Re: Pitt professor's theory of evolution gets boost from cell research

On 28 Jan 2006 04:23:56 -0800, in talk.origins , "hersheyhv"
<hersheyh@xxxxxxxxxxx> in
<1138451036.554714.80170@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
>Ash wrote:
>> hersheyhv wrote:
>> > Ash wrote:
>> >> http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2006/01/26/pitt_professors_theory_of_evolution_gets_boost_from_cell_research.html
>> >>
>> >> anyone know anything of this?
>> >> It seems an odd thing to be in a journal called New Anatomist
>> >
>> > Jeffrey Schwartz's book, "Sudden Origins" is, as one person politely
>> > called it, one of the worst science books ever published. It is filled
>> > with ignorance of genetics and incompetent review of the literature
>> > related to genetics. snip
>> That and the fact that, AIR, his
>> > thesis implies that 'recessive' alleles switch to 'dominant' when they
>> > increase in frequency in a population.
>>
>> Was he really saying that? I thought he was saying they were more likely
>> to be expressed (which makes sense to me, if they are at a greater
>> frequency, there is more chance of an individual having two copies)
>
>I made a conscious effort to try to forget the book. But the
>discussion, AIR (and that was 6 years ago), was that 'recessive'
>alleles stay hidden until they burst upon the stage and then become
>'dominant'. Not 'more frequent'. Dominant. I see this as conflating
>(whether intentional or through ignorance, I know not) the meaning of
>the word dominance as it is actually used in genetics, where
>dominance/recessive describes the phenotypic effect of alternate
>alleles in a heterozygote, with the idea of 'most frequent allele in
>the population'. No mention of Hardy or Weinberg in his book, AIR.
>The most frequent allele in a population is called the "wild type"
>allele, not the "dominant" allele. This is a pretty fundamental
>distinction that a first year undergrad in biology should (but alas
>does not always) be able to make.

If the review is correct, and there is no reason to think so, then he
is making some new errors now as well. I do get the feeling that
Schwartz is not clear on the distinction between dominant and common,
but we now have a claim that mutations only happen under stress.

"Why does it take an environmental drama to cause mutations?"

"But extreme stress pushes cells beyond their capacity to produce
protective proteins, and then mutation can occur."


Then we get this gem:

"The article's conclusions also have important implications for the
notion of "fixing" the environment to protect endangered species.
While it is indeed the environment causing the mutation, the resulting
organism is in an altogether different environment by the time the
novelty finally escapes its recessive state and expresses itself."

"Escapes its recessive state"? Sure sounds like a confusion on what
recessive means.

There is more nonsense in the article.

--
Matt Silberstein

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