Hard of understanding?

Just in case anyone is still misled by Hicks, here is the reply from today’s Times, written by the experts where DNA analysis was devised:

“Richard’s skeleton

Sir, Professor Hicks, in his letter [Dec 5] commenting on our research findings, suggests that the skeleton found in Leicester is not that of Richard III. He states that “there are lots of candidates” yet seems unable to specify one who ticks all the boxes [buried in the choir of Greyfriars, battle injuries, aged mid-30s, same mitochondrial DNA {mtDNA}, scoliosis, etc.] He overlooks the fact that the publication represents a detailed analysis of Richard’s maternal-line relatives across seven generations in order to account for others sharing the same mtDNA type through known relation – and that this mtDNA type is exceedingly rare and therefore highly unlikely to have shown a match by chance.

Hicks also claims that we “presumed the bones to be those of Richard and sought only supporting evidence”. A cursory reading of the paper and an examination of our statistical analyses makes it abundantly clear that the opposite is true. We considered all relevant lines of evidence and made every effort to weight the analysis against the remains being those of Richard III, yet still produce a highly conservative probability of 99.9994 per cent in favour. Lastly, Hicks refers to “wild accusations of bastardy”. Nowhewere do we make any such accusations.

T.King, University of Leicester

MG Thomas, UCL

K Schürer, University of Leicester”

Not only are there no “wild accusations of bastardy” by those who understand science but at least one of the nineteen links (from John of Gaunt to John of Dorset) is traditionally thought of as an illegitimacy but may reveal Dorset to be a legitimate Swinford. Our advice to Hicks might well centre upon aiming his fire away from his own lower limbs. He must know what happened at Roxburgh in 1460.