Mainly concerning scientific evidence in the Hemings-TJ discussion, here
are responses to four selected brief passages from Lyle Browning's recent
postings, in one case also involving Kevin Hardwick's postings. (And
because of the volatility of the general topic, I'll repeat my usual
disclaimer: I'm a paternity agnostic.)

1. Mr. Browning wrote: "Let the fireworks begin."

Fireworks are fine, in my view, if you mean colorfully interesting and
informative discussion -- or even if you don't mean "colorfully." But I
agree with those who surely worried that this thread would lead to another
round of shouting, name-calling, undignified snideness, and the pointless
repetition of old paternity-belief and paternity-disbelief arguments.
(Though I must say, I wish everybody would at least acknowledge, whether
or not they go on to respect the distinction, that oral tradition handed
down through generations is simply not the same as oral history.)

2. Mr. Browning wrote: "Historians without scientific backgrounds tend to
leap on the headline, and do not understand the limitations or nuances of
the  technique and use that to bolster their arguments. That is both bad
science and bad history."

My own study of what I call Hemings-Jefferson science abuse has led me to
believe that certain historians have been culpably credulous about Fraser
Neiman's statistical study of the apparent coincidences between Sally
Hemings's conceptions and TJ's sporadic presences at Monticello. (More
about that if anybody wants to discuss it -- and please note that I'm not
attacking the obvious qualitative evidentiary value of the apparent
coincidences; I'm talking about bogus quantification purporting to be
science.)

But it also seems to me that historians have generally _not_ misunderstood
or misused the DNA evidence. Instead -- and here I agree with something
that I think Mr. Browning is saying -- it has been mainly journalists who
have committed DNA science errors. It's true that you can find isolated
cases of historians misusing the DNA evidence, sometimes with an apparent
possibility that it's more a case of carelessness of phrasing than error
of understanding. More often, it seems to me, the problem is a blurring of
the difference between molecular findings and the historical
interpretation of molecular findings. But my own sense is that -- unlike
deadline-harried, sensation-seeking journalists -- historians writing
about Hemings-TJ have generally taken the time to understand what the DNA
proved and what it didn't prove.

(A big exception is the assertion that the DNA disproved the Carr
paternity possibility. In fact -- and here I'm repeating myself, though I
think it's necessary in the circs -- the DNA disproved the Carr paternity
possibility only for the case of Eston Hemings. Lawyer-historians R. B.
Bernstein and Annette Gordon-Reed, if they have been quoted accurately in
news reports, have recently committed this DNA evidence error.)

The brief passage quoted above from Mr. Browning, with its reference to
historians "without scientific backgrounds," made me look back to find the
Sept. 25 posting in which Mr. Browning mentioned a concern about
"non-scientific types writing about science." Jeffersonians participating
in this forum will recognize that as an enormous Jeffersonian heresy,
though it's commonly committed in our non-Jeffersonian age with our "two
cultures" chasm between science and the rest of life. Of course
nonscientists may and should write about science. Despite the "two
cultures" blockage, science no more belongs to scientists than war belongs
to generals or law to lawyers.

In my view it's obviously true that if nonscientists don't understand the
equations of quantum chromodynamics, they should avoid commenting about
those equations. But if genetic scientists produce molecular findings
bearing on a history question, and if those scientists then conflate the
authority of those molecular findings with the much lower authority of the
scientists' own observations about what the molecular findings may mean,
and if the editors of the world's leading science journal then promulgate
that blurry conflation not only in a misleading headline but in an
outright false pair of prominent statements, it's the duty of historians
to sort it all out.

And in my view, that's exactly what most historians mostly did when
scientists at the journal Nature irreparably skewed worldwide
understanding of the DNA scientists' report about perfectly legitimate,
but nondispositive, molecular findings.

3. Mr. Browning wrote: "Who the parent was is unknown but narrowed to less
than half a dozen Jeffersons ... ."

Please forgive me if I'm misinterpreting this. It seems to me to be saying
that the radius of the circle of paternity candidates, measured in men, is
under six -- as well it might be in historical opinion or even in
historical fact, but as it is not if the context is merely DNA science.

And please forgive me if I'm misinterpreting something related from Kevin
Hardwick's Oct. 12 revised list of the things that we can "say about Sally
Hemings that no one is likely to dispute." Item 5 on that revised list
says that the "father of one of [SH's] children -- Eston Hemings -- was
descended from Thomas Jefferson's paternal grandfather; that is to say, we
can narrow the list of possible fathers for this child to Thomas
Jefferson, TJ's brother, his paternal uncles, and his paternal cousins."

It seems to me that, at a minimum, this phrasing fails to make completely
clear what is known about the radius of the circle of paternity
candidates. That complete clarity is important because many participants
in Hemings-TJ discussions, and almost all participants in the media,
presume that the circle includes only Jeffersons who were routinely
acknowledged at the time as members of the extended Jefferson family. In
my view it's important to stipulate specifically the possibility of
paternity by some unknown carrier of the Jefferson DNA marker within the
enslaved population. We know that the DNA marker crossed the race line. We
do not know whether it crossed the race line in a generation earlier than
the one that produced Eston Hemings. Now, this may well be an outlandish
possibility in terms of the historical evidence. But because the DNA
evidence says nothing whatsoever about it, as a matter of DNA science the
circle of paternity candidates must actually be defined as wider than the
circle of males in the known, acknowledged, extended Jefferson family. As
a matter of DNA science, we simply do not know the radius of the circle of
paternity candidates. (And yes, here I have repeated myself nearly
verbatim, but in this case it seemed necessary.)

4. Mr. Browning wrote: "If [TJ] and SH had children, so be it. I simply
don't care. But I do care when scientific evidence is taken out of context
and misused."

Zackly.

And please let me add: Amen.

So please let me repeat -- partly self-interestedly, I freely admit --
that that's why I wrote the essay "Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson and the
Authority of Science," which has as its thumbnail summary "Whether or not
Hemings and Jefferson had children together, misreported DNA and misused
statistics have skewed the paternity debate, discrediting science itself,"
and which is freely available at http://www.tjscience.org/.

Thanks.

Steve Corneliussen

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