Thanks very much, Mr. Kukla.

You say, below, that "[a]ll the responsible participants in the ongoing 
discussion have recognized the specific limits about what the DNA results 
'say' and about where they are silent." You also mention "the basic 
scientific matters upon which [you] believe all responsible parties to the 
ongoing discussion agree."

In fairness, I should acknowledge the key qualifier _responsible_. But in 
fact my point is that even at this late stage, a decade after Nature's 
editors misled the world, and even if you narrow it down to responsible 
parties, some in fact still do _not_ get it. (And I note that I said in the 
first place that I thought historians mostly got it right from the start.)

That's why I cited that erroneous recent scientific press release from an 
English university associated with some of the Jefferson DNA work. Those 
people are, or should be, responsible parties.

And it's why I included the erroneous recent assertion by Professor Lori 
Andrews. Please consider that the journal Science is published by the 
world's largest scientific organization. It has enormous credibility. 
Science has conferred on Professor Andrews substantial status as a leading 
ethicist for what she calls biohistory, specifically including Hemings-TJ 
biohistory. In my view she too is, or anyway should be, a responsible 
participant in the Hemings-TJ discussion.

There are other examples as well, including the misleading -- and arguably 
just false -- portrayal of Hemings-TJ DNA in a fairly recent feature article 
on DNA evidence in American Heritage's magazine _Invention and Technology_.

And if you widen "responsible" to include all who ought to be, and could be, 
responsible in the media, the problem is even more pronounced.

Yes, we are "basically in agreement about the biology" in this forum and in 
academe and to some extent elsewhere. But that doesn't mean that the biology 
isn't still substantially misunderstood. In my view, it's still a problem.

An extra note: one thing that has indeed been disputed, but not debated very 
much at all, is what certain historians take to be "statistical evidence" of 
the paternity.

I'll also post a reply to Mr. Wiencek's response.

Thanks very much.

Steven T. Corneliussen
Poquoson, Virginia
(also Jefferson Lab)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jon Kukla" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, April 25, 2008 11:50 AM
Subject: Re: [VA-HIST] Jefferson on BookTV


>I haven't checked the VA Book! podcast or the BookTV video, but I think Dr.
> Corneliussen and I (and many others) are basically in agreement about the
> biology - which is what I was trying to suggest in that brief comment 
> during
> the VA Book! session on New Writings about Jefferson.
>   Very succinctly, this is what my comment was trying to express:  All the
> responsible participants in the ongoing discussion have recognized the
> specific limits about what the DNA results "say" and about where they are
> silent.
>   For example, in *Mr. Jefferson's Women* (NY: Knopf, 2007, p. 252 note 
> 44)
> I quote Dr. Kenneth K. Kidd, a Yale professor of genetics, whose careful
> language neatly reflects the biological conclusions and silences :
>   "The data do prove that Thomas Woodson was not the son of Thomas
>    Jefferson or any close male-line relative of Jefferson. The Carr
> brothers
>    are also excluded from being fathers of Eston [Hemings] or Thomas
>    Woodson. Thus, as with modern day paternity testing, we can prove
>    a man is/was not the father, but we cannot absolutely prove a man 
> is/was
>    the father."
> And Kidd's language here reflects the recognition, elsewhere in the
> reporting, of a biological connection between *one of* Sally Hemings's
> children, Eston Hemings, and *either* Thomas Jefferson or another close
> male-line relative.   These are the basic scientific matters upon which I
> believe all responsible parties to the ongoing discussion agree.  The 
> point
> of my comment in the VA Book! session, then, seems to be similar to that
> being made by Dr. Corneliussen - which is simply that when we go beyond 
> the
> very specific and limited findings of the DNA testing, we must rely once
> again on a variety of conventional historical sources about which 
> reasonable
> people may continue to disagree. We are, I think, agreed on the basic
> biological findings and their limits.
>   My chapter on Sally Hemings in *Mr. Jefferson's Women* explains the
> conclusions I draw from my examination of all the evidence. Its only a
> chapter-length discussion - and since virtually anything one can say on 
> the
> subject has been vigorously disputed by somewhere by someone, the chapter
> basically presents my conclusions without trying to refute others. For the
> benefit of readers who haven't been following this debate since the early
> 1970s, I wrote a very lengthy endnote (p. 248-248 n 2) describing and
> referring interested readers to the most important published discussions
> since Fawn Brodie's 1974 biography - and summarized my own previous
> participation in those debates.
> -- 
> Jon Kukla
> www.JonKukla.com <http://www.jonkukla.com/>
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 11:27 PM, S. Corneliussen 
> <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>
>
>> (Is the electronic coast now clear for resumption of discussions? I'll
>> try.)
>>
>> Thanks very much, Henry Wiencek, for posting notice of this BookTV
>> discussion, and for moderating it. I learned a lot and enjoyed it a lot.
>>
>> Those who watched will recall that a good bit of the discussion focused 
>> on
>> the Hemings-Jefferson paternity controversy. In my case, that's 
>> interesting
>> not so much because of the paternity question itself -- about which I'm a
>> head-scratching agnostic -- but because I make my living at the
>> intersections of science and society. I've studied the use and misuse of
>> science in the Hemings-TJ debate since the DNA news first appeared nearly
>> ten years ago. Here's why I bring up the Hemings-TJ 
>> techno-historiography:
>>
>> At one point in the broadcast Jon Kukla, I believe it was, remarked that 
>> in
>> the decade since the DNA evidence appeared, everyone involved in the
>> discussion has come to agree on what the DNA did and did not prove. Now, 
>> it
>> does seem to me that that's always been mostly true for historians, who
>> mostly avoided being misled by the journal Nature's original
>> misrepresentation of what the DNA scientists actually reported about 
>> their
>> molecular findings. And it does seem to me that it has been getting 
>> closer
>> to mostly true in the media. But I don't think it's fully true, and I 
>> think
>> it matters. So I offer two comments:
>>
>> First, unless I misunderstand something fundamental -- and someone please
>> tell me if I do -- a common Hemings-TJ DNA science error cropped up right 
>> on
>> that TV broadcast. Alan Pell Crawford at one point said of the DNA, "the
>> Carr boys -- it cleared them." Yes, the DNA showed that no Carr fathered
>> Eston Hemings. But the DNA tells absolutely nothing about any other 
>> Hemings
>> child. This DNA science error also appeared last year in Maura 
>> Singleton's
>> fine U.Va. Magazine recap of the Hemings-TJ controversy.
>>
>> Second, it's not uncommon even nowadays to find someone saying,
>> erroneously, in print or in a broadcast, that the DNA itself -- as 
>> opposed
>> to historical evidence seen in the light of DNA findings -- proved TJ to
>> have been Eston's dad, or even that the DNA proved TJ the dad of all the
>> children. Two notable examples:
>>
>> * Lori B. Andrews, a law professor, led a group whose report 
>> "Constructing
>> Ethical Guidelines for Biohistory" appeared in the magazine Science on 
>> April
>> 9, 2004. They plainly understood that the DNA by itself did not prove
>> paternity. Yet in an October 7, 2007, article in the Sunday magazine 
>> Parade,
>> Professor Andrews asserted, erroneously, that the DNA indicated that TJ
>> fathered a Hemings child.
>> http://www.parade.com/articles/editions/2007/edition_10-07-2007/Secrets_from_the_Grave
>>
>> * A March 28, 2007, University of Leicester scientific press release 
>> opened
>> by asserting that nearly a decade earlier, a team of DNA scientists 
>> "showed
>> that Thomas Jefferson had fathered at least one of the sons of Sally
>> Hemings." http://www.physorg.com/news94279329.html
>>
>> Especially in the latter of those two cases, it's possible to torture out 
>> a
>> feeble claim that if you look deeply enough, you'll see that underlying 
>> the
>> erroneous scientific claim, there's actually a compensating supposition 
>> that
>> historical interpretation is part of DNA science. In other cases, this 
>> sort
>> of blurring of the distinction between molecular findings and historical
>> interpretation is a little more obvious. But I still run across, or 
>> people
>> send me, public claims that science itself flat outright proved the
>> paternity.
>>
>> Ten years ago the editors at Nature, acting without the reporting DNA
>> scientists' consent, gave the world a bad headline on the scientists'
>> report. Worse, alongside the accompanying commentary piece by a 
>> geneticist
>> and Joseph Ellis, they published an outright false stand-first summary 
>> and
>> an outright false illustration caption. The world press broke the news
>> accordingly. Thereafter, we all had to chase a silly goose. All of that 
>> is
>> well known already, but my point today is this:
>>
>> I agree that we chase that silly goose less now than we did in late 1998
>> and in 1999. But we do still chase it.
>>
>> It's too bad, really. The debate is confusing and contentious enough
>> without the goose that Nature loosed.
>>
>> It's too bad also because the distraction hindered understanding 
>> worldwide.
>> It misled people into thinking that the character of the claimed 
>> historical
>> proof was the same as the character of a forensic DNA proof in a crime 
>> case.
>> I believe that that misunderstanding stopped people from independently
>> assessing historical interpretations.
>>
>> And it's also too bad because the special authority of science matters in
>> public discussion, as seen in public issues from global overheating to 
>> the
>> side effects of immunizations. You'd think that the editors of the 
>> world's
>> leading science forum, the journal Nature, would know that.
>>
>> Thanks for indulging this bit of science nerdery, and please indulge one
>> more personal note: Because I've been called a racist before for talking
>> like this, I repeat that I'm actually a paternity agnostic. And I note 
>> that
>> in this forum, the racism charge would stand in preposterous counterpoint 
>> to
>> previous postings of  mine -- postings that led to charges of political
>> correctness because I advocated
>> * improved understanding of, and heightened respect for, the
>>  self-emancipators of May 1861 who made Fort Monroe the
>>  most under-recognized crisis of the early twenty-first century
>>  for American history lovers, and
>> * thoughtful reconsideration of the unexamined recycling of
>>  slavery-era language connoting perverted slavery-era illogic.
>>
>> Steven T. Corneliussen
>> Poquoson, Virginia
>> (and Jefferson Lab, Newport News)
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Henry Wiencek" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 9:12 PM
>> Subject: [VA-HIST] Jefferson on BookTV
>>
>>
>> There was a fascinating panel on Thomas Jefferson at the Virginia 
>> Festival
>> of the Book, and it's going to be on cable this weekend on BookTV which 
>> is
>> on CSpan:
>>
>> Saturday at 11:00 AM, and Sunday at 6:00 AM
>> 2008 Virginia Festival of the Book - Thomas Jefferson Panel
>> Authors: Jeremy Bailey; Alan Pell Crawford; Jon Kukla
>> [and myself, the uncredited Moderator.]
>>
>> A very lively discussion, with a "full and frank, fair and balanced" 
>> airing
>> of issues of continuing interest to the members of the list.
>>
>> Henry Wiencek
>> Charlottesville
>>
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