Talk:Gregor Mendel/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Misleading representation of cited source

One attempted explanation invokes confirmation bias. Fisher accused Mendel's experiments as "biased strongly in the direction of agreement with expectation [...] to give the theory the benefit of doubt". In his 2004 article, J.W. Porteous concluded that Mendel's observations were indeed implausible. However, reproduction of the experiments has demonstrated that there is no real bias towards Mendel's data.

The paper cited at the end of this paragraph determines that the tetrad-pollen model is insufficient to explain the bias Fisher observed in Mendel's data. The final two sentences when taken together, though, seem to indicate that it came to the opposite conclusion due to a "however" followed by ambiguous language in the second sentence, "real bias towards Mendel's data". Is it saying that Mendel's data was gathered in an unbiased manner (what I consider the more natural reading)? Or that real-world conditions did not present a 'biased'-situation under which Mendel's data could be accurate (which is what the paper says)? I think it could be cleaner.

I instead propose the following: "In his 2004 article, J.W. Porteous concluded that Mendel's observations were indeed implausible. The most popular theory of natural conditions which could account for the observed statistical irregularities of Mendel's data was tested in 2007, but did not produce evidence explaining the bias of Mendel's data."

Additionally, it might be worth talking about how Daniel Fairbanks contributed to both that paper, and the papers/books about how "they concluded that there were no reasons to assert Mendel fabricated his results, nor that Fisher deliberately tried to diminish Mendel's legacy". I feel like I'd need to read that book in order to figure out how all of these positions and ideas connect. Fiveeyesonetoe (talk) 20:09, 23 July 2023 (UTC)