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Flaws in Richard Lenski Study (view source)
Revision as of 13:00, March 26, 2009
, 13:00, March 26, 2009Incorrect p-values in paper
10. Lenski's paper claims that "During [30,000 generations], each population experienced billions of mutations,<ref>Lenski cites one of his own prior articles for this.</ref> far more than the number of possible point mutations in the [approximately] 4.6-million-bp genome. This ratio implies, to a first approximation, that each population tried every typical one-step mutation many times." Lenski's conclusion is nonsensical because it assumes that the mutations are completely random '''and''' that each mutation has a roughly equal probability.
10. Lenski's paper claims that "During [30,000 generations], each population experienced billions of mutations,<ref>Lenski cites one of his own prior articles for this.</ref> far more than the number of possible point mutations in the [approximately] 4.6-million-bp genome. This ratio implies, to a first approximation, that each population tried every typical one-step mutation many times." Lenski's conclusion is nonsensical because it assumes that the mutations are completely random '''and''' that each mutation has a roughly equal probability.
11. In Table 2 of [http://www.pnas.org/content/105/23/7899.full.pdf], the expected mean should be 26,382 generations, not 28,382.
11. In Table 2 of [http://www.pnas.org/content/105/23/7899.full.pdf], the expected mean should be 26,382 generations, not 28,382.
12. The p-value computed for experiment two was incorrectly listed as 0.0007 instead of 0.0006 in [http://www.pnas.org/content/105/23/7899.full.pdf]. These p-values are meaningless because the paper used a flawed test statistic (see: [[Significance of E. Coli Evolution Experiments#Test Statistics]]). However, the error illustrates the need to use enough random realizations when using Monte Carlo methods to measure p-values.
== References ==
== References ==