Royal Truman posted a document The Problem of Information for the Theory of Evolution Has Tom Schneider Really Solved It? which is a critique of the Ev model. On this page I will put some responses. They will be limited for now because I have other things to work on (ie real publications). Readers are encouraged to identify his errors and confusions. It won't be hard, but listing all of them will be a big task!

• Truman makes the multiplication error of creationists. Using this argument he "demonstrates" that the Ev program does not work. Yet it does.

• A good simulation does not attempt to simulate everything; only the essential components are modeled. For the issue at hand, the form of the genetic code is not relevant; information measured by Shannon's method is more general than that.

• Many of Truman's complaints have to do with inessential points. For example, a high mutation rate was used so that the computation would run quickly. Obviously if the rate were made lower (only 10 fold lower to reach HIV rates) the evolution would take longer, but the essential result should be the same. If you don't believe it, get the code and try it yourself.

• Apparently Truman doesn't understand the difference between L (the length of a site) and Rsequence (the information content of a site) and complains about this. He must be still thinking in terms of consensus sequences.

Schneider Lab
origin: 2001 Nov 12
updated: 2001 Nov 12