Inference vs evidence of natural selection in human evolution

Genetic switches play big role in human evolution

Excerpt: (with my emphasis) “A new computational method called INSIGHT (Inference of Natural Selection from Interspersed Genomically coHerent elemenTs), allowed the scientists to integrate these diverse data types and find evidence of natural selection in the regulatory DNA.”

My comment: If inference was evidence of natural selection there would be no need for other researchers to analyze the role that micro-RNAs play a role in gene regulation, which is suggested below.

Excerpt: “INSIGHT may now be used by other researchers for analyzing… micro-RNAs, non-coding molecules that also play a role in gene regulation.”

My comment: Other researches have already analyzed microRNAs in flies. For example,  microRNA-14 acts in neurosecretory cells in the adult brain to control metabolism, and microRNA-124 appears to act in the context of adult brain-directed neuroendocrine control of male pheromone production and behavior. What this means is that instead of the computational inference of natural selection, we now have evidence for the reality of nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled adaptive evolution (sans mutations theory).

This evidence shows that

1) natural selection is for nutrients

2) microRNAs direct the metabolism of nutrients to pheromones

Pheromones, which control reproduction in species from microbes to man, signal nutrient-dependent species-specific sex differences in reproductive fitness. That’s how pheromones enable sexual selection for reproduction fitness in flies and mammals.

Now that we have evidence that natural selection is for nutrients and that sexual selection is for pheromones, it may be time to stop looking at the inference of natural selection as if it were evidence of anything. Clearly natural selection is for nutrients that metabolize to pheromones. This integrates natural selection and sexual selection for pheromones in all organisms that sexually reproduce.

Does anyone still prefer inference to biologically based evidence of natural selection for nutrients and sexual selection for pheromones? Arguably, I think not everyone can grasp the biological facts, which means that some may always prefer theoretical inferences to evidence of nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled adaptive evolution.