No, Steve, you weren't the only person on the planet who understood
the Nature article's findings on the Jefferson/Hemings DNA study,
though you might understandably have felt that way.
When I read it, I was appalled at the sensationalist and misleading
headline affixed to it and the scandalously sloppy reporting about its
findings. The WMQ report was about as non-scientific as it may be
possible to get. Annette Gordon-Reed's new book has revived the
prevalent willful ignorance of what the DNA test proved.
I'm what we might term a "paternity skeptic". If any scientific
evidence is produced that Thomas Jefferson sired any or all of Sally
Hemings's children, I will be happy to consider it as I would any
other scientific claim. So far the most anyone can legitimately say is
that Thomas MIGHT have been the father of ONE child and almost
certainly was not the father of one other. We have no evidence one way
or the other about the other children.
Thanks very much for the link to David Murray's article,
http://www.tjheritage.org/documents/WP--NatureRush.pdf
I am praying that Anne Pemberton has exhausted her typing fingers this
go-round, but in case she hasn't, let me BEG her not to append an
entire thread with her every minimal but fiery comment. We who
subscribe to the digest cannot merely block her postings, and she
bloats the digest unconscionably by her inability to refrain from
copying all previous posts on a subject.
Kathleen Much
On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 Steve Corneliussen wrote:
> "Much of the coverage demonstrated a remarkable flight from careful and
> skeptical reporting," Murray wrote. "All too often, the news stories,
> commentary and analysis transformed an intriguing but inconclusive
> scientific finding into a dead certainty." As far as I know, Murray in this
> article was the first high-visibility whistle blower concerning abuse of the
> special authority of science in the Hemings-TJ controversy.
<snip>
> I knew horrendous misreporting when I saw it. Yet during
> the two weeks before Murray's article appeared, I had begun to wonder if I
> was the only person on the planet who actually understood what the Nature
> DNA report did prove and what it didn't prove.
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