DISTANCES AND STATISTICS

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Abstract
- Felsenstein's claim of approximate additivity for sequence differences is based on an unjustified model, as is his proposed nonadditive fitting method. His advocacy of the nonnegativity restriction on fitted branch lengths rests on the false premise that distances are additive. His proposed significance test confounds sampling error with departures from additivity and rests on false assumptions of additivity and of independence of distances. His additive fitting program lacks any useful facility for recognizing ambiguities in distance data.