Enemies of science (3)

In this third installment of my enemies of science series, Jay R. Feierman again takes center stage via his refusal to post my responses to his ridiculous comments on the International Society for Human Ethology yahoo group.

Feierman wrote: “The genotype, not the phenotype, is what is selectively and preferentially passed across generations under positive natural selection pressure even though it is the phenotype, acting as the proxy for the genotype in a specific environment, that is the “object” of natural selection.”

My comment: That ‘gene-centric’ view has been replaced. It’s replacement has been exemplified in species from microbes to man. Nutrients are selected that metabolize to species-specific pheromones, which control reproduction. It is the control of reproduction that enables adaptive evolution of genetically predisposed phenotypic expression in variable environments.

Feierman wrote: How something like a metabolic cycle could evolve by natural selection is a very specialized area of science and an area in which I have no expertise  

My comment:  In the context of evolution via natural selection, any claims made by someone with no expertise on something as important as metabolic cycles are to evolution makes no sense, since metabolic cycles are clearly involved in adaptive evolution.

Jean Maruani wrote (in 1989) “…in the Darwinian theory of evolution: genetic random mutations are the source of the genetic variability upon which natural selection is assumed to operate.

My comment: It is now perfectly clear that this statement and any statement or inference like it is WRONG.

Feierman wrote: I am absolutely certain that if you showed this statement to any professor of biology or genetics in any accredited university anywhere in the world that 100% of them would say that “Random mutations are the substrate upon which directional natural selection acts” is a correct and true statement.

Evidently, Feierman adopted something similar to the 1989 assumption stated by Maruani, but Feierman changed his mind about this on August 14, 2013. Feierman wrote:  “…rather than saying that “mutations are THE substrate upon which natural selection acts” a more accurate statement is “mutations are A substrate upon which natural selection acts.”

My comment: If “mutations are A substrate upon which natural selection acts,” we are still forced to assume, as did Maruani, that natural selection acts on them.  Why would anyone still make such assumptions when it is clear that adaptive evolution is nutrient-dependent and pheromone-controlled?