"Basically yes," admitted Mendel in a soft voice. It was barely noticeable, but he had hesitated before giving his answer. Also the response had been evasive, a common trait for speakers on soft ground. But the ever alert Brother Timothy sensed where to go next.
"But is it not true that the order in which the pods form on your plants has an important role to play in the manner in which the seeds form?" Brother Timothy was relentless.
As if speaking from a long way away, Mendel replied, "In some few plants only a few seeds developed in the first formed pods, and these possessed exclusively one of the two characters, but in the subsequently developed pods the normal proportions were maintained nevertheless." Even he heard the weakness in the excuse, and several people in the audience coughed. Brother Matthew put his head in his hands and looked down at the floor.
"As in separate pods, so did the distribution of the characters vary in
separate plants. Did it not?" asked Brother Timothy, his voice like silk. It is easy to ask good questions when you already know the answers. He was sitting on the edge of his seat and staring directly at the increasingly uncomfortable Mendel.
"Somewhat," Mendel admitted reluctantly, shuffling his notes and not looking at Brother Timothy directly.
Like an anthropologist encountering a new behavior in a study population, teacher Makytta was watching a ritual of science; the ruthless tearing down of a presentation by an opponent in the audience. Regardless of its merits, any scientific position is always open to attack. Most outside the profession think that these attacks are in the interests of truth, for the elimination of falsehood, and are an essential part of the scientific method. They rarely are. Ego and ambition are greater driving forces in the pursuit of new discoveries than idealistic searches for the truth.