Mutation and evolution

evol-mut-circle is an international group of scientists, philosophers, and historians interested in research on the role of mutation in evolution, particularly as a dispositional factor. The group meets monthly via… Read more

Mutation bias: a systematic difference in rates of occurrence for different types of mutations, e.g., transition-transversion bias, insertion-deletion bias Brandolini’s law: it takes 10 times the effort to debunk bullshit… Read more

It has been said that the reception of any successful new scientific hypothesis goes through three predictable phases before being accepted. First, it is criticized for being untrue. Secondly, after… Read more

Whereas Kimura (1968) proposed his version of the Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution as the answer to an esoteric problem of population genetics theory, King and Jukes (1969) proposed a… Read more

This is a long but organized dump of some thoughts on a particular type of distortion that arises from an attitude of conservatism or traditionalism. It is part of a… Read more

The Haldane-Fisher “opposing pressures” argument is an argument from population genetics that played an important role in establishing the Modern Synthesis orthodoxy, and which continued to guide thinking about causation… Read more

Unfamiliar ideas are often mis-identified and mis-characterized. It takes time for a new idea to be sufficiently familiar that it can be debated meaningfully (a really long time, in the… Read more

Unfamiliar ideas are often mis-identified and mis-characterized. It takes time for a new idea to be sufficiently familiar that it can be debated meaningfully. We look forward to those more… Read more