[VadeRetro]

I think he kind of wishes he hadn't gone where he did with hidden alleles as the answer to the before-your-eyes adaptiveness of bacteria. He has established that a bacterial allele can be unexpressed, "hidden," if only once in a blue moon.

There will be no dragging him back to the problem to which said phenomenon is not an answer at all.

[js1138]

There will be no dragging him back to the problem to which said phenomenon is not an answer at all.

But the case he cited had nothing hidden. We were discussing mutations. He implied that mutation wasn't the source of change because there was a recessive trait.

At this point I challenged him to explain how this worked in bacteria. He has never responded to my challenge. I'm still waiting.

Words are magic to him. Say the right incantation and facts go poof. His problem remains: Explain how recessive traits work in a bacterial colony descended from a single individual.