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To: Southack
In experiments using statistics, outcomes are presented as expected values vs. observed or actual values. Transmission of a gene or mutation from one generation to the next is expected to be 100%. The actual rate differs from this, due to sampling error.
763 posted on 04/14/2002 6:39:53 AM PDT by Nebullis
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Sampling error in the transmission, that is, not the experiment.
764 posted on 04/14/2002 6:40:34 AM PDT by Nebullis
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To: Nebullis
"In experiments using statistics, outcomes are presented as expected values vs. observed or actual values. Transmission of a gene or mutation from one generation to the next is expected to be 100%. The actual rate differs from this, due to sampling error." - Nebullis

No, that's not accurate. You might be able to support a claim such as "the expected rate for the transmission of established genes approaches 100% in an ideal environment", but in no way, shape, or form can you claim that mutations bat 1,000 in the propagation ballgame.

For one thing, no species has ever batted 1,000 for their propagation success. Not everybody lives to propagate.

For another, many mutations are caused by "errors" in context, not data. Context is not replicated. It is the data in DNA that is replicated, but the same data might produce different results (read: mutations) based upon context during replication and processing. Even a benficial mutation, if caused by an error in context rather than in the data of the sequenced bases themselves, will NOT propagate to offspring (simply because that error in context/environment is highly unlikely to present itself at the precise time/place required to cause the DNA code to reproduce that mutation again).

Then there is the replication process itself, which is not 100% perfect by the very definition of Evolutionary theory. You can't have a 100% success ratio of passing on mutations if the replication process itself isn't even that effective.

So for these three major reasons as well as scores more, the "expected rate" or mutation propagation is never 100%. Mutations do not bat 1,000 in the game of life. Two-headed snakes, even when forcefully bred in the lab, aren't going to always produce two-headed offspring.

768 posted on 04/14/2002 12:02:26 PM PDT by Southack
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