[Retransmitting from my Jefferson Lab e-mail because the copy I
transmitted from home never appeared.]

A friend who knows of my interest in the ways in which the authority of
science is invoked in the Hemings-TJ controversy was visiting a new Thomas
Jefferson Foundation exhibit and jotted down this caption: "Based on
documentary, scientific, and statistical studies and oral history, many
historians now believe that years after his wife's death Thomas Jefferson
was the father of Sally Hemings' children." The friend is pretty sure that
that's very close to verbatim.

Leaving aside the old discussion about oral history vs. oral tradition,
and concerning only the mention of statistics: It's possible that all
that's meant is, for example, Winthrop Jordan's often-recalled
nonquantitative observations about the qualitatively intriguing Hemings-TJ
Monticello conceptions coincidences. But in the past, the TJF has, I
believe, explicitly cited the outright quantitative statistical study that
appeared in the William and Mary Quarterly nearly a decade ago. That study
confidently invoked the full authority of statistical science in
professing to have proven TJ's paternity of six Hemings children. That
quantitative, not just qualitative, study involved probability theory,
Monte Carlo simulations, and Bayes's theorem.

I would be grateful for answers or comments on three questions: Does
anybody know if the TJF still means deliberately to cite that study as
legitimate scientific evidence? Does anybody know if any other such
_quantitative_ statistical study has appeared anywhere? If so, does
anybody know if the TJF is now citing any such study?

Thanks very much.

Steve Corneliussen
Poquoson, Virginia

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