Mendel Got Extremely Lucky (...or Maybe He Lied) 

Great example and storytelling!

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It's the same way your limited by your tools, senses and experience in dictating reality, at best it's a gross approximation and at worse your observing a false reality with its own consistent logic

Luck seems common because we don't remember the unlucky ones.

Another classic example is how Hans Oersted accidentally discovered the relationship between electricity and magnetism

🙄

I heard he made up his mind after lying in bed for a week listening to a John Lemon sonata.

Okay, Dad

You missed starting the comment with "All I am saying,".

But we also know the only way to get peas is with a knife

yeah, it's not luck, it's good intuition

The luck is his choice of plant. If he had chosen any other organism chances are that he wouldnt have had the results he got.

@@mathieuxlaflamme2322 And I am saying it was likely a deliberate choice for those reasons. People had noticed heredity and heritable traits, so it would have been a silly waste of time to prove the point with an organism he didnt know would support his idea.

@@mathieuxlaflamme2322 he worked on different things, and was smart enough to recognize that peas had some promising properties and stick with them. not luck

It was divine will that guided him! God must've given him a revelation! Take that, evolution! /s

Hmm, the purple ones are more common, but sometimes they make white ones! BUT WHY?!?!?! *Founds Genetics*

In a Botany class, we studied the genetics of albinism in sorghum plants. That was pretty straightforward inheritance. The poor albino ones suffered early deaths. 😢

Farmers and crop husbandry has been studying offspring for thousands of years. This Medel is surely important to science, but Christ the narrow framing that gives him credit let alone assign him luck for discovering what native cultivators literally designed the plants to do is ridiculous.

@@yossarrian He did not discover what they did. He discovered WHY they did what they did. That is what science is all about.

@@dannypipewrench533 ok yes, and that negates my point that his choice was not arbitrary nor lucky how?

It does have a cool vibe.

Ever so slightly super geeky

Yes! 😂

I disagree no disrespect ... although the words have a cool vibration there's no meaning behind it and the word Mendel sounds very like mundane

Or perhaps a children's book?

I was thinking the exact same thing!

That's the case with just about any field, but keep in mind, that Mendel was essentially one of those people you just described, and his work was only discovered posthumously.

absolutely. Look up biometricians, who were big shots in the 2nd half of the 19th century. Most traits of interest-like height or, in fact, eye color-are "complex" and don't apparently follow Mendelian inheritance rules. Mendel's true luck is that he happened to have had the time to make detailed observations of anecdotal traits. It turned out this was the right starting point, and that variation in more important traits could also be explained with these rules albeit in a roundabout way

Hundreds of years before him and at the same time he was alive, many others in the fields of science were inquiring on heritability, he just happened to have a nice way to see how some traits happened and this worked out really well when later geneticists found his papers decades later. Its not really survivor bias, its just a great place to start the idea of heritability and how it works. He was certainly lucky though

Exactly my thought

Wait, you're telling me the church wasnt cool letting this guy watch animals bang each other, but they're perfectly ok with him watching plants get it on?? Typical Christian hypocrites. Not to mention the fact he hybridized with bees, meaning he somehow was able to mate with these poor bees himself! what a twisted individual. Those poor bees probably never stood a chance....how....ugh. At least we got good science out of it. Ends justifying the means and what not.

"religious leaders." you mean _the other monks at his monastery?_

@@benthomason3307 It was considered unethical to purposely breed animals unworthy for use in sacrifices and feast. So plants were more acceptable for experiment on.

It is a nice story, but there are no historical records of it. It likely goes back to Mendel's hawkweed crossing experiments. Hawkweed is also called mouse ear.

"In August 1853, Mendel returned to Brno, still uncertified as a science teacher but well trained in scientific theory and methodology. He immediately encountered an environment of official censure for secular pursuits, not unlike the ecclesiastical condemnation of science he had witnessed in Vienna. The Bishop of Brno, Anton Ernst Schaffgotsch, had been assigned to investigate the Augustinian monasteries in Prague, Krakow, and Brno for secularism, beginning in 1853 while Mendel was still in Vienna (Orel 1996; Klein and Klein 2013). In 1854, after Mendel had returned, Schaffgotsch conducted an on-site investigation. In his report, recommending that the monastery be disbanded, he wrote (as translated by Klein and Klein 2013): “In a word, in the house tending the Rule of St. Augustine reigns a secular spirit which the few lappets of the Augustinian habit fail to cover up”, and specifically of Mendel, “he studies profane sciences at a worldly institution in Vienna at the expense of the monastery to become a professor of said sciences at a state institution” (p. 295)." - nature.com/articles/s41437-019-0289-9 (Mendel and Darwin: untangling a persistent enigma, 2020) "Although he began his research using mice, he later switched to plants because his bishop (Anton Ernst Schaffgotsch) found studying animal sexuality offensive and inappropriate for the status of a monk. Hence, Mendel decided to use garden peas as his primary experimental model" - nature.com/articles/s41431-023-01303-1 (Johann Gregor Mendel: the victory of statistics over human imagination, 2023)

missed opportunity to call him a peabrain

Damn peter you're old man!

@@curiodyssey3867 yeah....I am...my body let's me know most days of that.

@@peterkennedy7219 getting older scares me :( I never even considered the mortality of my parents, but from age 60-65 they have aged so much, gone grey, then my pops got cancer. That's when it really hit me. Then it dawned on me that I'm already 30, and the day absolutely will come, as real as this very moment, where I will be looking in the mirror back at a 65 year old me, and my time on this earth will, at least for the majority, be used up. Scares me because from 20 to 30 time has accelerated so fast that if it keeps it up like this, literally no time at all will have passed before its here. Oh my god existential dread is coming on heavy right now ahhh

@@curiodyssey3867 I get it. My dad died at 37 when I was 14. Really messed with my head when I hit 37 and have since passed it by 8 years. Never figured I would make past 40. Part of the reason I never had kids.

Ya, I feel the title and premise of this video is misleading. He came upon peas while studying other plants and other traits. He didn’t just choose the traits at random as is said in the video. An amazing mind and diligent observation, not luck, lead to Mendels discoveries.

Yeah, pretty sure he was a very talented gardener already and had a very good intuition for which plant to pick and which traits. There is a saying that goes ‘Chance favors the prepared mind’

@@jjsparks_9025 Yeah and says "well maybe he just lied?" but then ... they dont talk about how. They dont talk about whether he did good or bad science, or how he "massaged the evidence", etc....

@@Nazuiko Exactly. I was especially curious about the lying part but they glossed it over. The video is sus. It looks as if they wanted to diminish Mendel's works.

@@stempki The monastery where he worked was the crop source for several Parishes in the Local Bishop's Diocese. Much of to food was grown for the Bishop, Priests, Deacons, Monks, Nuns, and what we would now call Charity Dining Halls.

That's true! (p < 0.05)

That's awful mean of you to say.

In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.

Albeit it is basic, it still basic enough that any normal person can understand it. It is how people use to breed certain animals to get certain traits without understanding the deep reasons for it. For example, Shrimp Breeding in the aquarium hobby etc.

isnt he a professor in utah valley university?

This is exactly what I was thinking. Not so much luck, but that he chose an organism to study that already fit his hypothesis.

It's still common today. Clinical studies that don't prove a medication works are often not published by the companies doing them.

@@ooooneeee very true

Wow, that is a lot of speculation and conspiracy

@@poldertalk Yes but I believe it's a reasonable and plausible guess. It is what I would have probably done if I was in his place back then. It may seem scandalous now but was within expectations of the era.

Read somewhere he was originally breeding rats but had to pick something else when other monks in the monastery started complaining about his test subjects. I guess it's not just the stench but that he's observing them getting it on that grossed out his collegues.

They're just suggesting he might have lied given how precise some of his results were considering what we know now. And maybe it's not true, but worth mentioning.

He definitely got lucky by deciding to study peas. He studied many plants, but by having peas he could actually draw the relevant conclusions. Claiming Mendel might have lied, simply due to the precision of pea results, seems yellow journalistic, but that just means his results were lucky.

yeah it seems a bit ridiculous to dismiss his intuition as "luck"

It's luck that he lived or had access to a particular plant that follows this basic form of inheritance.

@@shawnsg you don't think that it was a blind guess, but educated by them who came before him? Cause, I mean, obviously. And as such stop invisiblizing the common wisdom for some pale-face science-guy who INVENTED genes. It wasn't luck, it was farmers and cultivators and agriculture birthed from husbandry shared by old-wives for thousands--thats right--thousands of years. That he had access bc of luck is like saying you're lucky to have access to electricity. True enough but way beyond the bucket. Not relevant.

The TV series? I started watching it for a second time but got pre-occupied again and haven't even finished the first season. 😉

are you currently pursuing jobs ?

@@ishana6038 no, right now I work with IT assistance, which is something I like but the pay sucks, also too many unpaid overtime work, as I teacher at least the pay is slightly better and a bit less unpaid overtime work

@@evandrochaves9596 yaa . .. teaching is nice ...plus you also get to be in touch with your fav subject ...hopefully, you'll be a teacher soon 👍

thought the same, somewhat unfair to have it in the title but not in the video itself.. cause that's what's gonna stick in your mind even if it's wrong after all..

That’s clickbait for ya.

Doesn't it look like bad luck if you look at the others?

I like your funny word magic man

I'm a bit disappointed that there was no more than a single comment on that item. Analysis of his data match the outcomes a bit too well. One would expect a bit more variability in "real" data. Now, it is still possible that he was lucky in his data as well as his subject matter. The key to understand is those suggesting the data might be edited to prove the hypothesis are not saying he was wrong. In the case of binary and independent genes, his principles are valid, and that has been proven over and over again since his time. Others have suggested that he selected the organism and the traits as they seemed to have a clear pattern. He then investigated that pattern until he could better understand how the traits combined. I'm sure he was not the first to see patterns in inheritance, but he is the first to document his theory and provide data to back it up.

That's a false assumption. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

@@YeOldeTraveller Confirmation Bias is often an Unmentioned/Ignored Flaw in many Scientific Research Studies. Isaac Asimov in his Autobiography mention he almost failed Biochemistry for reporting all his results and refusing to leave out data points that did not agree with the results expected by the baseline hypothesis.

Nah, because when he chose them concept of genetics did not even exist. He wroked with purebred lines. And then he established 'genetics'

Mendel studied many plants. Among them peas were the easiest to analyze. Their gene patterns were simple enough for him to understand after observation, so he could actually draw conclusions. We don’t hear about his other plants, likely because their patterns were to complex to be neatly categorized and he had difficulty observing them to the same extent as peas.

God had nothing to do with finding his work, but everything with why it was hidden.

@@kellydalstok8900 damn true, I mean at least his followers

I wonder if it’s because he was a friar in an abbey, and their dress code hadn’t changed much in the 500 years prior :P

@@diggoran Their glasses had though.

And that's just one extra chromosome. Science is wild

The luck in this case was among the plants he studied there were peas.

@@dex6316 He only published the results of peas. Whether he studied other plants is unknown.

Breeding rats sounds very difficult. Peas seem like such a perfect choice in retrospect.

@@Carlos-ln8fd true. Had he kept with rats and mice he might have never discovered what he did with peas.

Maybe he should’ve changed the bedding more frequently.

Well, Mendel was fairly set in one spot at that monastery, so maybe if Darwin had decided to visit one day? Based on Darwin's relationship with Christianity at the time, with his ideas being new and all, it might have been very possible that Mendel wouldn't have liked what Darwin had to say 😂

@@johnhoelzeman6683 Possibly! I think it might be more realistic that Mendel could conceivably come across some of Darwin's writings on evolution, and co-opt those ideas to complete his explanation of inheritance and look at the bigger picture.

yeah exactly. I mean, the choice of pea plants *was* pure dumb luck (it was what the monastery would let him experiment with), but he actually documented all sorts of traits. He just had absolutely no clue what to do with the ones that were more complicated so he solely focused on the things he *could* explain. He explained that in the preface to his paper.

That's an interesting case of "independent assortment" not applying. A commonly known example among snake hobbyists is "spider" ball pythons. "Spider" is a pattern in the snake's coloration that cropped up by random mutation and was then bred for, but is apparently linked to motor issues, known as "spider wobble" that occur with varying severity.

It's actually really interesting! While mammals primarily get our color from melanin, other animals can have several pigments/color producing cells going on. Some reptiles, for example have melanin and also Xanthophores, which are yellow, so an "albino"(amelanistic) ball python is white and yellow and an axanthic ball python is white and brownish-grey.

Actually, the number of white ones would _not_ quickly fall each generation. That's one of the big misunderstanding of Mendelian genetics even today, with newspapers still printing "scientific" articles about things like "redheads are not going to exist in a few generations!". The actual number would instead quickly settle on a more or less fixed proportion, which is exactly the curious thing that underlines the "Huh, that's weird" that led into the development of genetics. Before Mendel (and of course, still long after him chronologically), the general idea of inheritance was that children are the mix of their parents. What Mendel has shown was that this mixing is _not_ a simple averaging of traits, but rather, that it's quantum, granular. And along with that was the discovery (or perhaps better said, a better explanation) of recessive traits - which can be transferred in the offspring _without_ showing up on the offspring. Of course, the phenomenon itself was noticed before - it was known that sometimes, traits seem to "skip" a generation or two. But Mendel's data made it very clear that this is a very regular, though also random, mechanism. While you can never tell exactly which children will display which traits, you _can_ know how many of each there will be, on average. Sometimes, the difference is not obvious. Today we know that this is because a) genes can share the same chromosome, and chromosomes cross over and b) some traits are actually caused by an interplay of many different genes. A child of a small parent and a tall parent will most often be intermediate height (all else equal), _but_ - it can also be even smaller, or even taller.

This is weird question and I am not sure it will be answered because neither you nor anyone else is in position to change the gravity a single bit. And no one knows the material system hiding behind gravity (by the way Einstein was definitely wrong with gravity). It is the same kind of question like when you ask what would happen if humans have two heads (and two brains), four legs or even wings to fly. All this is possible but not always meaningful. You should be more interested about evolution and how it works in detail. Biology will not explain it to you as I show in my videos.

@@Dr.Z.Moravcik-inventor-of-AGI thank you for the insight. I am indeed interested in biology and am currently studying medicine :) if fact thinking about factors impacting the cardiovascular system and therefore limiting life expectancy led me to this thought. Other areas of knowledge are also fascinating so I‘m happy to keep learning. Yes, „what if“ questions might not really help with anything other than to entertain me

@@katharinafeustel5864 Sure I know what you mean. Most of the medical doctors rely on biology which is of no use if you want to understand human body perfectly. Body is only molecules ordered in space & time which is chemistry and molecules on atomic level is physics and so on. Making biologists talk about it is just waste of time. Answer to your question is that changing the gravity would require tremendous amount of change of human body structure (both anatomy and physiology). You would need to rebuild the body like when you want a car to suddenly float on the water. If increasing gravity about 10% means that instead of 100kg you would weigh 110kg, then your body could probably cope with it (like women usually weigh substantially less, like for example 55kg instead of 50kg is no problem for human body). This is no evolution but adaption capability of human body. Most of the structures of human body have adaption capability, which means that they can adapt to changes. Like for example your body height adapted to sudden changes in recent past and humans are bigger now (they say it was caused by increased sugar intake and better nutrition in general). So cardiovascular system and bones certainly can adapt as well (just think about what physical training /which is also a sudden change/ can do with human body). Also when your cardiovascular system develops new ramifications of arteries, veins and capillaries, it is no evolution (they usually call this phenomena wrongly 'microevolution') but it is only adaption of human body to changes. Unfortunately adaption of human body has its LIMITS and when they are reached it is like I have written. Rebuilding of the whole body is needed. Then we should start talking about evolution. Like for example when your body height should increase to 4-5 meters, then most of your systems in your body would stop working correctly and all of the human anatomy and physiology would require a rebuild.

😂

the luck was using peas, instesd of say, mice.

@@oxybrightdark8765 and I heard he was originally breeding mice. Had he not been forced to pick a different subject, he might not have made these discoveries.