The standards are higher for us, you can b&M all you like that that is unfair. It's not a bad thing, actually -- keeps us honest. Unless we are WC, it seems.
What do you suppose is Doug's error rate? Liza's? Jim D's? (Every citation I have looked up from any of these writers has been right.)
--- Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/27/06, andie nachgeborenen
> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > The thing we have to do is indeed to keep our
> > footnotes tight.
>
> Sure, we should keep our footnotes tight, but the
> thing is that some
> people's footnotes aren't. It's the same thing as
> tax returns and
> immigration papers: we try to keep ours tight, but
> some people's
> inevitably aren't.
>
> This is what Michael Perelman recently posted on the
> topic of footnote
> accuracy -- the error rate is estimated to be 30-45%
> (no wonder, since
> few of them were edited by anyone other than their
> authors, if your
> earlier note on academic publishing is correct):
* * * *
Tfast writes
>
> It does not matter how fair the process was after
Churchill
was
targeted. Nor for that matter does his guilt.
It's irrelevant that he a liar and a fraud who has does a lot of harm to his own side? A
It doesn't matter that thsi was established a process the fairness of which no one disputes? Bullshit. If it had been a kangaroo court, you's (quite properly) have had a fit about that).
> He was targeted because of what he wrote about 9/11. This means that any procedural action that followed is tainted.
It does NOT. Look, we ain't talking about a criminal process with the exclusionary rule here. WC doesn't get to suppress evidence because someone started the investigation for a bad motive. In fact, given that hi ass was hanging in the open, WC's work was fair game,a nd rightly so, for any critical investigation, instigated for whatever reason. If the investigation is honest and the results accurate, we have to dealw ith the consequences. You buy nothing by saying that they would nevfer have found out that he was a fraud if they had not gotton on his case because of exercise of his right to free speech.
> Namely that the law should apply equally to all
citizens. This should
be
the end of the story.
We are not talking about the law, but about an investigation into someone's scholarship. ANd don't get all high horse about the standrds applying differentially -- they do, tough luck, we don't get a pass by saying that other guys are treated better who did things just as bad.
Carroll says:
> the _formalities_ of the Churchill case are so much
more important
than the endless details being discussed on this list.
Details -- like whether WC is a liar and a fraud. No one has disputed the fairness of the actual investigation, just the resaons for starting it. So the formalities are clean.
> Those minor footnote errors (if you are politically
vulnerable) can
(following the Churchill precedent) trigger a really
elaborate
investigation, and _no_ professional career will be
found spotless.
We ain't talking about minor errors of the David Abrahm sort but long term systematic fraud. Stop the "whitewash," Carroll. Everyone makes mistakes, but part of the reason that Finkelstein, Chomsky, Henwood, and the best of us are still standing is that they're not systematic liars and frauds and they makea lot less than the usual quota of errors.
Jim F. says:
> In other words
what is going on is a political powerplay against
progressive academics. I would
submit that for us to throw WC overboard will not
put a stop to this. On the contrary, the smell
of blood will simply draw in more of the rightwing
sharks who will simply go after more targets,
including people whose scholarship is much
less questionable than WC's. WC has been
singled out because he was seen as being
especially vulnerable. If he goes down, I can
guarantee you that the rightwing hit machine
will not stop with him.
The rightwing hit machine never stops. That doesn't mean we have to defend a of tenure, but WC's tenure does not appear to be threatened at this moment.
> Given the political climate
of the times, do you think that progressives
should have then joined Hook's lynch
mob against Somerville?
Somerville was a hack but not a liar and a fraud. Hook's idea was that (left-wing) hackery is unacceptable, which is not the usual scholarly standard. Indeed, hackery is generally acceptable if you aren't a deliberate liar.
> Well, as I think you know, Finkelstein has struggled
for years to get any sort of decent academic position,
and had to survive doing adjunct teaching wherever
he could since he couldn't get into any sort of a
tenure track job.
Yes, your point? It's an insult to someone like NF who takes the pains that he does to defend WC when he's been exposed as liar.
> And you, more than anyone here, should be aware
that one can publish in the most respectable
professional
journals, being careful "to cross one's t's and dot
one's I's," and
still be denied tenure because of your political
views.
And an insult to me for trying as hard as I did to get things right.
NF's troubles and mine are bad enough, but WC hasn't made it easier for anyone of us, and I am not going to hold him up as s poster boy for denial of academic freedom.
> Even if WC's scholarship did not have the kinds of
problems it seems to have,
But it does have those "problems."
> he still would be the subject
of a political attack that is aimed to deprive him of
his
job.
Yes, so we should defend him when his work is delibertaely corrupt?
> And the last time that I checked, over at Harvard Law School, Larry Tribe, Charles Ogletree and Alan Dershowitz, were still not in danger of losing their jobs despite their having committed academic misconduct (which the first two have admitted to, and Dershowitz denying having done anything wrong).
Quite irrelevant. "You too" is not a defense.
>
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