Potential falsifications of the theory of evolution

Gosh, I miss Brad.I think that in the same way that molecular/ genetic data provides some of the best evidence for evolution so it should be a fertile area to look for falsifications. If two closely related species were found to have radically different mechanisms of development for example, as opposed to the highly conserved developmental systems we see between highly divergent species, i.e. fly and mouse.

To be fair to Sanford I don't think there is any reason to think his research papers were bad, but they weren't to do with population genetics. He is best known for his work in the field of Biolistics and the development of 'gene gun' technology.TTFN,WK

Of course they are. You may not be, Sanford and Behe may not be (although in Sanford's case there is good reason to be believe this isn't true), but plenty of creationists are, including many of those under the ID big tent and some on this site.If you are just using your own unique interpretation of common descent of course that is another matter.TTFN,WKEdited by Wounded King, : No reason given.

I don't think that is true, in the linux download there is Fortran and C code that can be compiled in folders within the cgi-bin folder.Interestingly the readme file for the source code is bookended by 2 quotes. Way to show this isn't about religion guys!Also, synergistic epistasis!TTFN,WK

Sanford himself is on the record as believing the Earth is between 5 and 10 thousand years old.TTFN,WK

I don't know if Sanford coined the term 'genetic entropy' but Walter ReMine has been grinding the same axe in terms of Haldane's dilemma and genetic degradation from created baramins for at least the last 20 years.Interestingly Remine is also an author on the Mendel's accountant paper.TTFN,WK

I don't know what to tell you, I downloaded it from Sourceforge this morning and the sources were there. TTFN,WKP.S. Nerdiest derail evaah!

Boo I say! Pipe the output to tar?Why not just ... ?TTFN,WK

Care to tell us what pop. gen. work he has published in the last 20 years? The only thing I can find that comes close, and not very close at that, is a comparison of different Raspberry cultivars.Bear in mind that molecular genetics, i.e. the biolistic method of introducing genetic material, is not the same as population genetics.I'm also not sure that what everyone else in this thread is talking about a lot is population genetics, in terms of long term patterns of ancestry it is mostly comparative genetics that is more relevant, although I understand that as sequencing technologies improve the 2 fields are converging to some extent.TTFN,WK

My point is that population genetics has a specific meaning and is a specific field of study, and it isn't the field that Dr. Sanford practices, so your calling him an accomplished population geneticist seems to be based on you liking the guy rather than him actually having any accomplishments or track record in the field of population genetics. That bears no resemblance to what I was talking about, which is the study of real genetic sequences in real populations. Mathematical models and simulations certainly have a place in population genetics, but only to the extent that they allow us to accurately model and make predictions about reality. So far there is little evidence that Mendel's Accountant does either reliably for anything other than very small populations, if that. It certainly doesn't support Sanford and ReMine's claims that population genetics makes an earth less than 10,00 years old and a literal genesis with created kinds more plausible than evolution.TTFN,WK

This simply makes no sense., in the first place both fitness and natural selection are heavily determined by the environmental context of an organism to consider them totally independent is to ignore reality.Since we accept that drift can change fitness contrary to the tendencies of natural selection we can acknowledge that NS does not directly dictate changes in fitness in every instance so that fitness is not strictly dependent on NS, but to suggest they are totally independent is simply wrong. You seem to be claiming that NS has no influence on fitness, how can you possibly make a case for this, rather than just claiming it with no justification.I'm also not sure what you think your experiment demonstrates, that adaptation to a permissive environment does not well adapt you for a restrictive environment? Well, gosh, I'm totally shocked by your radical new idea. It certainly doesn't demonstrate that the more recent population is absolutely less fit than the ancestral one, just that it is less fit in the environment the ancestor was already adapted to.The real way to test the comparative fitness would be a cross evnvironmental comparison of the derived and ancestral strains in the permissive and restrictive environments. If the ancestral strain was fitter in both environments then you could make your case, on the other hand if the derived line was fitter in the permisive environment all you would have shown is adaptation in action.You need to bear in mind that your idea of totally removing NS is simply impossible unless you artificially enforce your organisms to all have the same number of offspring, and even then you can't get around selection against totally lethal mutations.The only fitness that seems to be declining in your example is their fitness for an environment they are no longer in. Many mutations deleterious in a restrictive environment may be beneficial in the permissive environment, as is seen when bacteria in a permissive environments lose unnecessary biosynthesis pathways, or in the case of antibiotic resistant strains that are less fit than the wild type in the absence of antibiotic.Conversely in some antibiotic selection experiments resistant mutations can be identified which are fitter than the Wild Type even in a permissive environment (Kassen and Bataillon, 2006).I suggest that rather than the deleterious mutation rate the true key element is the overall distribution of fitness effects, you can't debate this meaningfully while simply pretending that advantageous and indeed slightly advantageous mutations don't exist which can counteract the fitness effects of deleterious mutations.TTFN,WK

Technically this isn't true. Many evolutionary experiments using 'simpler' organisms such as fungi, bacteria and nematodes can actually freeze down stocks from populations at various times allowing them to be subsequently revived mixed with derived lines from later generations and competition to be observed.TTFN,WK

As far as I can see 'Genetic Entropy' is just the creationist term for mutational meltdown, and presumably one chosen because it dovetails so neatly with their incredibly poor understanding of how thermodynamics relates to biology.TTFN,WK

Well to be fair, creationists do keep insisting that they do exist, and simply leaving that sort of claim unchallenged can give it at least a spurious credence.TTFN,WK

Now that you have finished crying into your whine maybe you can provide us with a real (major) falsification of evolution since you seem so convinced they exist?You seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that evolutionary theory has already been falsified, otherwise all your bitching at Minnemooseus would just look like paranoid crazy talk, so perhaps you can provide us with the requisite evidence for this falsification?Even better you could go to this thread, Does ID follow the scientific method?, and be the first to offer any potential way of falsifying the Intelligent Design hypothesis. Which might be a small step to making it seem like a genuine scientific hypothesis and not creationism with a fake beard.TTFN,WK