Has the "Haldane's dilemma" ever been resolved?

Question

J.B.S. Haldane, an evolutionist, calculated (in 1957) that it was impossible for humans and chimps to evolve from a common ancestor over a 5,000,000 year period. This holds true even if there is a 98.5 % sequence homology as this would still require too many beneficial nucleotide mutation PER GENERATION. Since there are so many evolutionists on Yahoo "Religion & Spirituality", has this dilemma ever been resolved?

Answer 1

It is one scientist's opinion. There are a many who hold a different opinion.

Answer 2

Posting a science question in the religion and spirituality section often means the asker does not really want an answer. His goal is to ask a question that he believes proves some scientific knowledge to be wrong, or that science does not yet answer, and make the implicit claim that the only other explanation is a god, and specifically, the same god he happens to believe in.

It's the "god of the gaps" - intellectually bankrupt, since it favors ignorance instead of knowledge, and because of the contained logical fallacy.

However, on the off chance that you really want to know the answer:

1. Haldane's "cost of natural selection" stemmed from an invalid simplifying assumption in his calculations. He divided by a fitness constant in a way that invalidated his assumption of constant population size, and his cost of selection is an artifact of the changed population size. He also assumed that two mutations would take twice as long to reach fixation as one, but because of sexual recombination, the two can be selected simultaneously and both reach fixation sooner. With corrected calculations, the cost disappears (Wallace 1991; Williams n.d.).

Haldane's paper was published in 1957, and Haldane himself said, "I am quite aware that my conclusions will probably need drastic revision" (Haldane 1957, 523). It is irresponsible not to consider the revision that has occurred in the forty years since his paper was published.

2. ReMine (1993), who promotes the claim, makes several invalid assumptions. His model is contradicted by the following:
* The vast majority of differences would probably be due to genetic drift, not selection.
* Many genes would have been linked with genes that are selected and thus would have hitchhiked with them to fixation.
* Many mutations, such as those due to unequal crossing over, affect more than one codon.
* Human and ape genes both would be diverging from the common ancestor, doubling the difference.
* ReMine's computer simulation supposedly showing the negative influence of Haldane's dilemma assumed a population size of only six (Musgrave 1999).

Links:
Williams, Robert, n.d. Haldane's dilemma. http://www.gate.net/~rwms/haldane1.html
References:

1. Haldane, J. B. S., 1957. The cost of natural selection. Journal of Genetics 55: 511-524.
2. Musgrave, Ian, 1999. Weasels, ReMine, and Haldane's dilemma. http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/sep99.html
3. ReMine, Walter J., 1993. The Biotic Message, St. Paul Science, Inc.
4. Wallace, Bruce, 1991. Fifty Years of Genetic Load - An Odyssey. Cornell University Press. See particularly Chapters 5, 6, 8, and 9.
5. Williams. (See above)

Answer 3

A lot has been learned about molecular evolution since Haldane wrote that. It is now known that a very small number of changes in DNA may be responsible for most of the difference between man and apes.

Answer 4

Haldane's "cost of natural selection" stemmed from an invalid simplifying assumption in his calculations. He divided by a fitness constant in a way that invalidated his assumption of constant population size, and his cost of selection is an artifact of the changed population size. He also assumed that two mutations would take twice as long to reach fixation as one, but because of sexual recombination, the two can be selected simultaneously and both reach fixation sooner. With corrected calculations, the cost disappears

Answer 5

Without having to even look it up I can confidently say yes. If I can be bothered I will.

Edit:

And sure enough it took me two minutes...

http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/07/haldanes_nondil.html

Answer 6

Who cares what he said... that was 50 years ago.