Children are now Ahead of the Childish Myth Believing Royal Society

Especially incredibly bright primary school children in Scotland are ahead of the Royal Society on the facts https://t.co/pPgoyU5XDh pic.twitter.com/QDCgmiW3lW

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Criminotweet) October 14, 2016

On Richard III and Patrick Matthew: The Age of Scientific History Versus The Last Bastions of Childish Improbabilities

Rationally skeptical fact-led historians have revealed that the long-told history of Richard III is based for the most part on fabricated and otherwise un-evidenced storytelling (see for example Potter 1983; Ashdown-Hill 2015).

 After the Tudor usurpation of the throne it was necessary to justify to the populace, who believed in the divine sovereign right of the "Crown" to demand absolute loyalty and obedience, that Henry VII's army's slaughter of their monarch King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth was justified homicide of a ruler who was less, not more, than a normal human being.

Bit by bit, a few 19th, and many 20th and 21st century historians have peeled away at the layers of mythology about Richard III, revealing them to be baseless fictions, written as Tudor propaganda by supporters of Henry.

Bit by bit, one 20th century anthropologist (Eiseley 1979) and a few 20th and 21st century scientists (Dempster, 1995 ; Wainwright, 2010) and one sociologist (Sutton 2014 and  2016) have peeled away at the layers of mythology about Patrick Matthew, the originator of the concept of macroevolution by natural selection, revealing them to be unevidenced stories, deliberate lies written by Darwin and disproven fallacies written by his supporters as Darwinite propaganda.

What Jeremey Potter (1983. p. 6) cites as Horace Walpole's so eloquent dismissal of the last bastions of Richard III liars, mythmongers and their mynah-birding dupes can equally be said of those who currently cling to the ludicrous and now newly completely evidence-led debunked notion that Darwin and Wallace had virgin cognitive conceptions of Patrick Matthew's prior published theory, and orignal explanatory examples and analogies to explain it, after their friends, correspondents and influencers and influencer's influencers and facilitators cited it in the literature:

'Horace Walpole is the spokesman in this pithy summary of their case: "The Reign of Richard III has so degraded our annals by an intrusion of childish improbabilities that it places that reign at a level with the story of Jack-the Giant Killer."

And so, with apologies to Walpole (1798) , similarities between the cases of the treatment of Richard III and Patrick Matthew suggest to me that something similar should be written about the treatment of the latter:

The first and foremost priority that has been awarded to Darwin and Wallace, the replicators of Matthew's prior-published and prior-cited orignal conception of macroevolution by natural selection, has so degraded our annals of the history of scientific discovery by an intrusion of childish improbabilities, that it places the claimed historical fact of Darwin's and Wallace's dual independent conceptions at a level with the story of  The Virgin Mary. 

Incidentally, the same IDD research method that originally disproved the expert knowledge claim that no naturalists / no biologists read Matthew's (1831) orignal conception before Darwin and Wallace (1858) and Darwin (1859) replicated it without citing him, has unearthed something else orignal and intriguing about a Sheriff of Nottingham, the Mayor of Nottingham and Richard III's alabaster tomb memorial at Greyfriars Abbey in Leicester: Click Here to Read the Story.

Old Nottingham manuscript DISCOVERY of NEW DATA now in the capable hands of the Richard III Society research experts https://t.co/ntIuoIsENj pic.twitter.com/s7GAUZUPCN

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Dysology) October 19, 2016

Survey.

Your opinion is valuable.

If you had to choose, which historical figure do you think is most known throughout the World?

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Criminotweet) October 12, 2016

Patrick Matthew's Obituary

Those who have fought hard to see Matthew buried in oblivion must be turning in their own graves today.

This text was first transcribed by Dr Mike Weale: from his original re-discovery of it the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, September 5th 1874, p.2 col.2-3. 

The President of the British Association mentioned in his address at Belfast the name of a very remarkable man whose researches and discoveries will be better known to the scientific men of the next generation than they are to the men of the present. We dare say that when Professor TYNDALL coupled the name of PATRICK MATTHEW with that of Mr. DARWIN not a few of those who read next morning the Professor’s address would be inclined to ask “Who is Mr. MATTHEW?” To this question we are in a position to give some answer. Mr. MATTHEW was a thinking man, whose powerful mind and whose habits of keen and painstaking observance found both leisure and scope during the long life of lettered ease he led upon his pleasant estate in the Carse of Gowrie. His unobtrusive disposition, his love of retirement, a certain invincible shyness tempered by an inflexible independence in all that concerned his reason and his conscience, and, most of all, the difficulty he found in putting his views into a form sufficiently clear and concise to satisfy himself, all tended to make him that which he was – namely, a man who, although far in advance of his age, shrank from contact with the age in which he lived. It was only by chance that Mr. DARWIN heard of a rural philosopher who had anticipated him by long series of years in the promulgation of what is commonly known as “the Darwinian theory.” Mr. DARWIN read Mr. MATTHEW’s work on “Naval Timber,” found in it the theory of elective affinity or natural selection, and handsomely acknowledged that a country gentleman dwelling among his orchards in the famed Forfarshire Carse had gone before him on the path of research which he had regarded as exclusively his own. It was only by accident that Mr. WALTER, of the Times, met one day with an old man upon whom age sat lightly, and whose talk so interested him that he dipped into the same book on “Naval Timber,” and found to his amazement that he had been conversing with a Seer who had in his youth put upon paper his pre-vision – a vision seen with the eye of the mind – of the steam fleets of the future with their iron rams, their changed manoeuvres, their rapid movements, and their heavy armour plating. Mr. WALTER was so impressed by the chapter on armour-plated steam rams that he republished it in the pages of the Thunderer to let the world see that there was in England one man who, at the time when steam navigation was in its infancy – a mere timidly tentative thing – foresaw the changes which steam had made necessary in naval warfare, and foreseen some of those changes with a clearness which the Admiralty have hardly realised at this hour. An agriculturist had, in nautical matters, gone ahead of all recognised nautical authorities by more than thirty-five years. The chapter re-issued in the Times read like a revelation, and furnished one of the most curious illustrations this generation has seen of the triumph of mind over circumstances.

Mr. MATTHEW’s intellect was of a highly speculative order, and its speculations were characterised by a daring which contrasted strongly with his diffidence in other respects. He accepted nothing on trust, but mapped out his own course of thought and life with little regard for tradition, or for the respect paid to stereotyped conventionalisms. He was one of those who believe at once much less and much more than society at large believes. He loved to explore the unexplored in the realm of thought, leaving the world and its tumults behind him while he studied, with microscopic minuteness, the secrets of vegetable and animal life. In this way he became by slow degrees an animated Encyclopaedia of instructive knowledge picked up in the bye-paths of information. He knew much that was novel respecting the habits of birds and beasts and insects, the development of plants, and the laws which govern human life, and his desire to interest others in his own studies must, for a reason we are about to name, have caused him some disappointment. He lacked the power to put into attractive and popular shape the information he had picked up. We have likened him to an Encyclopaedia, but he was an Encyclopaedia with the folios unnumbered, the chapters unedited, and the index unmade. The happy art of making hard things easy and strange things familiar by means of using here and there an apt metaphor was not his. The few who shared with us the privilege and the honour of his friendship found that it required some previous preparation to enable them to follow him in his conversational statements of views which were to him sufficiently plain. But when he found thoughts identical with his own more clearly expressed by another than he knew how to express them his gratification was great, and this was particularly the case in respect of articles on the fighting ships of the future.

Mr. MATTHEW was a man of quick sympathies, and his sympathies were with the poor. In common with several other young men of great force of character he was carried early in life into active relations with the Chartist movement, and was, as a landed gentleman and an ardent Democrat, elected Chairman of the Chartist Convention. But he was no Democrat of the modern school. As an admirer of good government he respected those administrators who governed strongly. Abstemious in his own habits, governed by an enlightened reason and highly cultivated sense of personal honour, he was a fervid advocate of education – and not merely of the education of the schools, but of the educating influences that proceed from the setting of a good example. On his own land he planted fruit trees by the wayside, and he pointed with pleasure and with pride to the evidences that they were not injuriously molested. In another respect Mr. MATTHEW’s Democratic sympathies took a contrary direction to those of the Manchester – or GLADSTONE – school. He had more love for the people than faith in their judgment, and he would have done more for them than through them. He regarded the British Colonies with enthusiasm as the grandest patrimonial possessions of the nation, and so far from advocating a policy of Imperial disintegration as good for the nations and as leading to desirable equality, he believed in the superiority of certain races of men over others, and regarded the patent of governing authority possessed by the Saxon race as one stamped and sealed with the indisputable sign-manual of the Maker of the World. At the age of 84 the Philosopher of Inchture was reaping in brightness of spirit one of the rewards of his enlightened mode of life when he kindly intimated to us his wish that we should run up to the North to see him, and receive from his lips some account of his later researches. The Fates deprived us of that opportunity, and it was the last. The Seer, at once old and so youthful, weighted with years and so fresh in sympathies, so calm of mind and so cheerful at the period life when most men are querulous, has been removed, and we thank Professor TYNDALL for placing his name just where Mr. DARWIN would wish to see it placed – in a “co-partnership” of honour and fame.

We thank Professor TYNDALL for placing his name just where Mr. DARWIN would wish to see it placed – in a “co-partnership” of honour and fame https://t.co/885vpkXCQ6

— Andy Wilson (@a8drewson) October 9, 2016

The University of Leicester, The Richard III Society and the Important Question of Influence on Great Discovery

Incredibly,the Simple Fact-Finding IDD Research Method has Struck Again! Important old Nottingham book detected https://t.co/G4MKrDSSfc pic.twitter.com/FwznBwfNZ5

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Criminotweet) October 6, 2016

Ever since the sociologist Robert Merton (e.g. Merton 1957) emphasised the great importance of the

role of influence and priority for great scientific and other academic discoveries it has been an area deemed of interest to the social sciences.

My own research into the influence of  Partick Matthew - the originator of macroevolution by natural selection  (e.g. Sutton 2016) - has enabled me to realise the contemporary importance of the current question of the precise process of influence of members of the Richard III Society on Leicester University staff. Moreso, some members of the Society, especially John Ashdown Hill (See my earlier Best Thinking blog post), have gone into print in scholarly books to criticise the approach taken by Leicester University to promote its role in the discovery of the grave site or Richard III in a Leicester car park.

Those involved in supposedly independently replicating Matthew's (1831) prior-published discovery  (Darwin and Wallace 1858) and Darwin (1859) of the full hypothesis of macroevolution by natural selection, others who are newly discovered (Sutton 2014) to have cited it pre-1858, and those who mocked and disparaged Matthew and platform blocked him from speaking on his discovery, are all long dead. But imagine how things would be if we could actually interview them, rather than have to trawl around for scraps of evidence in the publication record and in their diaries and correspondence archive.

In 100 years from now I wonder what will be the "majority view" story on who has first and foremost priority for the discovery of Richard III's remains in the carpark?

 In light of published contestations from members of the Richard III Society, I believe it is essential to the interests of historic and other scholarly veracity on how great discoveries are made that we conduct academic research with members of the Richard III Society and The University of Leicester in order to determine whether due priority is currently being awarded to the right people.

Conflict on the topic of influence and first and foremost priority for great discoveries  

Langley et al (2014)  - members of the Richard III society - write in their scholarly book: Finding Richard III: The Official Account of Research by the Retrieval and Reburial Project  on the topic of discovering the grave of Richard III:

'Regrettably, in view of subsequent events, it needs to be emphasized that no other persons or institutions worked to amass the evidence needed to launch such a project, nor did anyone in Leicester investigate the idea of mounting a search for the king's grave. The reason for this is simple: they lacked the necessary knowledge and incentive. First, work of this nature has always lain in the hands of researchers and historians whom academics (and recently even archeologists) have been pleased to call 'amateurs.'. Second, almost the entire population of Leicester and its archeologists believed the unlikely tradition that the grave had been desecrated and destroyed.'

And

'In light of David Baldwin's very clear statement as to his view of this likely burial site, it is hard to understand on what basis the University of Leicester should maintain that Baldwin identified Richard's burial place as the Social Services car park...'

University of Leicester affiliated archaeological experts, academics and employed administrators were approached by independent historians, principally by Langley who did know the most likely spot for the exact grave site location, along with Ashdown Hill whose research confirmed the conclusions of a few others in that regard and also pinpointed it.  And then University archaeologists were simply paid by Langley - (Langley being the client and the Richard III Society the principal funders)  and were told where the body most likely was buried  and then directed to dig. Senior archaeologists at Leicester University doubted it was there, but they dug anyway, because they were employed simply as expert archaeological diggers. Even then one of the University staff members negligently struck the skull with a hatchet and damaged it more than it ever had been in the last 500+ years,

This happened following Ashdown-Hill's research into tracing a line of DNA descent back to Richard III in order that any bones recovered could be checked to see if they were those of the king, his associate Langley approached Leicester University:

'Langley knew of the global reputation of the genetics department of the University of Leicester for its pioneering work in genetic fingerprinting, therefore approaches were made to Dr Turi King, Lecturer in Genetics and Archeology. She agreed that if human remains were found which showed potential for being compatible with those of Richard III, she could arrange to conduct tests to retrieve a mtDNA sample ad to match it...'

'On the morning of 4 February 2013, the University of leicester mounted a media event to announce  that the mtDNA of the bones found at Greyfriers site matched that of Richard IIIs living relatives. Dr John Ashdown-Hill, the discoverer of the MtDNA, was excluded from the announcement. The university's Professor of Greek Archeology, and History, Dr Lin Foxhall, who had played no part in the search or retrieval process, took the lead when it came to the historical background. Philippa Langley was allowed to give a short speech at the end [but only] after the the media news feed was cut.'

'FUNDING SOURCES FOR ARCHEOLOGY COSTS EXCLUDING PRELIMINARY DESK-BASED ANALYSIS (£1,140) AND GROUND-PENETRATING RADAR (£5,043)

• Richard III Society and Members  - £17, 367    52.8%
• University of leicester                      £10,000     30.43%
• Leicestershire Promotions Ltd         £5,000       15.21%
• Leicester Adult Schools                   £500            1.52%
• Total                                                 £32,867       100%

There are more details of the grievances of these Richard III Society members in their book. I have no intention of stealing their thunder. The book is less than £3 on Amazon Kindle. Please buy it to learn more. There are many far more important revelations inside.

For the historical record: a small sample University of Leicester Academic's Twitter responses to my Tweets on the contents of this book regarding my earlier Best Thinking blog post follow:

1 From Turi King

While John's contribution isn't disputed, we weren't told where to dig to find Richard's remains! Greyfriars precinct has never been lost! https://t.co/xauQqyGAxn

— Turi King (@Turi__King) September 29, 2016

2. Turi King

.@Turi__King Yes I think it needs researching @rwjdingwall now But as funded sociology project on influence & priority for orignal discovery

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Criminotweet) September 30, 2016

Turi King - continued...

@Criminotweet O'Sullivan, D. In the Company of the Preachers.The Archaeology of Medieval Friaries in England and Wales.

— Turi King (@Turi__King) September 30, 2016

3. Turi King

. @Criminotweet Why not? In the meantime it would make sense to update your blog to reflect a more balanced view until proper research done.

— Turi King (@Turi__King) September 30, 2016

Mike Sutton...

.Dear @Turi__King - To be precise, I wonder if you might kindly look at the second paragraph of my blog and comment? https://t.co/G4MKrDSSfc

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Criminotweet) September 30, 2016

Reply by Turi King

.@Criminotweet Not having read the book, afraid I couldn't say what the disconfirming evidence would be. Make that research part your blog?

— Turi King (@Turi__King) September 30, 2016

4. Turi King

.@Criminotweet And a quick look around to check the facts leads you to https://t.co/1CLs8skbHt

— Turi King (@Turi__King) September 30, 2016

The said "facts":

Funder	Excavation and Reinstatement	Post Excavation	Total	% Contribution
University of Leicester*	£19,935	£94,115	£114,050	80.0%
Richard III Society	£18,083	--	£18,083	12.7%
Leicester Shire Promotions	£5,000	--	£5,000	3.5%
Leicester City Council	£5,000	--	£5,000	3.5%
Leicester Adult Schools	£500	--	£500	0.4%
Total	£48,518	£94,115	£142,633

 Note these do not appear to be the same apparent costing for simple discovery costs that the Richard III society provide. For example, the word "reinstatement" (i.e. post discovery and post excavation) added to the excavation costs is not used in the Richard III society in their costings. And the column for "post excavation" is a post (not pre) discovery cost.

5 Turi King

.@Criminotweet Not read the book but John said to me before dig started that finding Richard would be pure chance. So I'm surprised at this!

— Turi King (@Turi__King) September 30, 2016

Turi King continued

.@Criminotweet Not read it, as I say. Perhaps he's forgotten? He was as sceptical as we were.

— Turi King (@Turi__King) September 30, 2016

6. Turi King

.@Criminotweet !? We have medieval friaries expert: Dierdre O'Sullivan works with ULAS. Sounds like you need to do some homework for blog!;)

— Turi King (@Turi__King) September 30, 2016

Mike Sutton's reply

.@Turi__King Turi Blog presents verbatim published accusations of scholars. I have cited and quoted them. Any disconfirming evidence welcome

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Criminotweet) September 30, 2016

7. Turi King

@Criminotweet O'Sullivan, D. In the Company of the Preachers.The Archaeology of Medieval Friaries in England and Wales.

— Turi King (@Turi__King) September 30, 2016

Turi King....Next..

.@Criminotweet You probably want to research this for your blog so you can make an educated assessment of his claims. My understanding is..

— Turi King (@Turi__King) September 30, 2016

Turi King continued...

@Criminotweet My understanding is that friaries come in a set of standard layouts but it's not my field. But do see Dierdre O'Sullvan's work

— Turi King (@Turi__King) September 30, 2016

8. Mike Sutton

.@Turi__King I will certainly add all dis-confirming evidence Turi Would you post any such evidence as comment on the blog (with citations)?

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Criminotweet) September 30, 2016

9. Turi King

.@Criminotweet Not having read the book, afraid I couldn't say what the disconfirming evidence would be. Make that research part your blog?

— Turi King (@Turi__King) September 30, 2016

10 Turi King

.@Criminotweet Personally I thought it was a great interdisciplinary project with academics & public contributing to an amazing outcome.

— Turi King (@Turi__King) September 30, 2016

11. Mike Sutton (October 2nd 2017)

@Turi__King @Turi__King So why this publication by Richard III Soc assertion of big Influence on Uni of Leicester? https://t.co/IKnt5AdAPV pic.twitter.com/5aICfzy2cR

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Criminotweet) October 2, 2016

12 Reply from Turi King

@Turi__King Thanks. Read book by Ashdown-Hill expecting celebratory collaborative success. Led to second. Each express great dissatisfaction pic.twitter.com/3Ah6oWfmyI

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Criminotweet) October 3, 2016

You can read my two other blogs on this topic:

(1) here
(2) here

You can read my two Amazon book reviews on the topic

(1) here
(2) here

Follow me on Twitter

Here

Knowledge Contamination Analysis is Analogous to DNA Fingerprinting

Some of the greatest discoveries made in science and academia have question marks hanging over the area of prior-influence by unacknowledged prior-publications and other means of communicating ideas and facts.

The question of the influence of Matthew on Darwin and Wallace has been  brought to the fore by the new discovery that he was cited by Darwin's and Wallace's influencers and their influencer's influencers before they put so much as pen to paper on the topic.

New books published by John Ashdown-Hill accuse Leicester University of effective glory theft by orchestrated failure to acknowledge the crucial influence of his work on the discovery of Richard III's grave in a Leicester car park.

"Knowledge contamination" analysis can make a book an academic crime scene:
(1) https://t.co/21i7Lr93Cx
(2) https://t.co/LMpbVPMAh6 pic.twitter.com/500J6Yd9lK

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Dysology) October 1, 2016

Cognitive Contraception

On Influence in Science. @rwjdingwall So we have a case of another claimed virgin conception in science:https://t.co/Dil5TPVEzE pic.twitter.com/3OzNog9Fsf

— BlessedVirginDarwin (@OnNavalTimber) September 24, 2016

Facts cannot be magicked away by worshipping Darwin

We now living in an age of "Post-Truth Science"? No wonder we have "post-truth politics": https://t.co/SBJwPkZ477 pic.twitter.com/7aGzlUDmSB

— Supermythbuster (@supermyths) September 15, 2016

Like stealing other people's work? @supermyths https://t.co/Lm3YQPF6B4

— Robert Dingwall (@rwjdingwall) September 18, 2016

The 10 Fact Groups that Prove Darwinities Undone

Postscript 13/02/2020 - I have added live links where older links no longer go to live sources. Otherwise, this blog post is as it was first published.  

Introduction

The paradigm of Darwin's and Wallace's (1858) and Darwin's (1842, 1844 and 1859) independent conceptions of Patrick Matthew's (1831) prior published conception of the full and complex hypothesis of macro evolution by natural selection is based on the premise (e.g de Beer 1962 and Mayr 1982 ) that no one known to Darwin or Wallace, indeed no naturalists at all, read Matthew's (1831) original conception before they replicated it. That Darwinite paradigm is based on a punctured myth. Because it is newly discovered  by me (Sutton 2014, 2016) that other naturalists, indeed naturalists well known to Darwin and Wallace, their facilitators, influencers, and their influencer's influencers and facilitators in fact did read, and then actually cite in the pre-1858 literature, Matthew's (1831) book before either Darwin or Wallace so much as put pen to private notebook on the topic.

Those seeking to maintain the paradigm of Darwin's and Wallace's independent conceptions of Matthew's prior-published conception of evolution by natural selection are undone by the following ten groups of facts.

Veracity: the 10 groups of facts

FACTS 1. Only Matthew (1831) in his book On Naval Timber wrote about Natural Selection as an explanation for organic macro evolution before Darwin and Wallace (1858) and Darwin (1859) replicated his original ideas. This is established by many biologists including, for example, Dawkins (2010) in Bryson's edited collection, By Weale (2014) and by Royal Society Darwin Medal winner Ernst Mayr who wrote: 'The person who has the soundest claim for priority in establishing a theory or evolution by natural selection is Patrick Matthew.'

FACTS 2. Matthew wrote about natural selection throughout his book and not just in its appendix. Darwin wrote a deliberate lie when he claimed Matthew limited his orignal ideas on the topic to his book's appendix and he wrote to Joseph Hooker admitting as much (see Sutton 2014, 2016). The Matthew Appendix Myth is, therefore, bust by the facts. Furthermore, contrary to claims made by Richard Dawkins (2010) and others Matthew's (1831) book was far from obscure. As the citations in Nullius prove, it was heavily advertised in the first half of the 19th century, reviewed, frequently and cited (many times by Loudon in several books and many times by Selby in his 1842 book on trees. Significantly, it was very prominently advertised on more than half a page in the hugely popular Encyclopedia Britannica in 1842 and cited in the Encyclopedia Britannica again in 1842 in an article (citations to facts here) Moreover, pre -1858, Darwin's private notebook of books to read and books read lists five publications that are now known to cite or advertise Matthew's 1831 book.

FACTS 3. Contrary to claims in many academic textbooks and in social media, Darwin did not coin the term natural selection, nor its scientific meaning. Moreover, he did not coin the term artificial selection (see Sutton 2014, 2016).  Matthew used the term the "natural process of selection" in his 1831 book. And Big Data analysis of over 30 million publications reveals he apparently coined that term. Robert Chambers (anonymous author of the "Vestiges of Creation"), who cited Matthew's (1831) book On Naval Timber in 1832, and then in 1840, cited his second (1839) book "Emigration Fields", which took Matthew's (1831) orignal ideas forward with regard to dealing with the social problem of overpopulation in Britain, was apparently 'first to be second' in writing Matthew's apparently orignal term in his review of  Darwin's (1859) Origin of Species. Darwin four-word-shuffled Matthew's term to 'process of natural selection' and in doing so, Big Data analysis reveals he apparently coined that term. See Sutton 2014, 2016 for  further details and fully cited facts. Furthermore, Matthew (1831) was first to use the Natural versus Artificial Selection Analogy of Differences as an explanatory analogy for macro evolution by natural selection. As the historian Loren Eiseley discovered, Darwin replicated this original idea in his 1844 private essay with regard to Matthew's highly idiosyncratic wild forest versus nursery grown trees example. And I discovered that Wallace (1858) did so more generally in his Ternate paper. When the arch Darwinite Stephen J. Gould (1983 and 2002) set out to rubbish Eiseley's findings he got his own facts wrong and conveniently cherry-stepped away from mentioning this, Eiseley's most compelling evidence of Matthew's influence on Darwin (see Sutton 2015 for the facts). What Gould did is the same grossly misleading biased "cherry stepping" and "cherry picking" misrepresenting de facto fact denial ploy tried by Grzegorz Malec in his so called "review" of my book. It is a shame Eiseley, having died in 1977, could not take Gould to task for his dysology, Malec does not escape. You can read my published right of reply: Here. Matthew's original general explanatory analogy of differences between artificial and natural selection is so important that Darwin used it to open the very first Chapter of the Origin of Species. An electronic plagiarism check reveals many examples of great similarity between the prose and ideas of both Wallace and Darwin compared to Matthew's. For example, Darwin replicated Matthew's unique creative process by replicating his examples of how the natural process of selection works. By way of just two examples, in addition to the example of plants grown in nurseries that Eiseley discovered, Darwin also replicated Matthew's examples of what happens when many seedlings spring up together in a forest. Moreover, he replicated what Matthew cited from Steuart (1828) about cattle eating young trees. Only where Matthew cited his source about the cattle example, Darwin audaciously pretended it was his own observation in nature. My e. book, Nullius has an entire chapter dedicated to many other uniquely discovered examples of Darwin's and Wallace's obvious plagiarism of Matthew's book. 

As I reveal (see Sutton 2014, 2016 for the full citations) Matthew’s original explanatory analogy was, apparently, replicated first by Mudie (1832), then Low (1844), Darwin (1844), Wallace (in Darwin and Wallace 1858)  and by Darwin again (1859; 1868). Most tellingly, the same Big Data analysis of over 30 million publications in the publication record reveals that Mudie was apparently the “first to be second” in print with the original “Matthewism” “rectangular branching”. Some Darwinists have used social media - as Mr Malec does in a journal book review - to criticise the "first to be second" method employed in Nullius as being unreliable and subject to refutation. (see my reply here)Typically, in their desperate criticisms they imply that the findings made with this method is all that underpins Nullius. In reality, this is a minor part of the book. One must not forget that Nullius contains the hard and orignal evidence that Naturalists actually cited Matthew's book and ideas pre-1858.  Nevertheless, what these critics fail to realise is that good explanations in science are those that are capable of being refuted and are difficult to change once refuted.

Most significantly, Mudie was both an associate and two times co-author with Darwin’s most prolific informant Edward Blyth. Blyth’s own work was edited by Loudon, who cited Matthew’s book in 1832.  David Low’s replication of Matthew’s artificial analogy of differences is, arguably, unlikely to be purely coincidental. They were schoolmates at Perth Academy!

 Nullius 2014 reveals that Low was apparently twice “first to be second” with the Matthewisms: “long continued selection” and “overpowering the less”. He used each in different publications. Moreover, Low, just four years older than Matthew, was a highly esteemed Professor of Agriculture at the University of Edinburgh. He might, therefore, be the unnamed naturalist professor of a “celebrated university” who Matthew (1860) claimed, in his second open letter to Darwin in the Gardener's Chronicle, was afraid to teach his heretical and original ideas, or to mention them elsewhere, for fear of pillory punishment, long before 1859. Most importantly, Low was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, as was Darwin’s great friend and mentor Charles Lyell. Laird Lyell’s manor house was just 20 miles from laird Matthew’s country seat. It seems improbable Lyell did not know of him and the scandal of heretical ideas in his book (more on Lyell and his connections here). Low's work was very carefully read by Darwin, according to Darwin's own notes, and then recommended by him to the Royal Society for the author's useful work on using artificial selection to explain natural selection.

A new fallacy has sprung up on social media that I am the only person to believe that Matthew influenced Darwin and Wallace through knowledge contamination of their influencers and facilitators and their influencers's influencers and facilitators or that Darwin more likely than not plagiarised Matthew. In reality, Samuel Butler (1887, p, 100) believed Darwin copied Matthew but then forgot he had done so. This same cryptomnesia explanation was proposed by Darwin's biographer Clarke (1984). Furthermore, Loren Eiseley (1981) was convinced that Darwin deliberately plagiarised Matthew, as is Milton Wainwright (2008) and (2011).

FACTS 4. Under the Royal Society imposed conventions for priority, as decided by the Arago Rule (Strivens 2003), in cases of non-plagiarised claimed dual or multiple independent conceptions, it is only those who are first to actually publish their original discoveries /original conceptions who have scientific priority for them.

FACTS 5. There is no independently verifiable evidence, other than that which Darwin (a proven serial liar) wrote on his private notebooks and essays in his private study, that Darwin wrote a single word on natural selection anywhere until 1857.  The earliest solid dated, independently verifiable, evidence we have that Darwin actually had definitely written any kind of note or essay on the topic pre-1858 is that he sent a mere abstract a private essay to Gray in 1857. See Sutton 2016 for the peer reviewed facts of the matter. Moreover, Matthew's (1831) book was published six years before Darwin is claimed to have written a single word on the topic in his private Zoonomia notebook of 1837-38, which opens on the subject of Matthew's area of professional expertise. Namely fruit trees. And contains many other examples (here). And Matthew's (1831) book was cited by Darwin's associate and correspondent Robert Chambers in 1832, by Loudon in 1832 (who edited two of Blyth's 1835, 1836 highly influential papers on evolution. Blyth being Darwin's prolific informant and correspondent on the topic) and by Selby in 1842 - the year Darwin is claimed to have penned his first private essay on the topic. Most significantly, Selby went on to be editor of Wallace's Sarawak paper on evolution. Loudon was well known to William Hooker, the father of Darwin's best friend Joseph Hooker, who knew Loudon's work well and praised it to the skies in a book review (see Sutton 2016).

Loudon was also friends and co-author with John Lindley, who deceived the public pre-1858 in order to convince them that he and Lobb were first to propage and import the much loved and famous gaint redwood trees in Britain. All the while he possessed a letter proving that Matthew and his son were first to do so (get the facts here). Lindley's glory stealing fraud helped facilitate Darwin's later claim that Matthew was an obscure writer on forest trees.

FACTS 6.  It is propagandising pseudo-scholarly fact denial behaviour to claim  nonsense of the kind Richard Dawkins has written on this topic. Namely, that Matthew should have "trumpeted his discovery from the rooftops" to prove he understood what he had conceived at a time when it would have been criminally heretical to do so. Dawkins cherry-steps away from the fact that Matthew (1860) - using real examples - very forcefully informed Darwin of this fact in his second letter to the Gardener's Chronicle, where he told Darwin of an (unnamed) naturalist from a prestigious university who could not to teach his orignal work, or mention his orignal ideas elsewhere, for fear of pillory punishment - and that his book had been banned by Perth public library in Scotland (he called it by its nickname the Fair City) for the same reason.  For the very same reason, Robert Chambers (who is newly discovered to have cited Matthew in 1832) published his heretical Vestiges of Creation - the book that put evolution in the air in the mid 19th century - anonymously until the day he died. See Sutton 2014, 2016 for citations to the facts.

FACTS 7. The rationale (premise) for believing Darwin's and Wallace's claims to have each independently conceived Matthew's prior published origination is built entirely on total belief in Darwin's tale that no naturalist (as told in Darwin's 1860 letter of reply to Matthew in the Gardener's Chronicle)  or no one at all (as told by Darwin from the 1861 third edition onwards in every edition of his Origin of Species) is now a punctured myth because it is newly proven that naturalists well known to Darwin and Wallace, and to their influences and facilitators, their influencer's influencers and facilitators  in fact did read and then they cited Matthew's (1831) book in the literature years before 1858 (see Sutton 2014). Moreover, Darwin lied - and so committed glory thieving science fraud - when he claimed from 1860 onwards that no naturalist / no one at all had read Matthew's prior published conception - because Matthew had very plainly and forcefully informed Darwin, by way of his two letters published in the Gardener's Chronicle (1860), that the very opposite was true.

FACTS 8. We now newly have 100 per cent proven evidence that routes for knowledge contamination from Matthew's (1831) book to the minds of Darwin and Wallace did exist pre-1858. (See Sutton 2016). This is better than mere smoking gun evidence.

FACTS 9.  It is a fallacy that no one who read Matthew's ideas understood them before Darwin and Wallace replicated them and Matthew brought them to Darwin's public attention in 1860. In reality, in the first half of the 19th century, people would have avoided the taboo of writing about them, because they heretically trespassed on the realm of  natural divinity regarding the topic of the origin of species. This is why Chambers (who cited Matthew's book in 1832) had to publish anonymously his heretical Vestiges of Creation. Famously, as Darwin admitted from the third edition of the Origin of Species onwards,  it was the Vestiges that paved the way for public acceptance of his own book in the second half of the 19th century.  With regard to proof of the treatment of Matthew's work as taboo in the first half of that century,  The United Service Journal and Naval and Military Magazine published an extended review of it in the 1831 Part II and 1831 Part III numbers of the magazine; it praised Matthew's book in around 13,000 words and would say no more  on natural selection other than: "But we disclaim participation in his ruminations on the law of Nature."  Today, it seems that the truth of this independently verifiable fact is heretical, because Wikipedia - in trying to claim that Matthew's orignal ideas were not understood - denies that this text actually exists in the 19th century publication record, immediately deleting each and every mention of it (get the clickable citation to that literature and the  facts on Wikipedia's fact deleting behaviour here).  As Matthew explained to Darwin in the Gardener's Chronicle in his second letter of 1860, his book was banned by Perth library in Scotland for its heresy and another naturalist feared to teach its contents for fear of pillory punishment (see Sutton 2016 for the full facts). Loudon (1832), however was so bold as to write that Matthew appeared to have something original to say on the "origin of species", no less. These facts all prove that Matthew's ideas were understood. However, most of those who we knewly know cited Matthew's (1831) book would be unlikely to mention its distasteful heresy in print. Moreover, logically, they did not have to provide evidence in the literature that they fully understood Matthew's then heretical ideas, and they did not even have to fully understand everything about natural selection in his book to know that Matthew had written something on evolution to, therefore, be in a position to give Darwin and Wallace any kind of "heads-up" that Matthew's book might be worth looking at. Because, rationally, knowledge contamination can happen in at least the following three ways (from Sutton 2016):

Prior published unique ideas may contaminate the minds and work of others in three
main ways:

(a). Innocent Knowledge Contamination: The spread of original ideas in
a prior-publication via (a) subsequent published sources on the topic,
which failed to cite the Originator as their source, or (b) word of mouth
and/or correspondence to the replicator by those who read the Originator’s
work or communicated with others who did — understood its importance
in whole or simply in part — but failed to tell the replicator
about its existence.

(b). Reckless or Negligent Knowledge Contamination: (a) The replicator
reads the original publication, absorbs information such as original
ideas and examples and terms, but forgets having read it — and never
does remember. (b) The replicator reads the original publication and takes
notes, but forgets the source of the notes. (c) The replicator is told
about original ideas in a publication by someone — who understands
their importance in whole or simply in part — who explains they come
from a publication, but the replicator fails to ask the name of the author
and title of the publication.

(c). Deliberate Knowledge Contamination (science fraud): The replicator
reads the original publication, or is told about its contents, takes notes,
or is given notes, remembers this, but pretends otherwise.

FACTS 10. It is a fallacy (e.g see Stott 2013) that Matthew was quite content after Darwin's 1860 and 1861 acknowledgments of Matthew's prior-published the hypothesis of macro evolution by natural selection. In reality, he fought untill his dying day for full recognition for his original and prior published (1831) ideas, which Darwin replicated and continued to call "my theory". See the fully cited facts here.

Further Information

My position paper on this topic and details of all known published Darwinite defences to the New Data, along with my detailed and fully evidenced rebuttals to them, can be found on the relevant page on PatrickMatthew.com - Here

WILL THE ROYAL SOCIETY BE INTERESTED IN THE FACTS?

New Data & Plagiarism Question.@rwjdingwall Any objective scientists interested?
(1)https://t.co/lTxlr3VxCE
(2)https://t.co/0gInk67cql

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Dysology) September 7, 2016

Conclusion

The facts re-write the history of discovery of natural selection.

Perhaps we need an independent Veracity Institute to address all issues where independently verifiable facts bust much loved paradigms and then meet fierce resistance from those whose career and financial interests are underpinned by keeping the punctured premises, which support those paradigms, inflated with de-facto fact-denial pseudo scholarship, cherry picking, cognitive  blindsight, propaganda, mythmongering, fallacy spreading, obscene abuse and downright lies.

Get You Some of That Veracity!
GYSOT-V

The 10 Fact Groups that Prove Darwinities Undone: https://t.co/u0xw0yzq8O pic.twitter.com/oYzomY2AbB

— Supermythbuster (@supermyths) August 31, 2016

Towards a Veracity Centre 

I am very optimistic this morning Veracity Centre will be born with Prof.Bykhovsky on board - see comments section https://t.co/HWk3DtO4kk

— Supermythbuster (@supermyths) September 2, 2016

Joseph Hooker Married the Widow of Sir William Jardine

Sir William Jardine

In 1876 Joseph Hooker married Hyacinth Jardine, formerly Symonds, the widow of Sir William Jardine.

What is notable about this is that in the story of the discovery of natural selection is that Joseph Hooker was Darwin's best friend and Hooker's father - William Hooker - was Alfred Wallace's mentor and correspondent pre-1858.  And it was William Jardine - a great friend of Selby - who obtained from Scotland, at Selby''s request, a copy of Patrick Matthew's 1831 book, which contained the full prior published hypothesis of natural selection. Selby cited Matthew's book many time in 1842 (see Sutton 2014a; Sutton 2014b) and then went on to be editor of Wallace's (1855) Sarawak paper on organic evolution. Notably, Darwin's great friend Jenyns and Darwin's father were guests at Selby's house pre-1858.  Jenyns (1885) went on to write a book about Selby.

Interestingly, William Jardine wrote a savage review of Darwin's Origin of Species in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (1860). A copy of it is here. In his review Jardine - in as 19th century gentlemanly way as possible - points out Darwin's obvious plagiarism: "Many of the facts are second-hand, and without authority given."

Clearly more research is needed into the relationships pre-1858 between the Hookers of Kew and William Jardine.

Post Sutton (2016) Further Newly discovered routes of potential pre-1858 knowledge contamination of Matthew's original ideas to Darwin and Wallace. 

1. William Jardine made the acquaintance of William Hooker (father of Darwin's best friend Joseph Hooker) in 1847 (see page 24 of Jackson).