Adaptation vs Drift at Evolution Ottawa 2012

I've been looking over the program for the First Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology to be held in Ottawa, Canada next week [Evolution Ottawa].

The talks are divided into sessions with six short presentations per session. Here's the list of sessions with the words "adaptation" or "selection" in the title.

Adaptation 1
Adaptation 2
Adaptation 3
Adaptation 4
Adaptation 5
Adaptation 6
Adaptation 7
Adaptation 8
Adaptation 9
Adaptation 10
Adaptation and Evolutionary Genetics
Sexual Selection and Mating Systems 1
Sexual Selection and Mating Systems 2
Sexual Selection and Mating Systems 3
Sexual Selection and Mating Systems 4
Sexual Selection and Mating Systems 5
Sexual Selection and Mating Systems 6
Sexual Selection and Mating Systems 7
Sexual Selection and Mating Systems 8
Sexual Selection and Mating Systems 9
Sexual Selection and Mating Systems 10
Sexual Selection and Mating Systems 11
Sexual Selection and Mating Systems 12
Sexual Selection and Mating Systems 13
Sexual Selection and Mating Systems 14
Sexual Selection and Mating Systems 15
Mating Systems and Sexual Selection 1
Mating Systems and Sexual Selection 2
Adaptation and Experimental Evolution 1
Adaptation and Experimental Evolution 2
Sexual Selection and Experimental Evolution
Adaptation and Gene Flow
Adaptation and Genomics
Adaptation and Evolutionary Ecolgy 1
Adaptation and Evolutionary Ecolgy 2
Adaptation and Evolutionary Ecolgy 3
Adaptation and Evolutionary Ecolgy 4
Adaptation and Evolutionary Ecolgy 5
Natural Selection in the Wild: from Genotype to Phenotype

Here's the list of sessions with "Random Genetic Drift" or Neutral" in their titles.

Isn't that strange? There are many more neutral alleles than beneficial alleles and random genetic drift is overwhelmingly the most common mechanism of evolution. I guess most evolutionary biologists have a huge bias toward studying adaptation. One can't help but wonder how many studies were abandoned when the investigators discovered that they couldn't prove natural selection was involved.

Why weren't those studies completed and published as examples of random genetic drift?

There are more than one thousand talks being given at this meeting and only five (5) have the word "drift" in their title—and one of those is about education!

---