To: ATTENTION! BILL O'REILLY
|
DOUBLE- HELIX
HOAXES
|
 - Star-Magazine-financed
paternity test worthless
|
-
-
- Hypocrisy abounds in
this Age
of Clinton, a
Postmodern Oz rife with
- constitutional
deconstruction and semantic subversion, a virtual
surreality polymarked
by presidential alleles peccantly misplaced or, in the case
of Jefferson,
posthumously misappropriated.
--Mia T, THE
OTHER NIXON
-
JEFFERSON PATERNITY:
- DOUBLE HELIX HOAX?
-
- 11/2/98
-
- by Mia T
-
- DNA, the acronym
for
- the double helix tongue
twister
- deoxyribonucleic
acid,
- became the Scotch Tape of
forensic identification
- during the sanguinary OJ
Era.
-
- Now that we are sloshing
through the Semen Age of Clinton,
- DNA analysis has again
resurfaced as a tool of lawyers
- and the sociopaths they
defend.
-
- When the lay public hears
"DNA match,"
- it reflexively thinks
"certain identity,"
- not understanding that
results are expressed
- in terms of a probability
of chance occurrence.
-
- Nonetheless, it would not
be an overstatement to say
- that Kenneth Starr
established conclusively
- that the semen on Monica's
navy blue Gap dress was clinton's.
-
- RFLP analysis of clinton's
DNA determined
- that the frequency of the
matching genetic markers
- extracted from the
presidential fluids
- is characteristic of one
out of 7.87 trillion Caucasians.
-
- The world population is
only around 5 or so billion.
- So, statistically
speaking,
- you would have to search
outer space to find another match.
- Maybe clinton lackey Glenn
will find it...
-
- Similarly, the blood
matches to OJ Simpson's DNA
- (RFLP,
Cellmark)
- yielded probabilities as
rare as 1 in 150 billion,
- and again, virtual
identity.
-
- Which brings me to the DNA
analysis
- that purports to answer
the long-standing historical controversy:
- Did Thomas Jefferson
father the children of Sally Hemings?
-
- In my opinion, this study
is junk science.
- Identification is more
apparent than real.
- The methodology is, at
best, vaguely described and/or sloppy,
- and at worst, a fraud
(possibly concocted by a clinton/Carville cabal
- together with those 400
hog-and-bow-tied-save-clinton,
- retrograde-obsessing
historiographers.
- It is illuminating in this
regard that for the past week
- Carville had been shopping
the story to the press
- and one of the
hog-and-bow-tied 400 was an author of the study).
-
- The goal, according to the
authors of the study, Eugene A. Foster, et al.,
- was "to throw some
scientific light on the dispute." (1)
- An odd way of putting
it...a goal not of scientific precision but of scientific
aura.
-
- And the result of the
analysis is hardly the incontrovertible paternity
- currently being fed to an
unwitting press and a nonplussed public.
-
- The theory of the
study
-
- Because, apart from
occasional mutations,
- the Y chromosome is passed
unchanged from father to son,
- DNA analysis of the Y
chromosome can reveal
- whether or not individuals
are likely to be male-line relatives.
-
- The study analyzed DNA
from the Y chromosomes of: "five male-line
- descendants of two sons of
the president's paternal uncle, Field
- Jefferson; five male-line
descendants of two sons of Thomas Woodson; one
- male-line descendant of
Eston Hemings Jefferson; and three male-line
- descendants of three sons
of John Carr, grandfather of Samuel and Peter
- Carr. No Y-chromosome data
were available from male-line
- descendants of President
Thomas Jefferson because he had no surviving
- sons."
-
- With all the spinning
bi-allelic markers, microsatellites,
- mini-satellites,
haplotypes at various and sundry loci,
- with even the "rare"
haplotype that
- "has never been observed
outside the Jefferson family,
- and has not been found in
670 European men (more than 1,200 worldwide)
- typed with the
microsatellites or 308 European men (690
worldwide)"(2)
- we are left with the
following result buried amid
- the semblance of rarity
and exactitude:
-
- "The simplest and most
probable explanations for our molecular findings
- are that Thomas Jefferson,
rather than one of the Carr brothers, was the
- father of Eston Hemings
Jefferson, and that Thomas Woodson was not
- Thomas Jefferson's son.
The frequency of the Jefferson haplotype is less
- than 0.1 per cent, so our
molecular evidence is at least 100 times more
- likely if the president
was the father of Eston Hemings Jefferson than
- if someone unrelated was
the father.
-
- We cannot completely rule
out other explanations of our findings based
- on illegitimacy in various
lines of descent. For example, a male-line
- descendant of Field
Jefferson could possibly have illegitimately
- fathered an ancestor of
the presumed male-line descendant of Eston. But
- in the absence of
historical evidence to support such possibilities, we
- consider them to be
unlikely."(3)
-
- One in 100 is hardly the
clinton semen DNA result of 1 in 7.87 trillion
- or even the OJ blood DNA
result of 1 in 150 billion.
- One in 100 is meaningful
only in its
- non-elimination of
Jefferson as the father of Eston Hemings Jefferson.
- And even that modest
conclusion assumes an unbroken line of male-line descendants,
tenuous in a culture notorious for uncertain
paternity.
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
- 1. Eugene A. Foster, et
al.; Nature; 5 November 1998
-
- 2. Ibid.
-
- 3.
Ibid.>>
-
- -----------------
-
- JEFFERSON DNA ANALYSIS
REVEALED A DIRTY LITTLE SECRET...
-
- by Mia T
-
- The Jefferson DNA analysis
revealed a dirty little secret.
- And it has nothing to do
with Jefferson.
- The so-called literati are
scientific illiterates.
-
- Since this story hit the
wires,
- that crowd, barely able to
contain its glee,
- has been making much ado
about nothing conclusive...
-
- The Jefferson DNA analysis
is not definitive.
- Far from it.
- At best, it merely fails
to exclude the possibility
- that one Hemings child,
Eston Hemings Jefferson, was fathered by Jefferson.
- The probability of a
chance occurrence of this result is 1 in 100.
-
- Said another
way,
- the DNA of one out of
every one hundred males
- randomly plucked from the
general population
- would be consistent with
paternity.
-
- Not very compelling proof
of Jefferson's paternity.
-
- Yet a clueless press is
buying the spin from the
- clinton/Carville
inspired
- 400
hog-and-bow-tied-save-clinton,
- retrograde-obsessing
historiographers.
-
- Cinder Stanton, a
Jefferson scholar at
- the Monticello
International Center,
- when asked today
(Washington Journal, C-SPAN)
- whether she believed the
DNA "study" was politically motivated,
- noted that the publication
date of the 5 November Nature article
- was pushed
forward
- [to a pre-election
release by forces unknown, I would add].
-
- ----------------------
-
- McLAUGHLIN: JEFFERSON
PATERNITY HUMBUG
-
- by Mia T
-
- John McLaughlin (PBS)
today hosted
- a very interesting
discussion on the Jefferson-DNA study
- that included the study's
Oxford-based author.
-
- McLaughlin, schooled in
jesuitical reasoning,
- is not one to miss an
obvious fraud.
- McLaughlin's thesis was
the one I proffered the other day, namely:
- The so-called DNA analysis
did not prove Thomas Jefferson paternity.
- Indeed, McLaughlin
confirmed with the FBI
- that this putative proof
of paternity would never hold up in court.
-
- In fact, the more honest
conclusion would have not named
- Thomas Jefferson as the
starting point in the so-called unbroken sequence.
- The putative unbroken
male-line of descent was not from Thomas
- but from Thomas' uncle,
Field Jefferson.
- To conclude Thomas
Jefferson paternity assumes, among other things,
- that Field and Thomas'
father, Peter had the same father,
- and that there were
unbroken lines of male-line descendants
- in both the Hemings and
Jefferson lineage,
- a tenuous assumption in a
culture notorious for uncertain paternity.
-
- Moreover, Thomas' brother,
Randolph had six sons,
- and Uncle Field Jefferson
son(s) produced 11 males.
- All Sally Hemings'
contemporaries,
- the 17 sons plus their
daddies often romped round Monticello
- with their "rare"
Jeffersonian Y chromosome haplotype
- intact and ready for
action (assuming, of course, their own legitimacy).
- And let us not forget
those
- 1 in 100 random males in
the purlieus of Monticello
- with that very same
haplotype.
-
- Yet, given all this, the
science-illiterate literati
- are now claiming that the
study proved Thomas Jefferson paternity.
- They are either ignorant
fools or are assuming that that we are...
-
- Is this another clinton
scam being perpetrated on the world?
- Clinton has destroyed our
society,
- subverted the
Constitution,
- destabilized the
tripartite balance of power,
- imperiled the national
security,
- rewritten
history--revising presidential reputations downward to meet his
pitiful one.
-
- And now clinton is
infecting science with his insidious brand of fraud.
- All this destruction just
to save his own sorry fat butt.
- How sad.
-
-
- PATERNITY HYPE VISITS
MONTICELLO
-
-
- The Washington
Post
-
-
- November 15, 1998 David
Murray
-
-
-
- It was, without doubt, the
most heavily covered
- science story of the year:
Researchers found a genetic
- match between Thomas
Jefferson's family line and a
- distant descendant of the
last-born son of one of his
- slaves, Sally Hemings.
More than 295 editorial and
- news citations have
appeared in the Nexis database
- so far, along with eight
pieces in the news weeklies
- and 31 broadcast
transcripts, all based on the
- disclosure of the findings
in the Nov. 5 issue of the
- science journal Nature,
which was released at the end
- of October.
-
- Much of the coverage
demonstrated a remarkable
- flight from careful and
skeptical reporting. All too
- often, the news stories,
commentary and analysis
- transformed an intriguing
but inconclusive scientific
- finding into a dead
certainty. Several journalists went
- on to turn the DNA results
into some sort of
- referendum on the current
state of race relations and
- presidential
politics.
-
- Some outlets broke the
news with appropriate
- qualifiers: "DNA Test
Finds Evidence of Jefferson
- Child by Slave," wrote the
New York Times; "Tests
- Link Jefferson, Slave's
Son; DNA Study Suggests a
- Monticello Liaison," said
The Washington Post.
-
- But many accounts
contained strong assertions that
- paternity had been
"proven," "conclusively
- demonstrated" or
"resolved." Examples include:
-
- • "DNA Link;
Paternity Proved," the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot;
-
- • "Adulterer on
Mt. Rushmore," the Des Moines Register,
including the charge of "statutory rape"; and
-
- •"A boost for
President Clinton in fighting impeachment
. . . evidence proves Jefferson fathered
at least one child by his
slave," CNN.
-
-
-
- National Public Radio's
Nov. 1 account was typical.
- Correspondent Daniel
Zwerdling announced: "The
- proof is finally in. The
president not only did have an
- illicit sexual affair, he
fathered at least one child with
- his lover . . . DNA
testing has ended [that] debate."
- U.S. News & World
Report even ran a genealogical
- chart that showed a direct
line between Jefferson and
- the modern descendant of
Eston Hemings.
-
- What the Nature article
did by reporting a link
- between the Jefferson
family and kin of Eston
- Hemings was to add
enticing new evidence to a
- long-running historical
debate. Before those findings,
- historians could only
point to circumstantial evidence
- implicating Thomas
Jefferson rather than one of his
- male-line relatives. The
new DNA match with one
- descendant strengthens
that circumstantial evidence.
- With these findings the
balance shifts, suspicions
- become
probabilities.
-
- But certainty still eludes
us.
-
- The best characterization
of what has--and has
- not--been "proven" by the
combination of
- circumstantial historical
evidence and the DNA
- findings is found in the
original Nature report,
- co-authored by retired
pathologist Eugene Foster:
-
- "The simplest and most
probable explanation for our
- molecular findings are
that Thomas Jefferson, rather
- than one of the Carr
brothers [sons of Jefferson's
- sister, not paternal-line
carriers], was the father of
- Eston Hemings . . . . We
cannot completely rule out
- other explanations of our
findings based on
- illegitimacy in various
lines of descent."
-
- After the hyperbolic
coverage began flourishing,
- Foster wrote a letter to
the New York Times calling it
- "regrettable that
[our] statement has been transmuted
- into assertions that all
doubt had been removed." The
- Nov. 9 letter also said,
"The genetic findings my
- collaborators and I
reported . . . do not prove that
- Thomas Jefferson was the
father of one of Sally
- Hemings's children. We
never made that claim. Nor
- do we believe that the
Y-chromosome type we found
- in Hemings's descendant
occurs only in the members
- of the Jefferson family .
. . . this study could not
- prove anything
conclusively . . . . "
-
- The original Nature
article contained ample warning
- signs. The Jefferson case,
the magazine pointed out,
- has always depended on the
oral history of putative
- descendants and charges
first lodged by political
- opponents in 1802 that
Jefferson fathered the
- first-born son of Hemings,
Thomas Woodson.
-
- Descendants of Woodson
were shown in the Nature
- research to have no DNA
match with Jefferson.
- Undaunted, U.S. News
suggested that Jefferson might
- indeed be the father of
Woodson, the DNA evidence
- having been lost through
subsequent illegitimacy in
- the Woodson line.
Jefferson defenders have used that
- same line of reasoning to
explain away the presence
- of a Thomas Jefferson DNA
match in the case of
- Eston Hemings. An
additional qualifier is that
- Thomas Jefferson was 65
years old and Sally
- Hemings 37, rather than
the 14-year-old ingenue of
- folklore, in the year that
Eston was born.
-
- Thomas Jefferson himself
was not tested, only
- descendants of his
paternal uncle, Field Jefferson.
- This fact troubles some
forensic geneticists working
- professionally in DNA
paternity cases.
-
- What did the DNA match
positively establish? The
- findings show a
probability that the DNA of Eston
- shows a descent from some
male in the Jefferson
- paternal line, rather than
being a randomly occurring
- match from someone in the
general population, which
- is put at a 100-to-1
chance. A simple analogy would
- be recovering from a
victim a bullet that has
- distinctive rifle-barrel
markings enabling it to be
- traced. The research has
shown that said rifle was
- owned by males of the
Jefferson family. But who
- pulled the
trigger?
-
- The story broke the
weekend before Election Day,
- and political as well as
competitive forces appeared
- to drive the timing.
Nature's editors typically give
- reporters a few days'
advance notice on research
- reports that appear in the
magazine, though stories
- about those reports are
normally embargoed until the
- date of the magazine's
publication--in this instance,
- Thursday, Nov. 5. But,
under pressure from news
- outlets that heard rumors
of the findings and feared
- getting scooped, Nature
agreed to the early release
- date of Friday, Oct. 30.
That allowed the weekend
- papers and the Monday
editions of the news weeklies
- to cover the
controversy.
-
- Accompanying the findings
in Nature was a
- commentary by Joseph Ellis
of Mount Holyoke
- College in Massachusetts,
explicitly comparing the
- alleged actions of
Jefferson to those of the current
- president. Some critics
questioned the timing of the
- Nature publication. "Just
two days before the
- election, the (DNA) story
gave the everybody-does-it
- line both pedigree and
prestige," wrote columnist
- Charles Krauthammer.
"Accident? Two days before
- that, a full-page ad
appeared in the New York Times
- opposing Clinton's
impeachment. Among the signers:
- the co-author of the
article [Ellis] in Nature
- pronouncing the DNA data
definitive, in which he
- noted wryly the Hemings
report's 'impeccable timing.'"
-
- Foster, too, was troubled
by the Nature commentary.
- He told the Washington
Times on Nov. 10, "They
- unnecessarily politicized
something that was intended
- to be a piece of
scientific work."
-
- The consequences of the
media rush to judgment are
- hardly benign. To enlist
the facts of Jefferson as a
- sort of perverse character
witness in our current
- seamy scandal is to
subordinate the purposes of
- science to the dubious and
shifting needs of politics.
-
- Just as troubling is the
implication in some media
- reports that blacks in
America should be somehow
- pinning their standing in
America's destiny on the
- outcome of DNA
tests.
-
- By making science submit
to our desires to satisfy
- our political or racial
hopes, we ultimately damage
- the capacity to understand
ourselves.
-
- But beyond harm done to
science, it is demeaning to
- Jefferson and Hemings to
make their role in our
- shared destiny a matter of
genetic contingency. What
- if today's (or, for that
matter, tomorrow's) DNA facts
- had shown otherwise?
Should African Americans be
- regarded as historically
diminished? In fact, isn't our
- insistent preoccupation
with the body, rather than
- concerns of the spirit and
the character, precisely how
- we have impeded our racial
understanding?
-
- The contest over Thomas
Jefferson's paternity will in
- all probability go on. But
as that debate continues,
- may blacks and whites,
searching for our common
- American bond, continue to
seek kinship in
- Jefferson's ideals as
earnestly as it has been sought in
- our genetics.
-
- David Murray is director
of research at the Statistical
- Assessment Service, a
nonprofit science and public
- policy organization in
Washington.
-
- © Copyright 1998 The
Washington Post Company
-
-
-
- Evidence of a bum rap for
Jefferson?
-
- Washington
Times
-
- Jan 3, 1999. Reed
Irvine
-
-
- The respected British
scientific journal, Nature, is suffering acute
- embarrassment over the
articles it published last month claiming a study
- based on DNA analysis had
proven beyond reasonable doubt that Thomas
- Jefferson had fathered a
son by Sally Hemings, one of his slaves.
-
- Its January issue will
acknowledge that its Novermber issue overstated the
- evidence of Jefferson's
paternity.
-
- The article was introduced
with this statement by the editors of Nature:
- "The scandals involving
American presidents are nothing new. In 1802,
- President Thomas Jefferson
was accused of fathering a child by Sally
- Hemings, one of his
slaves. A molecular genetics study in the Nov. 5 issue
- of Nature finally puts the
affair to rest, establishing beyond reasonable
- doubt Thomas Jefferson's
relationship to Sally Hemings' sons.
-
- The article by Dr. Eugene
Foster and others described a study of Y
- chromosomes from the
male-line descendants of Jefferson's paternal uncle,
- Field Jefferson, and
male-line descendants of two of Sally Hemings' sons,
- her first-born, Thomas
Woodson and her last son, Eston Hemings Jefferson.
- Five male descendants of
Jefferson's uncle were used in this study because
- Thomas Jefferson had no
sons to carry on the line. The chromosomes of the
- five descendants of Field
Jefferson were found to share an uncommon
- distinctive
characteristic.
-
- That characteristic was
not found in any of the five descendants of Hemings'
- first son, Thomas Woodson,
proving Jefferson was not his father -- the
- allegation published by a
Richmond newspaper in 1802 and a claim that
- Woodson's descendants
believed to be true. There was only one descendant of
- Eston in the study. His Y
chromosomes had the distinctive Jefferson
- characteristic. That was
what Nature trumpeted as proving beyond reasonable
- doubt Thomas Jefferson's
relationship to Sally Hemings's sons.
-
- The article itself was a
tad more cautious. It allowed that there were other
- remote possibilities that
someone other than Jefferson fathered Eston, but
- the authors said, "In the
absence of historical evidence to support such
- possibilities, we consider
them to be unlikely." But the title of the
- article threw all such
caution to the wind. It read, "Jefferson fathered
- slave's last
child."
-
- This resulted in numerous
articles based on the belief that Jefferson was
- guilty as charged.
Historian Joseph Ellis wrote, "Our heroes -- and
- especially presidents --
are not gods or saints, but flesh-and-blood humans,
- with all the frailties and
imperfections that this entails. Others were more
- critical, calling
Jefferson a hypocrite and perhaps even a rapist. One
of
- the worst was written by
Christopher Hitchens and published in the Nation.
- He suggested that
Jefferson be described as "the slave-owning serial
- flogger, sex addict and
kinsman to ax murderers."
-
- Richard Cohen, writing in
The Washington Post Magazine, implied that
- Jefferson had impregnated
Sally Hemings when she was only 14 or 15 years
- old. He didn't know that
the Nature article had reported that the genetic
- evidence proved that
Jefferson was not the father of Sally's first child,
- Thomas Woodson. Mr. Cohen
said he had always believed Jefferson had fathered
Sally's children and that it
was now a dead certainty. He said the Hemings
story made Jefferson harder,
meaner, selfish -- an exploiter.
-
- Messrs. Hitchens, Cohen
and others like them will not welcome the news that
- the editors of Nature have
admitted that the Foster article omitted facts
- that make it clear that
the analysis of the chromosomes did not come close
- to proving Jefferson
fathered any of Hemings' children. Since publishing
Mr.
- Foster's article, the
editors have learned that Thomas Jefferson was only
- one of nine living
Jeffersons who might have fathered Eston, passing on
to
- him the chromosomes with
the distinctive Jefferson characteristic.
-
- The most probable
candidate, according to Herbert Barger, an authority
on
- Jefferson family history,
was Jefferson's forgotten younger brother,
- Randolph. He says
Randolph's wife died around 1793 and he didn't remarry
- until 1810. He was a
frequent visitor to Monticello, and a slave oral
- history described him as
liking to play the fiddle and dance with
- Jefferson's slaves. Mr.
Barger told Mr. Foster about Randolph and the seven
- other Jefferson men who
could have fathered children by Hemings. A Nature
- editor says Mr. Foster did
not share this information with them and that he
- approved the headline that
declared without any qualification that Jefferson
- was Eston's
father.
-
- Nature's admission that
its article was flawed and misleading will be
- particularly embarrassing
for historian Joseph Ellis, author of "American
- Sphinx: The Character of
Thomas Jefferson." Persuaded by the Foster study,
- Mr. Ellis had switched
from a critic of the Hemings story to a believer. He
- co-authored an article for
Nature that accompanied the Foster article. The
- article called attention
to many parallels between Jefferson and Bill
- Clinton, but it omitted
one of the most striking parallels that nearly all
- the media had
overlooked.
-
- That is the allegation
that Mr. Clinton, like Jefferson, fathered a black
- son. The family of the
boy's mother wants a paternity test for Mr. Clinton.
- They believe DNA will
prove the president is the deadbeat dad of 14-year-old
- Danny.
-
6 Posted on 01/05/2000 07:55:50 PST by Mia T
To: ATTENTION! BILL O'REILLY
|
DOUBLE- HELIX
HOAXES
|
- Star-Magazine-financed
paternity test worthless
|
-
-
- Hypocrisy abounds in
this Age
of Clinton, a
Postmodern Oz rife with
- constitutional
deconstruction and semantic subversion, a virtual
surreality polymarked
by presidential alleles peccantly misplaced or, in the case
of Jefferson,
posthumously misappropriated.
--Mia T, THE
OTHER NIXON
-
JEFFERSON PATERNITY:
- DOUBLE HELIX HOAX?
-
- 11/2/98
-
- by Mia T
-
- DNA, the acronym
for
- the double helix tongue
twister
- deoxyribonucleic
acid,
- became the Scotch Tape of
forensic identification
- during the sanguinary OJ
Era.
-
- Now that we are sloshing
through the Semen Age of Clinton,
- DNA analysis has again
resurfaced as a tool of lawyers
- and the sociopaths they
defend.
-
- When the lay public hears
"DNA match,"
- it reflexively thinks
"certain identity,"
- not understanding that
results are expressed
- in terms of a probability
of chance occurrence.
-
- Nonetheless, it would not
be an overstatement to say
- that Kenneth Starr
established conclusively
- that the semen on Monica's
navy blue Gap dress was clinton's.
-
- RFLP analysis of clinton's
DNA determined
- that the frequency of the
matching genetic markers
- extracted from the
presidential fluids
- is characteristic of one
out of 7.87 trillion Caucasians.
-
- The world population is
only around 5 or so billion.
- So, statistically
speaking,
- you would have to search
outer space to find another match.
- Maybe clinton lackey Glenn
will find it...
-
- Similarly, the blood
matches to OJ Simpson's DNA
- (RFLP,
Cellmark)
- yielded probabilities as
rare as 1 in 150 billion,
- and again, virtual
identity.
-
- Which brings me to the DNA
analysis
- that purports to answer
the long-standing historical controversy:
- Did Thomas Jefferson
father the children of Sally Hemings?
-
- In my opinion, this study
is junk science.
- Identification is more
apparent than real.
- The methodology is, at
best, vaguely described and/or sloppy,
- and at worst, a fraud
(possibly concocted by a clinton/Carville cabal
- together with those 400
hog-and-bow-tied-save-clinton,
- retrograde-obsessing
historiographers.
- It is illuminating in this
regard that for the past week
- Carville had been shopping
the story to the press
- and one of the
hog-and-bow-tied 400 was an author of the study).
-
- The goal, according to the
authors of the study, Eugene A. Foster, et al.,
- was "to throw some
scientific light on the dispute." (1)
- An odd way of putting
it...a goal not of scientific precision but of scientific
aura.
-
- And the result of the
analysis is hardly the incontrovertible paternity
- currently being fed to an
unwitting press and a nonplussed public.
-
- The theory of the
study
-
- Because, apart from
occasional mutations,
- the Y chromosome is passed
unchanged from father to son,
- DNA analysis of the Y
chromosome can reveal
- whether or not individuals
are likely to be male-line relatives.
-
- The study analyzed DNA
from the Y chromosomes of: "five male-line
- descendants of two sons of
the president's paternal uncle, Field
- Jefferson; five male-line
descendants of two sons of Thomas Woodson; one
- male-line descendant of
Eston Hemings Jefferson; and three male-line
- descendants of three sons
of John Carr, grandfather of Samuel and Peter
- Carr. No Y-chromosome data
were available from male-line
- descendants of President
Thomas Jefferson because he had no surviving
- sons."
-
- With all the spinning
bi-allelic markers, microsatellites,
- mini-satellites,
haplotypes at various and sundry loci,
- with even the "rare"
haplotype that
- "has never been observed
outside the Jefferson family,
- and has not been found in
670 European men (more than 1,200 worldwide)
- typed with the
microsatellites or 308 European men (690
worldwide)"(2)
- we are left with the
following result buried amid
- the semblance of rarity
and exactitude:
-
- "The simplest and most
probable explanations for our molecular findings
- are that Thomas Jefferson,
rather than one of the Carr brothers, was the
- father of Eston Hemings
Jefferson, and that Thomas Woodson was not
- Thomas Jefferson's son.
The frequency of the Jefferson haplotype is less
- than 0.1 per cent, so our
molecular evidence is at least 100 times more
- likely if the president
was the father of Eston Hemings Jefferson than
- if someone unrelated was
the father.
-
- We cannot completely rule
out other explanations of our findings based
- on illegitimacy in various
lines of descent. For example, a male-line
- descendant of Field
Jefferson could possibly have illegitimately
- fathered an ancestor of
the presumed male-line descendant of Eston. But
- in the absence of
historical evidence to support such possibilities, we
- consider them to be
unlikely."(3)
-
- One in 100 is hardly the
clinton semen DNA result of 1 in 7.87 trillion
- or even the OJ blood DNA
result of 1 in 150 billion.
- One in 100 is meaningful
only in its
- non-elimination of
Jefferson as the father of Eston Hemings Jefferson.
- And even that modest
conclusion assumes an unbroken line of male-line descendants,
tenuous in a culture notorious for uncertain
paternity.
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
- 1. Eugene A. Foster, et
al.; Nature; 5 November 1998
-
- 2. Ibid.
-
- 3.
Ibid.>>
-
- -----------------
-
- JEFFERSON DNA ANALYSIS
REVEALED A DIRTY LITTLE SECRET...
-
- by Mia T
-
- The Jefferson DNA analysis
revealed a dirty little secret.
- And it has nothing to do
with Jefferson.
- The so-called literati are
scientific illiterates.
-
- Since this story hit the
wires,
- that crowd, barely able to
contain its glee,
- has been making much ado
about nothing conclusive...
-
- The Jefferson DNA analysis
is not definitive.
- Far from it.
- At best, it merely fails
to exclude the possibility
- that one Hemings child,
Eston Hemings Jefferson, was fathered by Jefferson.
- The probability of a
chance occurrence of this result is 1 in 100.
-
- Said another
way,
- the DNA of one out of
every one hundred males
- randomly plucked from the
general population
- would be consistent with
paternity.
-
- Not very compelling proof
of Jefferson's paternity.
-
- Yet a clueless press is
buying the spin from the
- clinton/Carville
inspired
- 400
hog-and-bow-tied-save-clinton,
- retrograde-obsessing
historiographers.
-
- Cinder Stanton, a
Jefferson scholar at
- the Monticello
International Center,
- when asked today
(Washington Journal, C-SPAN)
- whether she believed the
DNA "study" was politically motivated,
- noted that the publication
date of the 5 November Nature article
- was pushed
forward
- [to a pre-election
release by forces unknown, I would add].
-
- ----------------------
-
- McLAUGHLIN: JEFFERSON
PATERNITY HUMBUG
-
- by Mia T
-
- John McLaughlin (PBS)
today hosted
- a very interesting
discussion on the Jefferson-DNA study
- that included the study's
Oxford-based author.
-
- McLaughlin, schooled in
jesuitical reasoning,
- is not one to miss an
obvious fraud.
- McLaughlin's thesis was
the one I proffered the other day, namely:
- The so-called DNA analysis
did not prove Thomas Jefferson paternity.
- Indeed, McLaughlin
confirmed with the FBI
- that this putative proof
of paternity would never hold up in court.
-
- In fact, the more honest
conclusion would have not named
- Thomas Jefferson as the
starting point in the so-called unbroken sequence.
- The putative unbroken
male-line of descent was not from Thomas
- but from Thomas' uncle,
Field Jefferson.
- To conclude Thomas
Jefferson paternity assumes, among other things,
- that Field and Thomas'
father, Peter had the same father,
- and that there were
unbroken lines of male-line descendants
- in both the Hemings and
Jefferson lineage,
- a tenuous assumption in a
culture notorious for uncertain paternity.
-
- Moreover, Thomas' brother,
Randolph had six sons,
- and Uncle Field Jefferson
son(s) produced 11 males.
- All Sally Hemings'
contemporaries,
- the 17 sons plus their
daddies often romped round Monticello
- with their "rare"
Jeffersonian Y chromosome haplotype
- intact and ready for
action (assuming, of course, their own legitimacy).
- And let us not forget
those
- 1 in 100 random males in
the purlieus of Monticello
- with that very same
haplotype.
-
- Yet, given all this, the
science-illiterate literati
- are now claiming that the
study proved Thomas Jefferson paternity.
- They are either ignorant
fools or are assuming that that we are...
-
- Is this another clinton
scam being perpetrated on the world?
- Clinton has destroyed our
society,
- subverted the
Constitution,
- destabilized the
tripartite balance of power,
- imperiled the national
security,
- rewritten
history--revising presidential reputations downward to meet his
pitiful one.
-
- And now clinton is
infecting science with his insidious brand of fraud.
- All this destruction just
to save his own sorry fat butt.
- How sad.
-
-
- PATERNITY HYPE VISITS
MONTICELLO
-
-
- The Washington
Post
-
-
- November 15, 1998 David
Murray
-
-
-
- It was, without doubt, the
most heavily covered
- science story of the year:
Researchers found a genetic
- match between Thomas
Jefferson's family line and a
- distant descendant of the
last-born son of one of his
- slaves, Sally Hemings.
More than 295 editorial and
- news citations have
appeared in the Nexis database
- so far, along with eight
pieces in the news weeklies
- and 31 broadcast
transcripts, all based on the
- disclosure of the findings
in the Nov. 5 issue of the
- science journal Nature,
which was released at the end
- of October.
-
- Much of the coverage
demonstrated a remarkable
- flight from careful and
skeptical reporting. All too
- often, the news stories,
commentary and analysis
- transformed an intriguing
but inconclusive scientific
- finding into a dead
certainty. Several journalists went
- on to turn the DNA results
into some sort of
- referendum on the current
state of race relations and
- presidential
politics.
-
- Some outlets broke the
news with appropriate
- qualifiers: "DNA Test
Finds Evidence of Jefferson
- Child by Slave," wrote the
New York Times; "Tests
- Link Jefferson, Slave's
Son; DNA Study Suggests a
- Monticello Liaison," said
The Washington Post.
-
- But many accounts
contained strong assertions that
- paternity had been
"proven," "conclusively
- demonstrated" or
"resolved." Examples include:
-
- • "DNA Link;
Paternity Proved," the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot;
-
- • "Adulterer on
Mt. Rushmore," the Des Moines Register,
including the charge of "statutory rape"; and
-
- •"A boost for
President Clinton in fighting impeachment
. . . evidence proves Jefferson fathered
at least one child by his
slave," CNN.
-
-
-
- National Public Radio's
Nov. 1 account was typical.
- Correspondent Daniel
Zwerdling announced: "The
- proof is finally in. The
president not only did have an
- illicit sexual affair, he
fathered at least one child with
- his lover . . . DNA
testing has ended [that] debate."
- U.S. News & World
Report even ran a genealogical
- chart that showed a direct
line between Jefferson and
- the modern descendant of
Eston Hemings.
-
- What the Nature article
did by reporting a link
- between the Jefferson
family and kin of Eston
- Hemings was to add
enticing new evidence to a
- long-running historical
debate. Before those findings,
- historians could only
point to circumstantial evidence
- implicating Thomas
Jefferson rather than one of his
- male-line relatives. The
new DNA match with one
- descendant strengthens
that circumstantial evidence.
- With these findings the
balance shifts, suspicions
- become
probabilities.
-
- But certainty still eludes
us.
-
- The best characterization
of what has--and has
- not--been "proven" by the
combination of
- circumstantial historical
evidence and the DNA
- findings is found in the
original Nature report,
- co-authored by retired
pathologist Eugene Foster:
-
- "The simplest and most
probable explanation for our
- molecular findings are
that Thomas Jefferson, rather
- than one of the Carr
brothers [sons of Jefferson's
- sister, not paternal-line
carriers], was the father of
- Eston Hemings . . . . We
cannot completely rule out
- other explanations of our
findings based on
- illegitimacy in various
lines of descent."
-
- After the hyperbolic
coverage began flourishing,
- Foster wrote a letter to
the New York Times calling it
- "regrettable that
[our] statement has been transmuted
- into assertions that all
doubt had been removed." The
- Nov. 9 letter also said,
"The genetic findings my
- collaborators and I
reported . . . do not prove that
- Thomas Jefferson was the
father of one of Sally
- Hemings's children. We
never made that claim. Nor
- do we believe that the
Y-chromosome type we found
- in Hemings's descendant
occurs only in the members
- of the Jefferson family .
. . . this study could not
- prove anything
conclusively . . . . "
-
- The original Nature
article contained ample warning
- signs. The Jefferson case,
the magazine pointed out,
- has always depended on the
oral history of putative
- descendants and charges
first lodged by political
- opponents in 1802 that
Jefferson fathered the
- first-born son of Hemings,
Thomas Woodson.
-
- Descendants of Woodson
were shown in the Nature
- research to have no DNA
match with Jefferson.
- Undaunted, U.S. News
suggested that Jefferson might
- indeed be the father of
Woodson, the DNA evidence
- having been lost through
subsequent illegitimacy in
- the Woodson line.
Jefferson defenders have used that
- same line of reasoning to
explain away the presence
- of a Thomas Jefferson DNA
match in the case of
- Eston Hemings. An
additional qualifier is that
- Thomas Jefferson was 65
years old and Sally
- Hemings 37, rather than
the 14-year-old ingenue of
- folklore, in the year that
Eston was born.
-
- Thomas Jefferson himself
was not tested, only
- descendants of his
paternal uncle, Field Jefferson.
- This fact troubles some
forensic geneticists working
- professionally in DNA
paternity cases.
-
- What did the DNA match
positively establish? The
- findings show a
probability that the DNA of Eston
- shows a descent from some
male in the Jefferson
- paternal line, rather than
being a randomly occurring
- match from someone in the
general population, which
- is put at a 100-to-1
chance. A simple analogy would
- be recovering from a
victim a bullet that has
- distinctive rifle-barrel
markings enabling it to be
- traced. The research has
shown that said rifle was
- owned by males of the
Jefferson family. But who
- pulled the
trigger?
-
- The story broke the
weekend before Election Day,
- and political as well as
competitive forces appeared
- to drive the timing.
Nature's editors typically give
- reporters a few days'
advance notice on research
- reports that appear in the
magazine, though stories
- about those reports are
normally embargoed until the
- date of the magazine's
publication--in this instance,
- Thursday, Nov. 5. But,
under pressure from news
- outlets that heard rumors
of the findings and feared
- getting scooped, Nature
agreed to the early release
- date of Friday, Oct. 30.
That allowed the weekend
- papers and the Monday
editions of the news weeklies
- to cover the
controversy.
-
- Accompanying the findings
in Nature was a
- commentary by Joseph Ellis
of Mount Holyoke
- College in Massachusetts,
explicitly comparing the
- alleged actions of
Jefferson to those of the current
- president. Some critics
questioned the timing of the
- Nature publication. "Just
two days before the
- election, the (DNA) story
gave the everybody-does-it
- line both pedigree and
prestige," wrote columnist
- Charles Krauthammer.
"Accident? Two days before
- that, a full-page ad
appeared in the New York Times
- opposing Clinton's
impeachment. Among the signers:
- the co-author of the
article [Ellis] in Nature
- pronouncing the DNA data
definitive, in which he
- noted wryly the Hemings
report's 'impeccable timing.'"
-
- Foster, too, was troubled
by the Nature commentary.
- He told the Washington
Times on Nov. 10, "They
- unnecessarily politicized
something that was intended
- to be a piece of
scientific work."
-
- The consequences of the
media rush to judgment are
- hardly benign. To enlist
the facts of Jefferson as a
- sort of perverse character
witness in our current
- seamy scandal is to
subordinate the purposes of
- science to the dubious and
shifting needs of politics.
-
- Just as troubling is the
implication in some media
- reports that blacks in
America should be somehow
- pinning their standing in
America's destiny on the
- outcome of DNA
tests.
-
- By making science submit
to our desires to satisfy
- our political or racial
hopes, we ultimately damage
- the capacity to understand
ourselves.
-
- But beyond harm done to
science, it is demeaning to
- Jefferson and Hemings to
make their role in our
- shared destiny a matter of
genetic contingency. What
- if today's (or, for that
matter, tomorrow's) DNA facts
- had shown otherwise?
Should African Americans be
- regarded as historically
diminished? In fact, isn't our
- insistent preoccupation
with the body, rather than
- concerns of the spirit and
the character, precisely how
- we have impeded our racial
understanding?
-
- The contest over Thomas
Jefferson's paternity will in
- all probability go on. But
as that debate continues,
- may blacks and whites,
searching for our common
- American bond, continue to
seek kinship in
- Jefferson's ideals as
earnestly as it has been sought in
- our genetics.
-
- David Murray is director
of research at the Statistical
- Assessment Service, a
nonprofit science and public
- policy organization in
Washington.
-
- © Copyright 1998 The
Washington Post Company
-
-
-
- Evidence of a bum rap for
Jefferson?
-
- Washington
Times
-
- Jan 3, 1999. Reed
Irvine
-
-
- The respected British
scientific journal, Nature, is suffering acute
- embarrassment over the
articles it published last month claiming a study
- based on DNA analysis had
proven beyond reasonable doubt that Thomas
- Jefferson had fathered a
son by Sally Hemings, one of his slaves.
-
- Its January issue will
acknowledge that its Novermber issue overstated the
- evidence of Jefferson's
paternity.
-
- The article was introduced
with this statement by the editors of Nature:
- "The scandals involving
American presidents are nothing new. In 1802,
- President Thomas Jefferson
was accused of fathering a child by Sally
- Hemings, one of his
slaves. A molecular genetics study in the Nov. 5 issue
- of Nature finally puts the
affair to rest, establishing beyond reasonable
- doubt Thomas Jefferson's
relationship to Sally Hemings' sons.
-
- The article by Dr. Eugene
Foster and others described a study of Y
- chromosomes from the
male-line descendants of Jefferson's paternal uncle,
- Field Jefferson, and
male-line descendants of two of Sally Hemings' sons,
- her first-born, Thomas
Woodson and her last son, Eston Hemings Jefferson.
- Five male descendants of
Jefferson's uncle were used in this study because
- Thomas Jefferson had no
sons to carry on the line. The chromosomes of the
- five descendants of Field
Jefferson were found to share an uncommon
- distinctive
characteristic.
-
- That characteristic was
not found in any of the five descendants of Hemings'
- first son, Thomas Woodson,
proving Jefferson was not his father -- the
- allegation published by a
Richmond newspaper in 1802 and a claim that
- Woodson's descendants
believed to be true. There was only one descendant of
- Eston in the study. His Y
chromosomes had the distinctive Jefferson
- characteristic. That was
what Nature trumpeted as proving beyond reasonable
- doubt Thomas Jefferson's
relationship to Sally Hemings's sons.
-
- The article itself was a
tad more cautious. It allowed that there were other
- remote possibilities that
someone other than Jefferson fathered Eston, but
- the authors said, "In the
absence of historical evidence to support such
- possibilities, we consider
them to be unlikely." But the title of the
- article threw all such
caution to the wind. It read, "Jefferson fathered
- slave's last
child."
-
- This resulted in numerous
articles based on the belief that Jefferson was
- guilty as charged.
Historian Joseph Ellis wrote, "Our heroes -- and
- especially presidents --
are not gods or saints, but flesh-and-blood humans,
- with all the frailties and
imperfections that this entails. Others were more
- critical, calling
Jefferson a hypocrite and perhaps even a rapist. One
of
- the worst was written by
Christopher Hitchens and published in the Nation.
- He suggested that
Jefferson be described as "the slave-owning serial
- flogger, sex addict and
kinsman to ax murderers."
-
- Richard Cohen, writing in
The Washington Post Magazine, implied that
- Jefferson had impregnated
Sally Hemings when she was only 14 or 15 years
- old. He didn't know that
the Nature article had reported that the genetic
- evidence proved that
Jefferson was not the father of Sally's first child,
- Thomas Woodson. Mr. Cohen
said he had always believed Jefferson had fathered
Sally's children and that it
was now a dead certainty. He said the Hemings
story made Jefferson harder,
meaner, selfish -- an exploiter.
-
- Messrs. Hitchens, Cohen
and others like them will not welcome the news that
- the editors of Nature have
admitted that the Foster article omitted facts
- that make it clear that
the analysis of the chromosomes did not come close
- to proving Jefferson
fathered any of Hemings' children. Since publishing
Mr.
- Foster's article, the
editors have learned that Thomas Jefferson was only
- one of nine living
Jeffersons who might have fathered Eston, passing on
to
- him the chromosomes with
the distinctive Jefferson characteristic.
-
- The most probable
candidate, according to Herbert Barger, an authority
on
- Jefferson family history,
was Jefferson's forgotten younger brother,
- Randolph. He says
Randolph's wife died around 1793 and he didn't remarry
- until 1810. He was a
frequent visitor to Monticello, and a slave oral
- history described him as
liking to play the fiddle and dance with
- Jefferson's slaves. Mr.
Barger told Mr. Foster about Randolph and the seven
- other Jefferson men who
could have fathered children by Hemings. A Nature
- editor says Mr. Foster did
not share this information with them and that he
- approved the headline that
declared without any qualification that Jefferson
- was Eston's
father.
-
- Nature's admission that
its article was flawed and misleading will be
- particularly embarrassing
for historian Joseph Ellis, author of "American
- Sphinx: The Character of
Thomas Jefferson." Persuaded by the Foster study,
- Mr. Ellis had switched
from a critic of the Hemings story to a believer. He
- co-authored an article for
Nature that accompanied the Foster article. The
- article called attention
to many parallels between Jefferson and Bill
- Clinton, but it omitted
one of the most striking parallels that nearly all
- the media had
overlooked.
-
- That is the allegation
that Mr. Clinton, like Jefferson, fathered a black
- son. The family of the
boy's mother wants a paternity test for Mr. Clinton.
- They believe DNA will
prove the president is the deadbeat dad of 14-year-old
- Danny.
-
7 Posted on 01/05/2000 07:56:07 PST by Mia T
To: ATTENTION! BILL O'REILLY
|
DOUBLE- HELIX
HOAXES
|
- Star-Magazine-financed
paternity test worthless
|
-
-
- Hypocrisy abounds in
this Age
of Clinton, a
Postmodern Oz rife with
- constitutional
deconstruction and semantic subversion, a virtual
surreality polymarked
by presidential alleles peccantly misplaced or, in the case
of Jefferson,
posthumously misappropriated.
--Mia T, THE
OTHER NIXON
-
JEFFERSON PATERNITY:
- DOUBLE HELIX HOAX?
-
- 11/2/98
-
- by Mia T
-
- DNA, the acronym
for
- the double helix tongue
twister
- deoxyribonucleic
acid,
- became the Scotch Tape of
forensic identification
- during the sanguinary OJ
Era.
-
- Now that we are sloshing
through the Semen Age of Clinton,
- DNA analysis has again
resurfaced as a tool of lawyers
- and the sociopaths they
defend.
-
- When the lay public hears
"DNA match,"
- it reflexively thinks
"certain identity,"
- not understanding that
results are expressed
- in terms of a probability
of chance occurrence.
-
- Nonetheless, it would not
be an overstatement to say
- that Kenneth Starr
established conclusively
- that the semen on Monica's
navy blue Gap dress was clinton's.
-
- RFLP analysis of clinton's
DNA determined
- that the frequency of the
matching genetic markers
- extracted from the
presidential fluids
- is characteristic of one
out of 7.87 trillion Caucasians.
-
- The world population is
only around 5 or so billion.
- So, statistically
speaking,
- you would have to search
outer space to find another match.
- Maybe clinton lackey Glenn
will find it...
-
- Similarly, the blood
matches to OJ Simpson's DNA
- (RFLP,
Cellmark)
- yielded probabilities as
rare as 1 in 150 billion,
- and again, virtual
identity.
-
- Which brings me to the DNA
analysis
- that purports to answer
the long-standing historical controversy:
- Did Thomas Jefferson
father the children of Sally Hemings?
-
- In my opinion, this study
is junk science.
- Identification is more
apparent than real.
- The methodology is, at
best, vaguely described and/or sloppy,
- and at worst, a fraud
(possibly concocted by a clinton/Carville cabal
- together with those 400
hog-and-bow-tied-save-clinton,
- retrograde-obsessing
historiographers.
- It is illuminating in this
regard that for the past week
- Carville had been shopping
the story to the press
- and one of the
hog-and-bow-tied 400 was an author of the study).
-
- The goal, according to the
authors of the study, Eugene A. Foster, et al.,
- was "to throw some
scientific light on the dispute." (1)
- An odd way of putting
it...a goal not of scientific precision but of scientific
aura.
-
- And the result of the
analysis is hardly the incontrovertible paternity
- currently being fed to an
unwitting press and a nonplussed public.
-
- The theory of the
study
-
- Because, apart from
occasional mutations,
- the Y chromosome is passed
unchanged from father to son,
- DNA analysis of the Y
chromosome can reveal
- whether or not individuals
are likely to be male-line relatives.
-
- The study analyzed DNA
from the Y chromosomes of: "five male-line
- descendants of two sons of
the president's paternal uncle, Field
- Jefferson; five male-line
descendants of two sons of Thomas Woodson; one
- male-line descendant of
Eston Hemings Jefferson; and three male-line
- descendants of three sons
of John Carr, grandfather of Samuel and Peter
- Carr. No Y-chromosome data
were available from male-line
- descendants of President
Thomas Jefferson because he had no surviving
- sons."
-
- With all the spinning
bi-allelic markers, microsatellites,
- mini-satellites,
haplotypes at various and sundry loci,
- with even the "rare"
haplotype that
- "has never been observed
outside the Jefferson family,
- and has not been found in
670 European men (more than 1,200 worldwide)
- typed with the
microsatellites or 308 European men (690
worldwide)"(2)
- we are left with the
following result buried amid
- the semblance of rarity
and exactitude:
-
- "The simplest and most
probable explanations for our molecular findings
- are that Thomas Jefferson,
rather than one of the Carr brothers, was the
- father of Eston Hemings
Jefferson, and that Thomas Woodson was not
- Thomas Jefferson's son.
The frequency of the Jefferson haplotype is less
- than 0.1 per cent, so our
molecular evidence is at least 100 times more
- likely if the president
was the father of Eston Hemings Jefferson than
- if someone unrelated was
the father.
-
- We cannot completely rule
out other explanations of our findings based
- on illegitimacy in various
lines of descent. For example, a male-line
- descendant of Field
Jefferson could possibly have illegitimately
- fathered an ancestor of
the presumed male-line descendant of Eston. But
- in the absence of
historical evidence to support such possibilities, we
- consider them to be
unlikely."(3)
-
- One in 100 is hardly the
clinton semen DNA result of 1 in 7.87 trillion
- or even the OJ blood DNA
result of 1 in 150 billion.
- One in 100 is meaningful
only in its
- non-elimination of
Jefferson as the father of Eston Hemings Jefferson.
- And even that modest
conclusion assumes an unbroken line of male-line descendants,
tenuous in a culture notorious for uncertain
paternity.
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
- 1. Eugene A. Foster, et
al.; Nature; 5 November 1998
-
- 2. Ibid.
-
- 3.
Ibid.>>
-
- -----------------
-
- JEFFERSON DNA ANALYSIS
REVEALED A DIRTY LITTLE SECRET...
-
- by Mia T
-
- The Jefferson DNA analysis
revealed a dirty little secret.
- And it has nothing to do
with Jefferson.
- The so-called literati are
scientific illiterates.
-
- Since this story hit the
wires,
- that crowd, barely able to
contain its glee,
- has been making much ado
about nothing conclusive...
-
- The Jefferson DNA analysis
is not definitive.
- Far from it.
- At best, it merely fails
to exclude the possibility
- that one Hemings child,
Eston Hemings Jefferson, was fathered by Jefferson.
- The probability of a
chance occurrence of this result is 1 in 100.
-
- Said another
way,
- the DNA of one out of
every one hundred males
- randomly plucked from the
general population
- would be consistent with
paternity.
-
- Not very compelling proof
of Jefferson's paternity.
-
- Yet a clueless press is
buying the spin from the
- clinton/Carville
inspired
- 400
hog-and-bow-tied-save-clinton,
- retrograde-obsessing
historiographers.
-
- Cinder Stanton, a
Jefferson scholar at
- the Monticello
International Center,
- when asked today
(Washington Journal, C-SPAN)
- whether she believed the
DNA "study" was politically motivated,
- noted that the publication
date of the 5 November Nature article
- was pushed
forward
- [to a pre-election
release by forces unknown, I would add].
-
- ----------------------
-
- McLAUGHLIN: JEFFERSON
PATERNITY HUMBUG
-
- by Mia T
-
- John McLaughlin (PBS)
today hosted
- a very interesting
discussion on the Jefferson-DNA study
- that included the study's
Oxford-based author.
-
- McLaughlin, schooled in
jesuitical reasoning,
- is not one to miss an
obvious fraud.
- McLaughlin's thesis was
the one I proffered the other day, namely:
- The so-called DNA analysis
did not prove Thomas Jefferson paternity.
- Indeed, McLaughlin
confirmed with the FBI
- that this putative proof
of paternity would never hold up in court.
-
- In fact, the more honest
conclusion would have not named
- Thomas Jefferson as the
starting point in the so-called unbroken sequence.
- The putative unbroken
male-line of descent was not from Thomas
- but from Thomas' uncle,
Field Jefferson.
- To conclude Thomas
Jefferson paternity assumes, among other things,
- that Field and Thomas'
father, Peter had the same father,
- and that there were
unbroken lines of male-line descendants
- in both the Hemings and
Jefferson lineage,
- a tenuous assumption in a
culture notorious for uncertain paternity.
-
- Moreover, Thomas' brother,
Randolph had six sons,
- and Uncle Field Jefferson
son(s) produced 11 males.
- All Sally Hemings'
contemporaries,
- the 17 sons plus their
daddies often romped round Monticello
- with their "rare"
Jeffersonian Y chromosome haplotype
- intact and ready for
action (assuming, of course, their own legitimacy).
- And let us not forget
those
- 1 in 100 random males in
the purlieus of Monticello
- with that very same
haplotype.
-
- Yet, given all this, the
science-illiterate literati
- are now claiming that the
study proved Thomas Jefferson paternity.
- They are either ignorant
fools or are assuming that that we are...
-
- Is this another clinton
scam being perpetrated on the world?
- Clinton has destroyed our
society,
- subverted the
Constitution,
- destabilized the
tripartite balance of power,
- imperiled the national
security,
- rewritten
history--revising presidential reputations downward to meet his
pitiful one.
-
- And now clinton is
infecting science with his insidious brand of fraud.
- All this destruction just
to save his own sorry fat butt.
- How sad.
-
-
- PATERNITY HYPE VISITS
MONTICELLO
-
-
- The Washington
Post
-
-
- November 15, 1998 David
Murray
-
-
-
- It was, without doubt, the
most heavily covered
- science story of the year:
Researchers found a genetic
- match between Thomas
Jefferson's family line and a
- distant descendant of the
last-born son of one of his
- slaves, Sally Hemings.
More than 295 editorial and
- news citations have
appeared in the Nexis database
- so far, along with eight
pieces in the news weeklies
- and 31 broadcast
transcripts, all based on the
- disclosure of the findings
in the Nov. 5 issue of the
- science journal Nature,
which was released at the end
- of October.
-
- Much of the coverage
demonstrated a remarkable
- flight from careful and
skeptical reporting. All too
- often, the news stories,
commentary and analysis
- transformed an intriguing
but inconclusive scientific
- finding into a dead
certainty. Several journalists went
- on to turn the DNA results
into some sort of
- referendum on the current
state of race relations and
- presidential
politics.
-
- Some outlets broke the
news with appropriate
- qualifiers: "DNA Test
Finds Evidence of Jefferson
- Child by Slave," wrote the
New York Times; "Tests
- Link Jefferson, Slave's
Son; DNA Study Suggests a
- Monticello Liaison," said
The Washington Post.
-
- But many accounts
contained strong assertions that
- paternity had been
"proven," "conclusively
- demonstrated" or
"resolved." Examples include:
-
- • "DNA Link;
Paternity Proved," the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot;
-
- • "Adulterer on
Mt. Rushmore," the Des Moines Register,
including the charge of "statutory rape"; and
-
- •"A boost for
President Clinton in fighting impeachment
. . . evidence proves Jefferson fathered
at least one child by his
slave," CNN.
-
-
-
- National Public Radio's
Nov. 1 account was typical.
- Correspondent Daniel
Zwerdling announced: "The
- proof is finally in. The
president not only did have an
- illicit sexual affair, he
fathered at least one child with
- his lover . . . DNA
testing has ended [that] debate."
- U.S. News & World
Report even ran a genealogical
- chart that showed a direct
line between Jefferson and
- the modern descendant of
Eston Hemings.
-
- What the Nature article
did by reporting a link
- between the Jefferson
family and kin of Eston
- Hemings was to add
enticing new evidence to a
- long-running historical
debate. Before those findings,
- historians could only
point to circumstantial evidence
- implicating Thomas
Jefferson rather than one of his
- male-line relatives. The
new DNA match with one
- descendant strengthens
that circumstantial evidence.
- With these findings the
balance shifts, suspicions
- become
probabilities.
-
- But certainty still eludes
us.
-
- The best characterization
of what has--and has
- not--been "proven" by the
combination of
- circumstantial historical
evidence and the DNA
- findings is found in the
original Nature report,
- co-authored by retired
pathologist Eugene Foster:
-
- "The simplest and most
probable explanation for our
- molecular findings are
that Thomas Jefferson, rather
- than one of the Carr
brothers [sons of Jefferson's
- sister, not paternal-line
carriers], was the father of
- Eston Hemings . . . . We
cannot completely rule out
- other explanations of our
findings based on
- illegitimacy in various
lines of descent."
-
- After the hyperbolic
coverage began flourishing,
- Foster wrote a letter to
the New York Times calling it
- "regrettable that
[our] statement has been transmuted
- into assertions that all
doubt had been removed." The
- Nov. 9 letter also said,
"The genetic findings my
- collaborators and I
reported . . . do not prove that
- Thomas Jefferson was the
father of one of Sally
- Hemings's children. We
never made that claim. Nor
- do we believe that the
Y-chromosome type we found
- in Hemings's descendant
occurs only in the members
- of the Jefferson family .
. . . this study could not
- prove anything
conclusively . . . . "
-
- The original Nature
article contained ample warning
- signs. The Jefferson case,
the magazine pointed out,
- has always depended on the
oral history of putative
- descendants and charges
first lodged by political
- opponents in 1802 that
Jefferson fathered the
- first-born son of Hemings,
Thomas Woodson.
-
- Descendants of Woodson
were shown in the Nature
- research to have no DNA
match with Jefferson.
- Undaunted, U.S. News
suggested that Jefferson might
- indeed be the father of
Woodson, the DNA evidence
- having been lost through
subsequent illegitimacy in
- the Woodson line.
Jefferson defenders have used that
- same line of reasoning to
explain away the presence
- of a Thomas Jefferson DNA
match in the case of
- Eston Hemings. An
additional qualifier is that
- Thomas Jefferson was 65
years old and Sally
- Hemings 37, rather than
the 14-year-old ingenue of
- folklore, in the year that
Eston was born.
-
- Thomas Jefferson himself
was not tested, only
- descendants of his
paternal uncle, Field Jefferson.
- This fact troubles some
forensic geneticists working
- professionally in DNA
paternity cases.
-
- What did the DNA match
positively establish? The
- findings show a
probability that the DNA of Eston
- shows a descent from some
male in the Jefferson
- paternal line, rather than
being a randomly occurring
- match from someone in the
general population, which
- is put at a 100-to-1
chance. A simple analogy would
- be recovering from a
victim a bullet that has
- distinctive rifle-barrel
markings enabling it to be
- traced. The research has
shown that said rifle was
- owned by males of the
Jefferson family. But who
- pulled the
trigger?
-
- The story broke the
weekend before Election Day,
- and political as well as
competitive forces appeared
- to drive the timing.
Nature's editors typically give
- reporters a few days'
advance notice on research
- reports that appear in the
magazine, though stories
- about those reports are
normally embargoed until the
- date of the magazine's
publication--in this instance,
- Thursday, Nov. 5. But,
under pressure from news
- outlets that heard rumors
of the findings and feared
- getting scooped, Nature
agreed to the early release
- date of Friday, Oct. 30.
That allowed the weekend
- papers and the Monday
editions of the news weeklies
- to cover the
controversy.
-
- Accompanying the findings
in Nature was a
- commentary by Joseph Ellis
of Mount Holyoke
- College in Massachusetts,
explicitly comparing the
- alleged actions of
Jefferson to those of the current
- president. Some critics
questioned the timing of the
- Nature publication. "Just
two days before the
- election, the (DNA) story
gave the everybody-does-it
- line both pedigree and
prestige," wrote columnist
- Charles Krauthammer.
"Accident? Two days before
- that, a full-page ad
appeared in the New York Times
- opposing Clinton's
impeachment. Among the signers:
- the co-author of the
article [Ellis] in Nature
- pronouncing the DNA data
definitive, in which he
- noted wryly the Hemings
report's 'impeccable timing.'"
-
- Foster, too, was troubled
by the Nature commentary.
- He told the Washington
Times on Nov. 10, "They
- unnecessarily politicized
something that was intended
- to be a piece of
scientific work."
-
- The consequences of the
media rush to judgment are
- hardly benign. To enlist
the facts of Jefferson as a
- sort of perverse character
witness in our current
- seamy scandal is to
subordinate the purposes of
- science to the dubious and
shifting needs of politics.
-
- Just as troubling is the
implication in some media
- reports that blacks in
America should be somehow
- pinning their standing in
America's destiny on the
- outcome of DNA
tests.
-
- By making science submit
to our desires to satisfy
- our political or racial
hopes, we ultimately damage
- the capacity to understand
ourselves.
-
- But beyond harm done to
science, it is demeaning to
- Jefferson and Hemings to
make their role in our
- shared destiny a matter of
genetic contingency. What
- if today's (or, for that
matter, tomorrow's) DNA facts
- had shown otherwise?
Should African Americans be
- regarded as historically
diminished? In fact, isn't our
- insistent preoccupation
with the body, rather than
- concerns of the spirit and
the character, precisely how
- we have impeded our racial
understanding?
-
- The contest over Thomas
Jefferson's paternity will in
- all probability go on. But
as that debate continues,
- may blacks and whites,
searching for our common
- American bond, continue to
seek kinship in
- Jefferson's ideals as
earnestly as it has been sought in
- our genetics.
-
- David Murray is director
of research at the Statistical
- Assessment Service, a
nonprofit science and public
- policy organization in
Washington.
-
- © Copyright 1998 The
Washington Post Company
-
-
-
- Evidence of a bum rap for
Jefferson?
-
- Washington
Times
-
- Jan 3, 1999. Reed
Irvine
-
-
- The respected British
scientific journal, Nature, is suffering acute
- embarrassment over the
articles it published last month claiming a study
- based on DNA analysis had
proven beyond reasonable doubt that Thomas
- Jefferson had fathered a
son by Sally Hemings, one of his slaves.
-
- Its January issue will
acknowledge that its Novermber issue overstated the
- evidence of Jefferson's
paternity.
-
- The article was introduced
with this statement by the editors of Nature:
- "The scandals involving
American presidents are nothing new. In 1802,
- President Thomas Jefferson
was accused of fathering a child by Sally
- Hemings, one of his
slaves. A molecular genetics study in the Nov. 5 issue
- of Nature finally puts the
affair to rest, establishing beyond reasonable
- doubt Thomas Jefferson's
relationship to Sally Hemings' sons.
-
- The article by Dr. Eugene
Foster and others described a study of Y
- chromosomes from the
male-line descendants of Jefferson's paternal uncle,
- Field Jefferson, and
male-line descendants of two of Sally Hemings' sons,
- her first-born, Thomas
Woodson and her last son, Eston Hemings Jefferson.
- Five male descendants of
Jefferson's uncle were used in this study because
- Thomas Jefferson had no
sons to carry on the line. The chromosomes of the
- five descendants of Field
Jefferson were found to share an uncommon
- distinctive
characteristic.
-
- That characteristic was
not found in any of the five descendants of Hemings'
- first son, Thomas Woodson,
proving Jefferson was not his father -- the
- allegation published by a
Richmond newspaper in 1802 and a claim that
- Woodson's descendants
believed to be true. There was only one descendant of
- Eston in the study. His Y
chromosomes had the distinctive Jefferson
- characteristic. That was
what Nature trumpeted as proving beyond reasonable
- doubt Thomas Jefferson's
relationship to Sally Hemings's sons.
-
- The article itself was a
tad more cautious. It allowed that there were other
- remote possibilities that
someone other than Jefferson fathered Eston, but
- the authors said, "In the
absence of historical evidence to support such
- possibilities, we consider
them to be unlikely." But the title of the
- article threw all such
caution to the wind. It read, "Jefferson fathered
- slave's last
child."
-
- This resulted in numerous
articles based on the belief that Jefferson was
- guilty as charged.
Historian Joseph Ellis wrote, "Our heroes -- and
- especially presidents --
are not gods or saints, but flesh-and-blood humans,
- with all the frailties and
imperfections that this entails. Others were more
- critical, calling
Jefferson a hypocrite and perhaps even a rapist. One
of
- the worst was written by
Christopher Hitchens and published in the Nation.
- He suggested that
Jefferson be described as "the slave-owning serial
- flogger, sex addict and
kinsman to ax murderers."
-
- Richard Cohen, writing in
The Washington Post Magazine, implied that
- Jefferson had impregnated
Sally Hemings when she was only 14 or 15 years
- old. He didn't know that
the Nature article had reported that the genetic
- evidence proved that
Jefferson was not the father of Sally's first child,
- Thomas Woodson. Mr. Cohen
said he had always believed Jefferson had fathered
Sally's children and that it
was now a dead certainty. He said the Hemings
story made Jefferson harder,
meaner, selfish -- an exploiter.
-
- Messrs. Hitchens, Cohen
and others like them will not welcome the news that
- the editors of Nature have
admitted that the Foster article omitted facts
- that make it clear that
the analysis of the chromosomes did not come close
- to proving Jefferson
fathered any of Hemings' children. Since publishing
Mr.
- Foster's article, the
editors have learned that Thomas Jefferson was only
- one of nine living
Jeffersons who might have fathered Eston, passing on
to
- him the chromosomes with
the distinctive Jefferson characteristic.
-
- The most probable
candidate, according to Herbert Barger, an authority
on
- Jefferson family history,
was Jefferson's forgotten younger brother,
- Randolph. He says
Randolph's wife died around 1793 and he didn't remarry
- until 1810. He was a
frequent visitor to Monticello, and a slave oral
- history described him as
liking to play the fiddle and dance with
- Jefferson's slaves. Mr.
Barger told Mr. Foster about Randolph and the seven
- other Jefferson men who
could have fathered children by Hemings. A Nature
- editor says Mr. Foster did
not share this information with them and that he
- approved the headline that
declared without any qualification that Jefferson
- was Eston's
father.
-
- Nature's admission that
its article was flawed and misleading will be
- particularly embarrassing
for historian Joseph Ellis, author of "American
- Sphinx: The Character of
Thomas Jefferson." Persuaded by the Foster study,
- Mr. Ellis had switched
from a critic of the Hemings story to a believer. He
- co-authored an article for
Nature that accompanied the Foster article. The
- article called attention
to many parallels between Jefferson and Bill
- Clinton, but it omitted
one of the most striking parallels that nearly all
- the media had
overlooked.
-
- That is the allegation
that Mr. Clinton, like Jefferson, fathered a black
- son. The family of the
boy's mother wants a paternity test for Mr. Clinton.
- They believe DNA will
prove the president is the deadbeat dad of 14-year-old
- Danny.
-
8 Posted on 01/05/2000 07:56:24 PST by Mia T
