mendacious", you should be able to point out something in it that can be shown to be false.Either that or evolutionists have developed a new special sort of mendacity which involves telling the absolute truth.So, is there anything in the artcle which is not true?We're waiting. Solutions to the Cost-of-Selection Dilemma, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 71, No.10, pp,3863-3865, October 1974 The cost of natural selection revisited, Ann. Zool. Fennici. 40:185-194, April 2003