In defense of statistical methods for detecting positive selection

Abstract
In a highly publicized article, Nozawa et al. (1) claimed that the branch-site model (BSM) (2, 3) was unreliable because it produced excessive false positives in their simulation experiment. BSM uses a likelihood ratio test to detect positive selection that affects particular branches and codons in protein-coding genes, indicated by accelerated nonsynonymous substitution rates. The authors' conclusion, … 1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: z.yang{at}ucl.ac.uk