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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