T think everyone is missing the point here. Virtually no one cares who sired these children! Is that going to change anything? This site would be best served if all of the Jefferson historians and nosey others would carry on their conversations in private and not through this venue. I personally am tired of deleting numerous messages while a few of you argue the parentage of a person's children which you are not even related to. Please discontinue this line of discussion and move on to something that is important to the general population, not the few learned? Individuals.
J. Martin
-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of JEFFREY D SOUTHMAYD
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2009 11:58 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: A modest proposal re the DNA debate
Don't know what his previous publications about pottery and architecture have to do with this either.
J South
You are indeed missing the most fundamental point of all: Professor
Neiman does not engage the DNA evidence. Instead, he engages the
apparent coincidences between Sally Hemings's conceptions and TJ's
sporadic presences at Monticello. He professes to have used statistical
science to prove that the coincidences prove that TJ fathered six
Hemings children.
JDS
-----Original Message-----
From: Steven T. Corneliussen <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:53 am
Subject: Re: A modest proposal re the DNA debate
> Don't know what any of this research and writing
> has to do with expertise in dna analysis, but perhaps
> I am missing something.
You are indeed missing the most fundamental point of all: Professor
Neiman does not engage the DNA evidence. Instead, he engages the
apparent coincidences between Sally Hemings's conceptions and TJ's
sporadic presences at Monticello. He professes to have used statistical
science to prove that the coincidences prove that TJ fathered six
Hemings children.
The DNA evidence does figure into the Neiman study, but only insofar as
the nonstatistical threads of the pro-paternity argument are -- or so
Dr. Neiman says, anyway -- germane in his application of something
called Bayes's theorem. He applies that to the=2
0results of the computer
simulations with which he started his study.
In this matter, Dr. Neiman was working as a scientist, precisely in
order to invoke science's special authority within a humanities debate.
But his scientific report "Coincidence or Causal Connection? The
Relationship between Thomas Jefferson’s Visits to Monticello and Sally
Hemings’s Conceptions” appeared in a leading humanities journal,
sequestered from the scrutiny of other scientists.
Professor Neiman is a distinguished scholar, and statistical science is
an important tool for him and his colleagues. See for example the
description from his Web site for the course "Analytical Methods in
Archaeology" (http://people.virginia.edu/~fn9r/anth588/index.html).
Excerpt: "This course examines quantitative analytical techniques used
in archaeology. Topics include, regression, smoothing, correlation,
measures of diversity and distance, spatial autocorrelation and Mantel
methods, seriation, ordination, and clustering."
So there's no mystery about his qualifications. In his dual roles at
U.Va. and Monticello, he's obviously superbly qualified. The mystery, in
my view since 2000 when this all started, is what caused him to become
so supremely confident that he could actually use statistical science to
resolve a two-century-old sex mystery for which the evidence is so
fragmentary anyhow.
Steven T. (Steve) Corneliussen
Poquoson, Virginia
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