Re: What goes around comes around

Cornelius Hunter wrote:

> Pim, Preston and Terry:
>
>
>
>> Cornelius Hunter wrote:
>> COuld I ask you to support your claims, at least the once which make
>> claims about science? Such as the Herv data? How again does it
>> disprove common descent? Are you sure you are not using what is known
>> as a 'naive falsification' approach here?
>>
>> Present your argument. I will see what science has found out about it.
>
>
> Actually, HERVs do not disprove CD. That is not possible because it is
> behind a mote. HERVs merely disprove predictions of CD.
>
Which one exactly?

>> Current Biology A HERV-K provirus in chimpanzees, bonobos and
>> gorillas, but not humans
>> Volume 11, Issue 10, 15 May 2001, Pages 779-783
>
>
> This is a fine example. Evolution predicts that an homologous HERV in
> chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas will also be found in humans. The
> prediction is false. Wild after-the-fact speculation by dedicated
> evolutionists who presuppose their theory is true doesn't count.
> Anybody can make up just-so stories to rescue theories like
> geocentrism. So please, spare us the idle speculation that cannot be
> falsified.

Yawn. I find arguing science with you mostly a waste of time. You seem
to have made up your mind and the fact of common descent does not seem
to convince you. Have you read the article, do you even know if these
are speculations that cannot be falsified? Have you kept up to date with
Herv-K research?

Let me quote from the article

    Several possibilities were considered to explain how a provirus
    could be present in /Gorilla/ and /Pan/ but be absent in /Homo/. It
    is highly unlikely that the provirus was deleted in humans, as the
    retroviral integration process is irreversible. Another possibility
    was that the provirus was replaced in the human lineage by a gene
    conversion or unequal crossover event. In particular, the
    preintegration site may have been duplicated either in tandem or at
    another position within the genome of the common ancestor of /Homo/,
    /Pan/, and /Gorilla/. A recombination event involving the duplicated
    locus could then have replaced the 9.5 kb provirus in humans with a
    sequence similar to the preintegration site. In this regard,
    analysis of the human sequence flanking the HERV-K-GC1 integration
    site in /Pan/ and /Gorilla/ indicated that the ape provirus lies
    within an older L1 retrotransposon and that several L1 elements and
    an Alu element lie within a 5 kb stretch flanking the insertion site
    of the provirus. This particularly raised the possibility that gene
    conversion from an L1 element at a nonorthologous position might
    have replaced the provirus in the human lineage.

    To test these possibilities, we designed several PCR primers based
    on the human sequence over a 5.4 kb stretch of sequence flanking the
    site of the HERV-K-GC1 insertion in /Pan/ and /Gorilla/ (Figure 1
    <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VRT-433PCG6-S&_coverDate=05%2F15%2F2001&_alid=321128879&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=6243&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000047944&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=918210&md5=13110dbbdd3f3bbe44797b22730cc978#fig1>).
    No evidence for a preintegration locus in /Pan/ or /Gorilla/ was
    seen with any combination of primers used (Figure 1c
    <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VRT-433PCG6-S&_coverDate=05%2F15%2F2001&_alid=321128879&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=6243&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000047944&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=918210&md5=13110dbbdd3f3bbe44797b22730cc978#fig1>).
    Thus, neither of those genera contains a duplicated locus, tandem or
    otherwise, including any L1 element at a nonorthologous position,
    that is sufficiently similar to the HERV-K-GC1 site to be recognized
    by any of the PCR primer pairs used. The data are consistent with
    the conclusion that these genera lack an appropriate locus for a
    putative gene conversion event that could have eliminated the
    provirus within the human lineage.

The authors carefull go through various possible explanations and
present their evidence in exquisite detail.
Do you even realize that HERV-K phylogenies are in excellent agreement
with established phylogenies? Do you understand the statistical chance
nature of such events? Why should we reject CD because of a few outliers
in a sea of corroborating data? You have presented no scientific
arguments other than calling it 'wild after the fact speculation'.

How does ID again explain it? Or is silence the appropriate response
here? Hardly the wild after the fact speculation...
Received on Fri Oct 7 17:11:53 2005