Talk:Haldane's dilemma

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This entire article has massive WP:NPOV (especially undue weight) problems. Remine's arguments should get a paragraph at most with explanations as to why they are considered to be worthless by mainstream scientists. JoshuaZ 16:59, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Leading evolutionary geneticists, James Crow and Warren Ewens, acknowledge ReMine’s paper is correct – which is a bit inconvenient for you. Also, the errors and confusions identified by ReMine’s paper are still actively advocated in the Wiki essay – thereby validating ReMine’s claim that evolutionary leaders allowed confusion and error to thrive in this field. 4.159.23.36 04:10, 24 August 2006 (UTC) WalterR
Without ReMine's arguments, there wouldn't be any controversy -- they deserve to be fully described. There are scientists who think the dilemma has been solved, but if you want to claim they think ReMine's arguments are worthless, you'll have to come up with a reputable citation, not just evolutionist 'Net-rants. Mdotley 16:16, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Excuse me? If no scientists have bothered to comment on Remine other than "Net-rants" then it would go a long way to showing that Remine's work is arguably original research and is almost certainly not notable.JoshuaZ 16:18, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Excuse me? ReMine's paper was peer-reviewed by evolutionary geneticists (including James Crow and Warren Ewens) who acknowledge it is correct. You have no reason to brush that aside. 4.158.231.1 07:00, 26 August 2006 (UTC) WalterR
JoshuaZ, Remine's arguments have been appropriately published. Responses have also been published; some in 'Net-rants, some in peer-reviewed journals. If you want to claim that mainstream scientists think the arguments are worthless, check the journals, (not the 'Net rants) and get appropriate citations. Mdotley 21:41, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Mdotley wrote:
"Remine's arguments have been appropriately published."
Not on my reading of the guideline for evaluating the reliability of sources, they haven't. None of Mr Remine's arguments have been published in peer-reviewed scientific literature or any other sources whose credibility on the matter is verifiable. The only sources for most of his arguments are a self-published book and on-line sources (or "Net-rants", as you have so aptly described them). The one known exception, published in TJ-in-depth Journal of Creation, doesn't contain any of the more controversial of Mr Remine's arguments at all. All it contains are:
* An exposition of Mr Remine's revised definition of the cost of selection (which he calls the "cost of substitution");
* Claims that the existing literature is full of confusion and contradictions which have been cleared up by his new definitions;
* Demonstrations that his definitions give the same value as the traditional ones in certain special cases;
* Derivation of conditions under which his cost of substitution will be at a minimum and expressions for the value of the minimum.
I entirely agree with JoshuaZ that the current article gives too much prominence to Mr Remine's views. There are also several places in the current exposition of his views where the wording implies that disputed POVs of his are in fact correct, and no independently verifiable source is cited for the assertion that Warren Ewens and James Crow (among others) have judged his TJ paper to be correct.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that Mr Remine has some justifiable grounds for complaint about the way this article has developed. In the early sixties genuine scientific controversies most certainly did break out over what some people perceived to be implications of Haldane's paper. Some of the participants (E.O.Dodson in particular) made arguments quite similar to some of Mr Remine's. Others, such as Feller and Moran, argued that Haldane's arguments were fallacious; but then their own arguments were in turn rebutted by Kimura and Crow.
A proper encyclopedia article on Haldane's dilemma should give an account of all the significant points of view put forward in this scientific literature, including rebuttals (if any) of the views favoured by the article's editors. It would appear from the history of this article, however, that too many of its editors have merely set out with the principal aim of showing why Haldane---or more particularly Remine---was wrong. In my opinion, the result has been a completely unbalanced article. It seems to me to give far too much prominence to the technical minutiae of Haldane's paper, and not nearly enough (essentially none, in fact) to describing the various points of view of the participants in the above-mentioned scientific controversies. David Wilson 20:45, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

David Wilson is correct that the current article is "completely unbalanced." The article wantonly obscures the problem from view, lulls readers into oblivion with needlessly tedious derivations, and gives a false sense of agreement and resolution among evolutionary geneticists. By comparison, the section on ReMine offers a modest remedy toward sobriety. If you think the current article gives "too much prominence" to ReMine's views, then the solution is to sober-up the rest of the article. That is:

  1. Give a clear, direct statement of the problem (such as the limit on the number of substitutions to explain human evolution).
  2. Give a clear explanation of the cause of the problem (because Haldane's description is not the clearest available).
  3. Identify the most prominent resolutions claimed for the problem.
  4. Acknowledge the lingering confusions and disagreements surrounding Haldane's Dilemma (such as George C. Williams's assertion that Haldane's Dilemma "was never solved").

In other words, give a clear, revealing, up-to-date account. The idea of giving "an account of all the significant points of view put forward in this scientific literature" is not realistic, since that would essentially require a book, and moreover, many of those views are contradictory and "were fallacious". You could forego those views that were explicitly refuted in the literature, unfortunately, rather few of them were. Many fallacious arguments (including Feller, Moran, Hoyle, Felsenstein, and many others) thrive today because they were not explicitly refuted in the literature. Confusion and error were allowed to thrive (so long as it favored a solution to Haldane's Dilemma). The literature remains in a state of unresolved confusion and contradiction, and coping with that appropriately will be a key difficulty for this article. Also, James Crow publicly acknowledged (on the ARN.org website) that he and Warren Ewens judged ReMine's paper to be correct. It is independently verifiable. 4.158.231.65 08:50, 22 September 2006 (UTC) WalterR

WalterR wrote:

'The idea of giving "an account of all the significant points of view put forward in this scientific literature" is not realistic, since that would essentially require a book, ...'

Not at all. There's no need to give a detailed account of every single thing ever written on the subject. The various significant opinions could be quite easily grouped into a small number of about 4 or 5 classes, whose adherents' differences in each case were essentially trivial. All that's necessary is a succinct, accurate summary of each position, with citations from one or two of its most prominent adherents. A much more difficult problem, in my opinion, will be achieving a consensus on which particular positions are sufficiently "significant" to include, how to group them, and what constitutes an unbiased account of each of them.

WalterR wrote:

  1. Give a clear, direct statement of the problem (such as the limit on the number of substitutions to explain human evolution).
  2. Give a clear explanation of the cause of the problem (because Haldane's description is not the clearest available).

Like the current introdution to the article, that procedure would not be NPOV, because it implicitly assumes that one of the more significant POVs, which has never been refuted by anyone, including Walter Remine (in my opinion), is incorrect. The POV in question is that no-one has ever shown that the theory Haldane developed in The Cost of Natural Selection poses any sort of dilemma for evolutionary theory.

It is obvious from the discussion section of Haldane's paper that he himself did not think that it posed any such dilemma at the time when he wrote it. While we know from A Defence of Beanbag Genetics that he was aware of the controversies over the cost of selection which arose in the early sixties, he also gives no hint there, or anywhere else as far as I know, that he ever regarded it as posing a dilemma for evolutionary theory. We also know from the writings of Ewens and Crow that neither of them do either (though for different reasons).

A Wikipedia encyclopedia article is not the place to argue the merits or defects of this (or any other) POV. It is however also not appropriate to suppress it by using a description which implies it is incorrect.

WalterR wrote:

Also, James Crow publicly acknowledged (on the ARN.org website) that he and Warren Ewens judged ReMine's paper to be correct. ...

I presume you are referring to this post by Nikolas Voss, in which he posted a response of Crow's to some discussions that had taken place on the bulletin board where the response was posted. In that response Crow did not say that "he and Warren Ewens judged ReMine's paper to be correct". Here is what he actually wrote:

"I did review ReMine's paper for Theoretical Population Biology. I have forgotten most of the paper, but I recommended rejection on the grounds that, although the paper was essentially correct and made some interesting points, there was not enough new theoretical content to merit publication in this highly technical journal. Another reviewer, Warren Ewens, reached essentially the same conclusion. I also said the paper might be published in a less technical journal."

Omitting the word "essentially" from before "correct" in your indirect quotation gives the possibly misleading impression that Crow and Ewens raised no objection whatever to anything written in the paper. I'm afraid I find that difficult to believe. I have read your paper very carefully, and checked all the calculations and proofs. While I think Crow's assessment of "essentially correct" is quite reasonable, I also think that it would be false to say simply that the paper is "correct" without qualification. For what it's worth, I also agree with Crow's assessment that it contained "not enough new theoretical content to merit publication" in a journal devoted to publishing original research.

In my opinion the paper contains several technical errors. While they can all be corrected without doing much damage to what little of substance it does actually contain, they're also sufficiently serious that any conscientious reviewer would have to demand that this be done before it could be considered for publication.

Apart from the misquotation just indicated, the current wikipedia article is also selective in its choice of exactly which parts of Crow's comments it has chosen to cite. As noted above, Crow also said in his comments on your paper that "there was not enough new theoretical content to merit publication in this highly technical journal" (i.e. the journal of Theoretical Population Biology). He also wrote:

"Let me emphasize that the change of interpretation from Haldane's load to reproductive excess is a small improvement and should not be regarded as comparable in importance to Haldane's original very clever idea. Compared to this, the change in emphasis from genetic deaths to reproductive excess isn't such a big deal."

"There is the additional issue of just how important the Haldane cost is as a limitation to evolutionary change by natural selection, but that is another question. I don't think the Haldane principle is useful as a way of putting a brake on evolution rates; it is too simple and there are too many ways around it."

"I don't want to say that what I wrote 35 years ago is a model of clarity and consistency and couldn't be improved on. But I still think it is reasonably clear and essentially correct, and includes the essence of ReMine's required reproduction rate."

It's simply not appropriate to offer support for a position by selectively misquoting just those parts of someone's comments which agree with the position, while at the same time ignoring other parts which disagree with it. An appropriate use of Crow's comments would be something like the following:

Leading evolutionary geneticists, including James Crow and Warren Ewens, reviewed the paper for possible publication in the journal Theoretical Population Biology. Crow and Ewens acknowledged it is essentially correct but recommended against publication because they considered its technical content was not sufficiently novel to warrant publication in that journal[1]. Remine disagrees with this assessment. His responses to the rejection of his paper can be found here and here

David Wilson 03:52, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

David Wilson (reasonably) proposes that the numerous published views be classified into a small number of groups, and the article then give a summarization of each group -- though many relevant details would be lost. But he also suggests the article should include irrelevant details, such as:

Wilson's text:
"... for possible publication in the journal Theoretical Population Biology. Crow and Ewens ... recommended against publication because they considered its technical content was not sufficiently novel to warrant publication in that journal[1]. ReMine disagrees with this assessment. His responses to the rejection of his paper can be found here and here."

Wilson's text may be relevant for other articles, (say, concerning the peer-review process), but it has no serious relevance for this Wiki article. This Wiki article is not about why ReMine's paper was published in one journal rather than another. This Wiki article is not about the journal Theoretical Population Biology and why it should, or shouldn't, have published ReMine's paper. Wilson's text serves no purpose here (except as a misplaced attempt to besmirch ReMine's paper). This is another example of (to use Wilson's phrase) a "completely unbalanced article." Evolutionists here focus at length on misrepresenting, minimizing, or smearing ReMine, while persistently avoiding any decent coverage of Haldane's Dilemma.

The relevant issue was charged previously by Wilson, and is now answered and independently verified by Wilson: ReMine's paper was peer-reviewed by evolutionary geneticists, Warren Ewens and James Crow, who publicly acknowledged it is essentially correct and made some interesting points.

Though it was correctly peer-reviewed, ReMine's paper contradicts the bulk of the Wiki article. ReMine's paper specifically identifies unnecessary confusions and errors that are widely promoted today -- promoted even within the Wiki article. The Wiki article needs to cope with those in some meaningful way: such as by eliminating them from the article, or alternatively, by acknowledging their existence within the article.

David Wilson writes that Haldane, Crow, and Ewens did not regard Haldane's Dilemma as a dilemma for evolutionary theory. That is highly misleading here, because the evolutionary genetics literature (including those three authors), almost totally avoided discussion of the serious issue -- a limited number (~1,667) of beneficial mutations to explain human evolution. You cannot credit Haldane, Crow, or Ewens for something they did not publish. They and many others were free to publish support that such a limit is not a problem, but they did not. Instead the literature almost always spoke of the matter obliquely, in terms of substitution rate (such as "one substitution per 300 generations"), which obscures the problem from view.

David Wilson wrote:
WalterR wrote:
  1. Give a clear, direct statement of the problem (such as the limit on the number of substitutions to explain human evolution).
  2. Give a clear explanation of the cause of the problem (because Haldane's description is not the clearest available).
... that procedure would not be NPOV, because it implicitly assumes that one of the more significant POVs ... is incorrect. The POV in question is that no-one has ever shown that the theory Haldane developed in The Cost of Natural Selection poses any sort of dilemma for evolutionary theory. [bolding added]

David Wilson argues it would be "not neutral" -- and therefore disallowed by Wiki -- to give a clear, direct statement of the problem and its causes. I regard his argument as scientifically perverse on its face. He attempts to justify it based on the existence of what he calls "one of the more significant points-of-view" -- which happens to be effectively non-existent in the literature. Evolutionary genetics literature does not seriously support (and does not remotely have a consensus) that a limit of something-less-than 1,667 beneficial substitutions is not a problem. On the contrary, (and contrary to Wilson's claim), the literature displays numerous evolutionary geneticists who took Haldane's speed limit as a problem in need of a serious solution. It would be perverse to withhold a clear, direct statement of the problem and its causes.

4.158.231.20 09:09, 28 September 2006 (UTC) WalterR

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