On May 4, 2008, at 12:47 PM, S. Corneliussen wrote:
>
>
> True, the misreporting of valid DNA evidence and the outright  
> misuse of statistical science originated among people representing  
> science, not the history profession, though credulous historians  
> unskeptically accepted the statistical stuff.
>
>
Mr. Corneliussen, I assume that your allusion to the use (or misuse)  
of statistical science refers to the article by Fraser D. Neiman,  
Director of Archaeology at Monticello, that appeared in the William  
and Mary Quarterly circa 2000?  As I recall, it applied statistical  
analysis to the probable dates of SH's conceptions and the known  
dates of TJ's presence at Monticello to demonstrate the extreme  
improbability that anyone else was the father of her children.

This did not, of course, absolutely rule out the paternity of some  
other man whose presence at Monticello invariably correlated with  
TJ's.  And Dr. Neiman is of course an archaeologist (and a very good  
one), not a statistician.  However, along with the DNA analysis, his  
statistically-based conclusion is indeed the other piece of  
scientific--as opposed to traditionally historical--research that  
many historians, myself included, have found compelling.

I am probably not alone among such historians in lacking the  
statistical training to evaluate Dr. Neiman's study as science.  If  
his study is indeed, in your opinion as a scientist, "outright misuse  
of statistical science," could you possibly give us a brief  
explanation in laymen's terms of why you believe this to be so?

If you can, thanks very much.

--Jurretta Heckscher

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