Response to Carl Zimmer and Joseph Thornton, Part 3

The science writer Carl Zimmer posted an invited reply http://tinyurl.com/yhpm3t7 on his blog from Joseph Thornton of the University of Oregon to my recent comments about Thornton's work. This is the third of several posts addressing it. References will appear in the last post.

Now back to Thornton's first point, the role of neutral mutations (which he sometimes labels "permissive" mutations). At several places in his post Thornton implies I'm unaware of the possibilities opened up by genetic...