Twin Res Hum Genet. 2026 Aug 10:1-3. doi: 10.1017/thg.2026.10092. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
Haldane (J. B. S.) was a brilliant scientist. His ‘cost of natural selection’ is a view of the dark underbelly of Darwin’s creation – a count of the individuals who fall by the wayside when one allele displaces another. Th. Dobzhansky, perhaps not liking Haldane’s brand of mathematics, called in the eminent European William Feller to scrutinize Haldane’s cost. Feller published two articles (1966, 1967). The second sentence of the first paper shows that Feller misunderstood what Haldane measured: ‘These authors [Haldane and M. Kimura] introduce a measure for the loss in population size caused by a slow natural selection.’ Feller made intricate calculations of population size under various assumptions. These missed the point of Haldane’s clever notion. Feller’s two articles are an attempted demolition of conventional population genetics methodology.
PMID:42572908 | DOI:10.1017/thg.2026.10092
