ragland37{at}webtv.net (Michael Ragland) wrote 

> Suzuki et al. explain it as well as anyone I've seen; 
> 
> "If a population is finite in size (as all populations are) and if a
> given pair of parents have only a small number of offspring, then even
> in the absence of all selective forces, the frequency of a gene will not
> be exactly reproduced in the next generation because of sampling error.
> If in a population of 1000 individuals the frequency of "a" is 0.5 in
> one generation, then it may by chance be 0.493 or 0.0505 in the next
> generation because of the chance production of a few more or less
> progeny of each genotype. In the second generation, there is another
> sampling error based on the new gene frequency, so the frequency of
"a"
> may go from 0.0505 to 0.501 or back to 0.498. This process of random
> fluctuation continues generation after generation,



> But random genetic drift is even more that this. It also refers to
> accidental random events that influence allele frequency. For example, 
> "Chance events can cause the frequencies of alleles in a small
> population to drift randomly from generation to generation. 



> M.R.
> This article on genetic drift raised more questions than it answered.

Unfortunately the concept of genetic drift, in and of itself, 
does nothing more than raise unanswerable questions:

It's silly to suggest that "chance" can be causal.  For example, 
you can employ statistics to better predict when a baseball player 
will hit a home run.  But does chance hit the ball over the fence?  
No, the baseball player does.  Check out this link:

http://www.coastalfog.net/buddhism/causeandeffect2.html

Genetic drift is nothing but a more complex and, therefore, more 
conceptually intractable version of the gambler's fallacy.  

You could also do search in google using: Gambler's fallacy 

It seems there are two types of gambler's fallacy, as described 
on the following webpage:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/gamblers-fallacy.html

I think the one associated with genetic drift is the second of 
the two on this page. 

The thing that I think a lot of people don't get about evolutionary 
biology is that biological phenomena is extremely complex (which 
seems to contradict the apparent simplicity of the concept of natural
selection) and so one must make extra effort to not fall victim to
the numerous fallacies that us human are apt to fall into.

Regards to all,

Jim
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