It carries on because there is no proof ruling out other men.
It carries on because of irrational biases.
It carries on because there is no proof ruling out other men.
It carries on because the new scientific method significantly distinguishes the probability of Thomas Jefferson paternity.
From submitted paper:
Finally, we estimated joint likelihood ratios and posterior probabilities under the assumption that Eston and Madison Hemings had the same father (Table 2). Under this assumption, we estimate that TJ paternity is 2,213 (1,614–2,814 central 95th percentile interval) times more likely than RJ paternity using the 5 cM threshold and 3,672 (2,811–4,559) times more likely using the 10 cM threshold. We obtained similar posterior probabilities (~99.95%) from both thresholds. When we allow for Eston and Madison Hemings to have different fathers and use a uniform prior where all combinations of paternity are equally probable, we estimate the posterior probability of TJ paternity for both Eston and Madison to be 82.4% (81.73%–82.9%) and 86.4% (86.09%–86.57%) using the 5 and 10 cM thresholds, respectively, and obtain a posterior probability of ~99.96% that Thomas Jefferson was the father of a least one of Eston and Madison (SI, Tables S8 & S9) and therefore a posterior probability <0.1% that he was not the father of either one.