| > no sign of apprehending I apprehended it perfectly well; I'm still in disagreement, since my argument is unaffected. > so contradict all available evidence It doesn't, and that's what you have missed. What I said is logically harmonious with all available evidence. By observing three fish with the same solution for antifreeze, we know that three fish have the same solution for antifreeze. This immediately contradicts any claim that all unrelated species have different solutions for antifreeze, which makes them worthy of study. It's a "black swan". As such, whatever mechanism has caused this has not been seen to work this way elsewhere. Therefore, saying "this mechanism is not seen to work this way elsewhere" is not remarkable as evidence. It's now a neutral statement which matches our expectation, and can't therefore be evidence against the mechanism. It's certainly not evidence for another mechanism. I could just as well say "I have only observed horizontal transfer in N other cases, and this is not one of those N cases, therefore it is not horizontal transfer". That would be wrong, but has equal logical merit as your claim. |
The paper doesn't claim causality either, but only argues, in my view pretty convincingly, that lateral gene transfer is a likelier explanation for the observed similarity than any other including convergent evolution. You haven't argued otherwise, but only that convergent evolution in this case is not implausible - which is true, but answers no claim that anyone is actually making.
There's no point in that that I can see, so if you want to keep on doing it, I'm afraid you'll need to do so in the absence of an interlocutor, or at least of an interlocutor who is me.