---
title: "Gregor Mendel"
chunk: 4/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:07:10.769171+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== Mendelian paradox ==
In 1936, Ronald Fisher, a prominent statistician and population geneticist, reconstructed Mendel's experiments, analyzed results from the F2 (second filial) generation, and found the ratio of dominant to recessive phenotypes (e.g., yellow versus green peas; round versus wrinkled peas) to be implausibly and consistently too close to the expected ratio of 3 to 1. Fisher asserted that "the data of most, if not all, of the experiments have been falsified to agree closely with Mendel's expectations". Mendel's alleged observations, according to Fisher, were "abominable," "shocking,"  and "cooked."
Other scholars agree with Fisher that Mendel's various observations come uncomfortably close to Mendel's expectations. A. W. F. Edwards, for instance, remarks: "One can applaud the lucky gambler; but when he is lucky again tomorrow, and the next day, and the following day, one is entitled to become a little suspicious". Three other lines of evidence likewise lend support to the assertion that Mendel's results are indeed too good to be true.
Fisher's analysis gave rise to the Mendelian paradox: Mendel's reported data are, statistically speaking, too good to be true, yet "everything we know about Mendel suggests that he was unlikely to engage in either deliberate fraud or in an unconscious adjustment of his observations". Several writers have attempted to resolve this paradox.
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 the doubt". In a 2004 article, J.W. Porteous concluded that Mendel's observations were indeed implausible. An explanation for Mendel's results based on tetrad pollen has been proposed, but reproduction of the experiments showed no evidence that the tetrad-pollen model explains any of the bias.
Another attempt to resolve the Mendelian paradox notes that a conflict may sometimes arise between the moral imperative of a bias-free recounting of one's factual observations and the even more important imperative of advancing scientific knowledge. Mendel might have felt compelled "to simplify his data to meet real, or feared editorial objections." Such an action could be justified on moral grounds (and hence provide a resolution to the Mendelian paradox) since the alternative—refusing to comply—might have hindered the growth of scientific knowledge. Similarly, like so many other obscure innovators of science, Mendel, a little-known innovator of working-class background, had to "break through the cognitive paradigms and social prejudices" of his audience. If such a breakthrough "could be best achieved by deliberately omitting some observations from his report and adjusting others to make them more palatable to his audience, such actions could be justified on moral grounds."
Daniel L. Hartl and Daniel J. Fairbanks reject outright Fisher's statistical argument, suggesting that Fisher incorrectly interpreted Mendel's experiments. They find it likely that Mendel scored more than ten progeny and that the results matched the expectation. They conclude: "Fisher's allegation of deliberate falsification can finally be put to rest, because on closer analysis it has proved to be unsupported by convincing evidence". In 2008 Hartl and Fairbanks (with Allan Franklin and AWF Edwards) wrote a comprehensive book in which they concluded that there were no reasons to assert Mendel fabricated his results, nor that Fisher deliberately tried to diminish Mendel's legacy. Reassessment of Fisher's statistical analysis, according to these authors, also disproves the notion of confirmation bias in Mendel's results.

== Commemoration ==
Mount Mendel in New Zealand's Paparoa Range was named after him in 1970 by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. In celebration of his 200th birthday, Mendel's body was exhumed and his DNA sequenced.

== See also ==
List of Roman Catholic cleric–scientists
Mendel Museum of Genetics
Mendel Polar Station in Antarctica
Mendel University in Brno
Mendelian error
The Gardener of God, an Italian docudrama about the life and works of Gregor Mendel

== References ==

== Further reading ==

== External links ==

Works by Gregor Mendel at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Gregor Mendel at the Internet Archive
Works by Gregor Mendel at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) 
1913 Catholic Encyclopedia entry, "Mendel, Mendelism"
Augustinian Abbey of St. Thomas at Brno Archived 22 November 2005 at the Wayback Machine
Biography, bibliography and access to digital sources in the Virtual Laboratory of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Biography of Gregor Mendel
GCSE student
Gregor Mendel (1822–1884)
Gregor Mendel Primary Sources
Johann Gregor Mendel: Why his discoveries were ignored for 35 (72) years (in German)
Masaryk University to rebuild Mendel's greenhouse | Brno Now
Mendel Museum of Genetics
Mendel's Paper in English
Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man
A photographic tour of St. Thomas' Abbey, Brno, Czech Republic
Villanova University Mendel Collection