Mud Sticks: On the Alleged Falsification of Mendel's Data

Abstract

GREGOR Mendel's celebrated paper (Mendel 1866) is a seemingly inexhaustible source of inspiration and controversy for each succeeding generation of geneticists and historians of genetics (Franklin et al. 2007). For the aficionado (or the fanatic) it is studied repeatedly, much as an avid sports fan enjoys each rerun of a classic matchup or a movie buff looks forward to yet another screening of Casablanca. Mendel's paper is special for a number of reasons. Its historical importance is beyond dispute, but its layout and style are also alluring. Unassuming and unpretentious, Mendel straightforwardly explains his rationale, his experiments, his results, and his interpretation. For the teacher of genetics, the paper is a cornucopia of raw data obtained from various types of crosses, data of the sort that scarcely exist in today's literature owing to the brevity of communications and the emphasis on summary statistics while the real data, when available at all, are relegated to supplemental online material. Above all Mendel's paper appears to reflect the author's simplicity, modesty, and guilelessness. The statistician R. A. Fisher (Fisher 1936), who devoted what must have been a great deal of his time to reconstructing the timeline and scale of Mendel's experiments, came to the conclusion that “there can, I believe, now be no doubt whatever that [Mendel's] report is to be taken entirely literally, and that his experiments were carried out in just the way and much in the order that they are recounted” (Fisher 1936, p. 132). (An electronic copy of Fisher's article is available online at http://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/.)