[rede.APPIA] DaSSWeb – Data Science and Statistics Webinar – 5 March – Ana Pires – Will the Mendel-Fisher controversy ever end ?

In 1866 Gregor Mendel published a seminal paper containing the foundations of modern genetics. In 1936 Ronald Fisher published a statistical analysis of Mendel’s data concluding that “the data of most, if not all, of the experiments have been falsified so as to agree closely with Mendel’s expectations.” The accusation gave rise to a controversy which reached the 21st century. We were fascinated by the story and eventually did some research on it, which resulted in the publication of the paper “A Statistical Model to Explain the Mendel–Fisher Controversy” (A.M. Pires and J.A. Branco, Statistical Science, 2010). Fourteen years later we revisit the story and try to understand how it has evolved and whether or not our ideas had any impact on that evolution.