It looks like John Sanford is up to his old tricks again:

[Subduction Zone]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26376851

A look at the authors tells quite a bit:

Sanford J1, Brewer W2, Smith F3, Baumgardner J4.

I will openly admit that this article is beyond my abilities to fully understand. But I am sure that it is also beyond Baumgardner's abilities. Do any of the biologists here no what he is going on about? Please note that though this is a "Pub Med" article it is still "In process" that means that it is only provisionally accepted right now.

 

[AnotherAtheist]

I believe that there is a basic flaw with this research.

What they are doing is loooking at how long it takes for a particular allele (string of DNA bases) to appear and become fixed in a population undergoing mutation. I.e. they start the experiment with a population and are looking for a specific target string to emerge and become fixed in the population. They find that it takes a very long time for even simple target strings to appear in the population and become fixed.

The flaw is that evolution does not have a specific target. There are large numbers of mutations that can occur, with a small fraction of these being beneficial. Beneficial mutations that appear will be amplified by natural selection, and may eventually become fixed in the popuation. However, there is no need to wait until a single particular mutation occurs for evolution to occur, any beneficial mutation will do. So, this research looks at a situation occurring which is much less likely than the situation in real life, and of course the waiting time will be longer.

I don't have the full text, so I may be guessing. They mention 'population size' but don't say whether the population varies in size as real populations do. Larger populations favour the emergence of new alleles, but make it harder for genes to become fixed. Population growth followed by a crash makes it more likely alleles will become fixed.

Now that you've bought this research to my attention, I wish to do a repetition and extension of it. Of course I need the full text before I can do so.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I believe that there is a basic flaw with this research.

What they are doing is loooking at how long it takes for a particular allele (string of DNA bases) to appear and become fixed in a population undergoing mutation. I.e. they start the experiment with a population and are looking for a specific target string to emerge and become fixed in the population. They find that it takes a very long time for even simple target strings to appear in the population and become fixed.

The flaw is that evolution does not have a specific target. There are large numbers of mutations that can occur, with a small fraction of these being beneficial. Beneficial mutations that appear will be amplified by natural selection, and may eventually become fixed in the popuation. However, there is no need to wait until a single particular mutation occurs for evolution to occur, any beneficial mutation will do. So, this research looks at a situation occurring which is much less likely than the situation in real life, and of course the waiting time will be longer.

I don't have the full text, so I may be guessing. They mention 'population size' but don't say whether the population varies in size as real populations do. Larger populations favour the emergence of new alleles, but make it harder for genes to become fixed. Population growth followed by a crash makes it more likely alleles will become fixed.

Now that you've bought this research to my attention, I wish to do a repetition and extension of it. Of course I need the full text before I can do so.

Thank you for your reply. And of course I missed your point, which is why I asked for help. This is a free article. Here is a link to the complete version, my bad:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4573302/

The original was published in one of the many many journals that are part of the Springer publishing house. It seems to be a vanity press article to me. As I said in the OP, Pub Med has listed this article as "in process".

 

[AnotherAtheist]

Thanks for the full article. I will need to read it to be able to give a reliable opinion of its contents.

EDIT: I need to read more, including some of the referenced papers. Consider my comments in the post further up to be made too soon.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Thanks for the full article. I will need to read it to be able to give a reliable opinion of its contents.

EDIT: I need to read more, including some of the referenced papers. Consider my comments in the post further up to be made too soon.

Don't rush to judgement and I have not quoted or used any of your claims in an argument yet. I have patience and with an article that I could not fully follow I have no right to jump on someone if it takes them some time to read and understand it.

 

[Loudmouth]

I believe that there is a basic flaw with this research.

What they are doing is loooking at how long it takes for a particular allele (string of DNA bases) to appear and become fixed in a population undergoing mutation.

That's the same flaw I found from reading just the early sections. Everything else after that is just math used to support a false assumption. To use an analogy, they are trying to claim that it should take 150 million Powerball drawings before you get a winner since the odds of getting a specific match is 1 in 150 million.