The publication by Keith Windschuttle of a hoax article on science has been all over the papers and the blogs. I agree with Tim Lambert (who gives lots of links) that the article sounds reasonable by comparison with the nonsense commonly published on scientific topics by Quadrant.
Just before this, I was thinking about another hoax, namely the repeated promise of a Volume 2 of The Fabrication of Australian History. When Volume 1 came out back in 2002, Windschuttle promised further volumes on an annual schedule, covering Queensland and WA. Since Queensland in particular was the focus of Henry Reynolds’ main work, and since the evidence of numerous massacres seems incontrovertible, this promised volume was central to Windschuttle’s claims of fabrication. The promise was repeated year after year, but no Volume 2 ever appeared, and the “research” supposedly already undertaken has stayed out of sight.
Then in February 2008, Windschuttle published extracts from a Volume 2, promised for publication “later this year”, but now on a totally different topic, that of the Stolen Generation. His target this time was Peter Read, an eminent historian who’s done a lot of practical work reuniting Aboriginal children with their birth families. It’s 2009, the promised volume hasn’t appeared, and there hasn’t been any reference to it on Windschuttle’s site for some time.
The real hoax victims here have been those on the political right, who’ve repeatedly swallowed Windschuttle’s promises to refute well-established facts about Australian history “later this year” and who are now getting their “science” from his discredited magazine.
John Quiggin 
Clearly a case of “Do as I say and not as I do”. I see that Windshuttle has learnt his unrepentent stance from the John Howard school of political debate. Maybe the teaching was the other way around; I don’t know.
You make a good point about the missing Volume 2 and Qld and WA cases. It is a conspicuous silence.
I dare say that a similar hoax claiming climate change was a fraud would be published just as eagerly.
Agree John been waiting for these mysterious volumes on QLD and WA myself. WA and QLD have ample records/books to review why isn’t he in the archives doing it? My guess is he hasn’t got the hook like Lyndal Ryan In Vol 1 to hang his inflammatory rhetoric on. Then again it may just mean he is too lazy to do any actual archival research.
[…] Quiggan has chimed in on the Windschuttle matter, asking Where’s the second book? Comments (0) | […]
I am probably the only reader of Professor Quiggin’s website who has ever applied (unsuccessfully of course) for the editorship of Quadrant. As such, I thought the following comments, even if they do savour of sour grapes, might be worth making. I have not seen anything like them made by anyone else.
(a) Quadrant‘s editorship is an unpaid post. (This is something I didn’t know till after I applied for it.) The assumption has long been not only that successive editors will do their work for free, but that they shall frequently top up the available taxpayer funding by subsidising Q from their own pockets. Which puts me, for one, in mind of the old saying “You pay peanuts, you get monkeys.”
(b) In America (which is where I am usually published), the prevailing attitudes towards editors of intellectual magazines are very different to Australia’s, and much more stringent. If Quadrant were based in the USA, and if anything like this brouhaha over “Dr Gould” ever occurred, Mr Windschuttle would lose his job. Furthermore, he would be considered lucky if he were given more than 10 minutes to clear his desk. This is in the unlikely event that he had not already been dismissed through making such extraordinary pro-plagiarism remarks as “There are very few cases where plagiarism should be a sacking offence for a university teacher” (Quadrant, May 2008). In America, plagiarism is regarded across the political spectrum as the intellectual sin.
My own dealings with Mr Windschuttle over the years, when they occurred at all, were civil enough. Previously I have praised some things he has written, and condemned other things. While I have my reservations about some things that the hoaxer has said, this whole business is not the first time I have wondered (perhaps wrongly) if Mr Windschuttle now has time in his universe for anyone except 24/7 sycophants.
Windschuttle is a 24/7 sycophant himself. At least now we know he only picks through other academics’s footnotes for political reasons and not academic reasons… Windschuttle the white ant.
Integrity and Windschuttle appear to be complete strangers. Having boasted of his work on the allegedly forthcoming Queensland tome, he has been unable to find time to comment on Jonathan Richards’s extensive documentation of officially-sponsored atrocities in The Secret War (Brisbane: UQP, 2008). I’m sure the obscurantists down at the Oz would pay handsomely for any number of Windschuttle words advancing their rapidly expanding population of denialist positions. Can it be that the facts refuse to be fitted around this position?
In fact I think there should be a new word meaning to deliberately seek to distort facts or to lie by deliberately obscuranting. Instead of just ordinary fibs, porkies, snowing the snowman etc – Keith created a very special sort of distortion didnt he?. How about blowing in the Windschuttle?.
Isn’t it possible that there is a bit of “Sharon Gould” in all of us?
Re the fraud perpetrated on Keith Windschuttle and Quadrant here’s my assessment, to counter the perfervid lefty analysis of Margaret Simons and the Crikey gang.
1. Looking at the fraudulent article it looks to me like the fraudster went to a lot of trouble to confect this bonbon. So I’m not sure if many editors of journals would have checked every citation to uncover the lie buried deep within. Would the ABC? Would Crikey with its myriad suspect contributors spouting their partial points of view? Did the climate change errors perpetrated by Hanson get checked before publication such as the recent temperature fraud/error re Russian temperatures, late in 2008?
2. Here Simons/Crikey et al are gloating over a fraud perpetrated against a target and taking the sides of the fraudster. Is Simons a supporter of Norma Khoury, Helen Demidenko’s fictional perpetration, or perhaps of Bernard Madoff or the Project Wickenby tax avoiders who falsify their records to evade tax? Is Simons a supporter of crimes generally or only against “people not like us.”
3. The ethics of this stinks from a journalistic sense also. Would a journalist with knowing of an upcoming murder, or a Bernard Madoff scam, or Bilal Skaf’s plans that day in Sydney, wait until it’s done to respect the source? Would Simon s hold back an expose of Tony Mokbel or HIH or Skase to enjoy it being perpetrated?
4. I think that Windschuttle should take comfort from this. After all he exposed the scientific frauds perpetrated by various famous historians in the aboriginal genocide fraud. This should if anything confirm his desire to expose fraud and confirm that we are all disadvantaged by fraud. It should also teach him to have a science editor to head off such frauds.
5. Re the reports of Robert Manne laughing about this, nothing would surpriser me from that bilious hating quarter.
So, Simons and Crikey should sit down and think about the larger issues involved before they get moist and hot about the pleasure they’ve just had watching an assisting in an unethical act.
Whilst I would hate to be associated with views such as those expressed by the righteous Ange(r?) I think the real strength of the hoax – and the earlier one of Sokal – is to demonstrate the importance of peer review.
Otherwise it is a bit like those clunky mainstream radio prank calls – anyone can be conned if targeted appropriately.
Nonetheless Windschuttle seems to me to be akin to the climate change denialists – there is more personality on view than understanding.
I think that all this illustrates how tribal Australian debates have become. It reminds me of two groups of kids at opposite ends of the paddock, throwing rocks and abuse at each other. With a hit, there is loud cheers and laughter.
Good fun, perhaps, but not informing us much.
I am not sure whether the net and blogs have made it worse or just exposed something that has always been there. The comments sections of blogs rarely produce debate or discussion. Either everyone piles on: “yeah, what you said” or add the verbal version of a raspberry (“bronx cheer” to any confused Americans who have got lost and wandered into all this) before running off.
I just wish that we could use it to sharpen and polish the debate. I want to have my opinions challenged and modified, not just confirmed. I want to be made to think.
But maybe I am just getting old…
PS To further my campaign, my Christmas present (to myself) was a T Shirt bearing the text:
“I think you will find that it’s a bit more complicated than that”
(With acknowledgment to the wise Ben Goldacre)
I have cross posted this to the skepticlawyer blog.
Thinking about Ken’s comments on the tribalism of such debates (which I agree is a major problem) I suppose I could add some comments on several aspects of Ange’s defence of Windshuttle, which I find questionable:
– referring to unspecified errors by Hansen is just mudying the water, by trying to argue that its OK because others do it, without any proof that they have in fact done so.
– Simmons actions are not a “fraud”. As per the Ian Plimer case (“Lying for God”) in Australian law a deception is only a fraud if done with the intent of personal gain. That was clearly not the case here. Hence it is not a fraud; deliberate deception yes.
– Ange has criticised Gould’s journalistic ethics without specifying any aspect of journalists code of ethics that has been breeched. He then compares it to covering up Madoff and other criminal frauds, where a journalist may have a duty to disclose. That is a non-sequiter – the tricking of Quadrant is not a crime, but a deliberate deception to (successfully) prove a lack of adequate checking. There appears to be no unethical conduct here.
– Why should Windshuttle take comfort? He has been exposed for doing precisely what he has criticised others for. He is a hypocrite.
It seems to me that it is precisely the inability to admit when one’s own “side” is wrong that makes these debates so tribal.
I much as I hate to admit it, I think this entire affair is overblown.
When I first heard this story break on Tuesday, my schadenfreude was palpable. I was expecting something of the level of Alan Sokal’s prank on ‘Social Text’. However, upon further reflection, and the subsequent reading of the actual article involved, I am somewhat disappointed.
Firstly, however much they may like to pretend, ‘Quadrant’ is not an academic journal, nor is it peer reviewed – it is a platform for opinion pieces. In the case of the Sokal hoax, ‘Social Text’ is both an academic journal and it is supposedly peer-reviewed. Windshuttle’s only sin as editor is in not even bothering to find the time to use Google to see if a) the author even existed and to check their credentials; and b) whether the author had actually given the presentation which they claimed they had based their essay on.
Secondly, the first half of the essay is quite reasonable in its claims, right up until it mentions that “a full understanding of life cannot be understood simply from amino acid patterns. Physics, chemistry and biology alone cannot alone explain the grace of living systems. Religion and humanity also suggest there is more to us—and all living creatures—than the sum of our quantifiable parts.” As an ecologist trained in both biology and chemistry, I find this claim rather absurd. However, for someone with a religious bent, it is an entirely reasonable statement to make. It’s not until the article dips in the use and misuse of epigenetics that the science-fiction begins.
Here again is the difference from the Sokal hoax. Only the most rudimentary understanding of physics is required to realise that Sokal’s paper was making ridiculous claims – i.e. that quantum uncertainty means that all scientific knowledge is relative and that therefore G is not constant. The ‘gotcha’ in Gould’s paper relies on an ignorance of epigenetics. This is no sin – epigenetics is a reasonably new (and rarefied) area in the field of genetics (it was still pretty theoretical when I studied genetics back in undergrad 10 years ago). I’m sure the average person would not even know the difference between them or that epigenetics even existed.
Of course the article does pander to a certain conservative mindset (i.e. the government can’t be trusted; the public can’t be trusted; oblique religious references to human ‘specialness’ etc.), but considering that the article is an opinion piece in a conservative publication that is not surprising.
All Windshuttle is really guilty of is being duped into publishing something by what in the internet parlance is called a ‘concern troll’. I wouldn’t put it on level of the Sokal hoax at all. With this rather ham-fisted effort, Gould has wasted a golden opportunity to lampoon a bastion of ‘conservative’ ideology.
I’ll bet Windshuttle’ll be going though all the articles he receives now with a fine-toothed comb and I also expect there’ll be a rash of copy-cats attempting to do the same thing to ‘progressive’ publications.
Ben, I don’t think Social Text was peer reviewed at the time of the Sokal publication.
Nanks, you are indeed correct 🙂
Socrates said: “It seems to me that it is precisely the inability to admit when one’s own “side” is wrong that makes these debates so tribal.”
Nup, it starts with deciding that you have a side, as distinct from a point of view on a particular issue.
While it’s true that an editor of any independent magazine, let alone a diminished little rag like the current Quadrant, can hardly be expected to perform a full-scale peer-review, surely at a minimum he might be expected to have done a cursory provenance check? Windschuttle had no reason to believe that ‘Sharon Gould’ had done him the basic courtesy of existing, let alone writing the proferred article.
It’s manifestly incompetent on his part, and a simple admission of this would have diffused the whole thing. His petulant defence makes it appear that he doesn’t even understand the error he’s made. Which raises the question: is Windshuttle a fit person to sit on the board of our national broadcaster?
I’m amazed by “Ange”‘s comments. She (he?) can hardly contain her (his) indignation. I can’t help wondering if (s)he is for real. He starts off excusing Windschuttle for stuffing up big time, attacks global warming research, gets really upset about everyone gloating, questions the ethics of publishing it, says Keith should be ‘comforted’ by this and then has a go at Robert Manne.
Sorry ‘Ange’, but you are wrong on every count. The whole reason this is a big story (and it is – it will be another Ern Malley) is because it was Keith Windschuttle. He built his career on nit-picking. To see him so effectively hoist with his own petard is just hilarious. And yes, there is a lot of gloating, but it is the gloating of seeing the sanctimonious, the vicious, the contemptible, falling face forward in their own muck. As for the ethics of publishing the story – it’s news. It is very much in the public interest to see that Windschuttle is far more sloppy than any of the victims he attempted to get sacked were, and to see that he will publish any rubbish as long as it conforms to his own prejudices.
I think there are some interesting lessons to be learnt from this. The first is the absolute scientific illiteracy of the Right. The fact that Keith took an obviously fake article seriously, strongly supports the claim that when it comes to global warming, the Right do not have the foggiest notion as to what they are talking about. The second is that the Howard years are at last over. Windschuttle was Howard’s favourite historian and favoured him with numerous gifts – most notably ABC board membership. After this, how can anyone take any of these people seriously anymore? The Right has had its economic credibility shattered, its electoral credibility shattered and now, its intellectual credibility shattered. These are indeed the last days of the Right.
Very amused
You are correct in the following statement
“Windschuttle was Howard’s favourite historian and favoured him with numerous gifts – most notably ABC board membership. After this, how can anyone take any of these people seriously anymore?”
Exactly – windschuttle received direct poecuniary benefits from taking an ideologically far right position. He and Janet Albrechtsen (another of Howards favourites) somehow managed to secure ABC board positions despite their noted aversion to anything publicy owned (the private sector should be the source of all wealth and the public sector should be greately diminished).
That they still accepted their remuneration for their public positions is hypocrisy in the extreme. If they think the private sector so wonderful – let them go elsewhere.
The two of them spent years attacking academia (any academia) and universities as left wing compounds.
This argument isnt tribal. Its about seeing justice done for many.
Windschuttle spent years picking his way through any historian who dared to research black history in Australia, contributed actively to the culture wars that set about trying to deride and condemn Australia’s national museum and Australia’s publis universities.
This is far from a tribal argument.
It is a sign of society in decay when the genuinely intelligent amongst us are derided, misprepresented and lampooned by the likes of Albrechtsen and Winschuttle.
Wake up Ange. Go and really read how Windschuttle spent his time in the past decade or two – making claims like “history should be about the study of great men and mighty battles”.
Well Im female and others are black and some men were working men and we were all here as well and thats real history and Windschuttle is the liar.
Furthermore – this argument goes back decades but the greatest Australian historian was always Manning Clark and he will be the greatest Australian historian well into the future through the passage of time – and what was done to Manning Clark by the extreme right wing friends, associates and funders of the organisation (amongst other noted proganda centres) that Keith Windschuttle now prostrates himself in the service thereof just beggars belief. We are not talking just attempted discrediting (as in picking through his footnotes) – we are talking about the destruction of peoples entire careers for political reasons.
Windschuttle is the type of person who would busy himself burning books, libraries and incarcerating innocent people, along with spouting propaganda if they paid him something for it. That is all he knows how to do. That is all he has ever done. He is no historian of any repute whatsoever in my books and for John Howard or KW to claim so is a very sad sorry little tale.
This is certainly a great moment for democracy. For all of democracies flaws, the Hoax/fraud of Windschuttle, has contributed postively to the essential function of our democracy.
This article, says it better than I can
“On Dissent And Democracy” by Shiv Visvanathan
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1502268.cms begins as follows:
“One of the great indicators of any society is the creativity of its radicals and the availability of its eccentrics. Equally critical is the tolerance and understanding that society shows its dissenters.
One needs the notion of human rights not just to emphasise that you are human but recognise that within that humanity, you can be utterly different.
This is easier said than done, especially in a society where time begins accelerating and mobility rather than justice becomes the tuning fork of welfare. One dreams and demands the instant infrastructure of roads, refineries, dams and laboratories.
A society in double quick time may be impatient with those who are slowing it down, rendering viscous its dreams of speed, desire and acceleration. Viewed within such a perspective, one can understand a society’s intolerance to the dissenter.”
It is obvious that for left to exist right must prevail as well. That without Quadrant no Crikey, Withtout “Deniers” their would be no “believers”. etc.
It would be utterly boring, dull and dangerously statist without all of this firey commentary.
Windshuttle will no doubt not take this lying down. He will be back for more, wether the Lefties like or not. Face it without eccentric nutty individuals like him (from the left and right) most of these blogs would be dull and boring. We would all go back to gardening.
So Ange and Alanna be angry, and Very Amused, well your in your own perfect imaginary world at this moment, but not for long I predict.
It is all a welcome struggle.
To be sure, incidents like this do prove a legitimate point about the extent to which people are susceptible to believing false claims that happen to flatter their ideological prejudices.
But in this case it seems the author went to a lot of effort to disguise the fraud. So what does this prove exactly? The fact that the author had to go to elaborate lengths to disguise the false claims is surely an implicit acknowledgement that Windschuttle would not have fallen for a more obvious fabrication. If Windschutlle is such an imbicile, then surely the author could have got away with making more transparently hyperbolical claims throughout the essay.
Maybe the folks over at Crikey are such an intellectually astute bunch that they could detect a carefully hidden fraud like this in anything submitted to them. I doubt it though.
Windschuttle is the kind of person who will happily privatise the ABC by degrees. How much involvement does he have in the decision taken to transfer the publishing arm of the ABC to Rupert Murdoch? How much is he involved in the decision to privatise other parts of the ABC?
If he is now embarrassed and his standing and career are affected it is something akin to kharma. There are many sayings beloved of conservatives “Pride goes before a fall”, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, “as you sew, so shall you reap”.
The damage is caused to his standing because he makes demands of others that he is not prepared to meet himself. It is as much that he wasn’t interested in verifying the identity of the author as it is about the theories where religion and science were wrapped into the same package. Interestingly people are debating about whether the hoaxer has done right or wrong, how important it is in the scheme of things, but expressing little sympathy for the hoaxed.
It is about values and if the hoaxer has achieved nothing else there is a strong reflection on Australian values – something that both John Howard in 2006 (from memory) and Kevin Rudd in 2007 reflected on at the same time of year. It is a very Australian characteristic to play a joke at another’s expense – usually not so publicly. Another Australian response would be “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer fella”.
Reminds me of that other fraud from about a year ago – Carbon dioxide production by benthic bacteria: the death of manmade global warming theory? Journal of Geoclimatic Studies (2007) 13:3. 223-231.
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/climate-change-great-gotcha-14750.html
a fake scientific article published in a fake journal “disproving” AGW. The Right jumped all over it like flies on poo, just as the hoaxters anticipated, proving how pathetic they are when it comes to science (in fact if you google the title it will lead you directly to some choice Rightwing websites).
Pr Q says:
THe award for the biggest and best hoax of the past year goes to Kevin Rudd for his masterful duping of the Left at the 2020 conference. It is unfortunate but apparently inevitable that intellectuals have a chronic tendency to fall at the feet of New Messiah’s. Rudd and Obama have politically benefited from this tendency.
AUstralian intellectuals were true to social form. They came in droves to Rudd’s Labor-love fest, still in the credulous post-Howard electoral euphoria. And, like Pilgrims to the New Jerusalem, they swallowed Rudd’s political agenda hook, line and sinker.
Whilst we have so many Left-wing kettles denouncing Windschuttling pots as black I cant resist quoting one attendant at the conference who could barely contain his enthusiasm.
Of course Rudd’s govt, far from displaying “new possibilities and a new openness to ideas”, has indeed concentrated on “putting a better spin on marginal changes to the policies inherited from Howard”. Even as some much derided Machiavellian commenters were exposing the hoax at the time in its aftermath.
The “real hoax victims here have been those on the political” Left who fell for the hoax like lemmings.
I’m pleased that the reporting on the outing of this fraud is more balanced, even that of the Spencer Street Soviet of The Age. I think that there’s a recognition that the fraud by the Fitrzroy organic veggie farmer PhD raises many ethical issues (and how appropriate that such a person should figure centrally in a Crikey story – Fitzroy thinking for a Fitzroy crowd). I note alanna’s comment above – I paraphrase it as “Windschuttle is not people like us and burns books like Nazis so we have no suympathy for him” Did I get that right Alanna? Is that intellectual discourse?
What are the takeaways:
1. Windschuttle and we all need to recognise that every writer is a potential fraudster liar and deceiver, not just history professors like Lyndall Ryan and Stuart Macintyre (why, even Robin Williams of the ABC with the notorious ‘global warming will cause the seas to rise 100 metres’ fraud might cause the ABC to check its facts or the veracity of its content makers)
2. I agree that Windschuttle should do a stronger identity checking on his contributors in the future
3. Margaret Simons and Crikey should consider their journalistic ethics, or else we’ll all let them shill for crooks conmen and fraudsters. Margaret Simons who writes in a blog pretentiously called the Content Makers, sort of a Crikey media Watch, should think long and hard about her role and her moral position in this.
This is utterly lame, Jack. One of your standard diatribes about immigration suddenly becomes an astute prediction that Rudd will capitulate to the brown coal power lobby. In previous iterations of this same comment, I’ve seen you citing (as evidence of your superior insight) something you wrote on another blog a few weeks before the White Paper, when the government’s intentions had been pretty plainly telegraphed.
As regards the Summit, I expressed cautious optimism. It turned out the caution was more justified than the optimism, which is usually the case I guess. But none of this justifies your absurd retrospective triumphalism.
Ken 16
Quite right, please substitute POV for side in my comment. I don’t personally subscribe to the complete doctrines of any one “side”. The trouble is though, that many people accuse you of belonging to a particular group simply for having a view that group holds, and criticising you on the basis of other views that group may hold which you don’t. Hence I find it difficult not to become polarised while taking part in such a debate.
Submitting the fake article was a mean trick – but Windshuttle himself is a volcano of dirty tricks.
Remember too, that early Australian economic growth was based on the genocide of the Aboriginal race, and dispossession for the survivors. Windschuttle (and otehr Quadrant ranters) try to deny this and offers no other explanation for Australian property rights.
The genocide of Aborigines is the hidden secret to Australian economics.
Ange’s fault: She uses the words ‘hoax’, ‘fraud’ and ‘error’ interchangeably, and when you are able to slide meanings so easily, its understandable that you could come up with preposterous analogies such as to Skaf and Mokbel.
An issue with Ben’s comment: “Windshuttle’s only sin as editor..”
The use of the word ‘only’ suggests that it is perhaps an inexcusable sin to not check the credentials/legitimacy of an author. IMO, Winschuttle should be sacked for this alone – even if the actual article had made perfect sense and been flawlessly footnoted.
Jack’s mistake: he caricatures all people on the left and intellectuals, assuming that everyone of them is identical to his imaginary caricature. I would hazard a guess that cynicism (or at best, wary curiosity) were the predominant attitudes from many left-leaning people towards the 2020 summit and its cult of celebrity. Having worked in the public service and seen so many whiteboard and sticky-note sessions come to naught, and so many consultation processes be more about ticking the box instead of genuinely getting feedback, I certainly thought the entire exercise was a negative for Rudd.
#27 Love this comment for its internal contradictions.
“I’m pleased that the reporting on the outing of this fraud is more balanced, even that of the Spencer Street Soviet of The Age”.
and
““Windschuttle is not people like us and burns books like Nazis so we have no suympathy for him” Did I get that right Alanna? Is that intellectual discourse?”
The use of quotation marks for an imaginary statement is a new kind of punctuation worthy of Quadrant. The rhetorical question sits quite well after the mention of Nazis burning books.
Nicely balanced – we have the Communists and the Nazis within the same paragraph.
I think that we should put aside for the moment all of Keith Windschuttle’s past history and treat him as if he were a non-controversial editor of a small magazine, but one which has a significant history in Australia, some influence, and which aims to be seen as a high quality magazine.
We should also recognise that this is a literary/cultural/political opinion magazine and that it is not a peer-reviewed academic journal.
Also as I understand from earlier comments (either here or somewhere else) he is not paid for this editorial job.
For the purposes of balance we should also ignore the ethics of sending a hoax paper to this magazine, as that is a separate issue to be debated.
However, what we would then conclude about this affair?
Well I would conclude that this editor is willing to publish material he doesn’t really understand and has no expertise in; that he didn’t appear to pass this on to anybody on his editorial board or anyone sympathetic to his editorial aims who has the ability to make a reasoned assessment of the article, or if he did they also didn’t have the requisite knowledge or judgement to do so.
I would also conclude that his standards for accepting an article run as far as that it will “promote debate” and that it appears superficially plausible. When you read the article, my reaction – perhaps influenced by knowing that it is fake – is that it is indeed superficially plausible, but that the arguments are all over the place, and that there are many assertions of fact that I wasn’t particularly aware of, and there are bits of it that I don’t particularly follow.
Also if I were an editor and received an unsolicited manuscript, I think that I would also like to check the qualifications of the author to write on this subject, and I think that this would involve confirming that the author actually exists, and has been pointed out, in the age of Google this is not a difficult task.
So my overall conclusion would be that this non-controversial editor – even though unpaid (except in prestige) – has not adequately done the basic job he is supposed to do.
Still leaving aside Windschuttle’s past history, but bearing in mind the other articles on scientific subjects that he has published in Quadrant, and bearing in mind the articles he hasn’t published (as Harry Clarke has pointed out) I think that I would also conclude that this editor and therefore the magazine is not a reliable guide to scientific issues, and possibly other issues that are supposed to be related to facts rather than literary qualities.
Now if I was the proprietor or on the editorial board, I would consequently be fairly unhappy with the editor for lowering the perception of magazine quality. If I was a potential author, I would probably think about looking elsewhere for publication opportunities, at least until the editor had been replaced.
I do not think ‘disinterested observer’ has spotted the real issue.
Windschuttle cannot be divorced from his past history because he continues in the same rut.
He needs to be treated with the same respect he shows to others.
Giving right-wing dogmatists and provocateurs protection is a recipe for a disaster.
Ange
As usual people like you do not get it right. You quote me directly
“I note alanna’s comment above – I paraphrase it as “Windschuttle is not people like us and burns books like Nazis so we have no suympathy for him” Did I get that right Alanna? Is that intellectual discourse?
What I said was
“Windschuttle is the type of person who would busy himself burning books, libraries and incarcerating innocent people, along with spouting propaganda if they paid him something for it.”
In other words Ange, but definitely not yours or your kind, he sold his soul like a puppet to his political masters for a buck in his own “rational” self interest. I guess that makes him a good little conservative but a very poor academic.
Oh and Ange. Im surprised Windschuttle hasnt changed his allegience lately – given his history – if I recall he was once a Trotsky lover and contrary to how you place me – I dont care one way or the other – I just dont like to see people manipulating political views, claiming false science is on their side (anti accepted science), while they busy themselves attacking genuine hardworking researchers who do put the hard yards in while they sit around creating divisive, insulting and downright objectionable media blurbs.
That doesnt make for a tolerant society. They have been the vicious attackers – not the imaginary “wave of lefties.” I dont know many “lefties” in fact. Do they really exist?
Universities encompass all views – they are not and never were “lefty” compounds. Thats just an argument for privatisation as was the purpose of Windschuttles position on the ABC board under Howards close watch, and the electorate (myself included) would like to see more balance and common sense back (have had enough of economic rationalism and the worship of the individual gone mad) – such balance the recent Coalition government was severely lacking.
I agree with most of what Ange says.
The deceitful (they can’t be that ignorant) assaults on Windschuttle are becoming hysterical.
The difference between the mini-deception that Windschuttle fell for and the mega-deceptions professors Manne, Quiggin et al fall for is that the former was corrected quickly at Quadrant’s expense and the latter are propagandized interminably at taxpayer’s expense.
Lol – this is turning into, excuse the phrase, a ‘wingnut circle jerk’, with the leftie/pinko/moonbats squaring off against the rightwing/nazi/deathbeasts.
It’s truly amazing how quickly people slip back into tired and hackneyed ideological positions.
I have no particular love for Mr Windshuttle, his politics, his scholarship or his magazine. However all he has done in this instance is to show that he is a fallible human – just like all of us – and that he is able to be blind-sided by confirmation bias – just like all of us.
The rest, as disinterested observer says, is irrelevant.
Does anyone have a view on the content of the faked article, never mind the ethics and the Schadenfreude? Was it intended to discredit ‘genetic engineering’ through guilt by association, or what? Has it helped to do so?
@Ben – nailed it. The issue with most commentators here, apparently, is Windschuttle – his personality and politics.
If, as @Chris Warren says, you believe “Windschuttle cannot be divorced from his past history because he continues in the same rut.” why bother worrying about the “rights and wrongs” of submitting a fraudulent article at all?
@O6 – It wasn’t a very well written article, but much of what it said was reasonable too… especially the first half on the reporting of science and the “rationally irrational public” from the Thomas Gilovich book (a must read btw).
Also, human genes are used in plenty of genetic research. E.g (from here): http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026844.500-pig-organs-ready-for-humans-at-last.html
To deal with this, two groups have produced pigs carrying human genes for anti-clotting substances. Revivicor has inserted a gene for a protein called tissue factor pathway inhibitor, which neutralises tissue factor, a key trigger of clot formation. And at the University of Melbourne in Australia, Anthony d’Apice and his colleagues have bred pigs that make human CD39, a protein that stops platelets from aggregating into clots.
So arguing that it should happen is a BFD?
And the conclusion:
Great moral questions can only be dealt with when the facts are laid out accurately. In applying their ethical calculus to complex scientific questions, the media and the public—and consequently, policy-makers—very often err.
Well, yeah. On it’s own, what wrong with that?
The implication I got from the article, however, was that therefore the public and the media should “just butt out”, which I completely disagree with.
In saying all that, it’s very poor editorial work in using an article that: “…was presented at the 19th International Conference on Genome Informatics in Brisbane. And not check out if it’s acceptable to reprint it (apropos of copyright). It took me about 5 second to find the conference program and see that “Sharon Gould” was not on it…
http://mlaa.com.au/giw2008/GIW%20Program.htm
A lot of the discussion above is about the current hoax. As I said in the post, this seems a lot less interesting than Windschuttle’s failure to deliver the goods on the central claims he made in 2002 and earlier.
JD, as regards immediate correction of hoaxes, can you point to a correction of Windschuttle’s claim to have evidence (to be published in a Volume 2 of Fabrication) refuting the historical analysis of Reynolds and others for Queensland.
You have correctly identified a far more important point than the hoax, Prof Q. Windy seems to have a chronic case of writer’s block.
In answer to your question, O6, @39:
http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2009/1-2/scare-campaigns-and-science-reporting
Ange, the only problem with your argument is that geodesists (you know people who actually study the size and shape of the earth) have acknowledged that if all the land based ice melts the sea level rises at the equator will be in the vicinity of 100 metres. But don’t let those scientists who study these things get in the way of a good story.
I wouldnt mind so much if I hadnt read the history of the culture wars – and lets face it – I am a newcomer having only read about these things in the last few years. But I did read a lot. I am horrified that economics historians – once a vital and integral part of the teaching of any econics qualification – and now almost extinct – were so hunted out of universities – by the “free marketeers” of the extreme right who saw economics historians as “left”. I dont want to go into it – but I will provide a link instead. I just teach economics to students who want to hear economics history, and the history of economic thought (yes, the current generation ask “why cant we have more of this” – and I wonder why they cant also).
Bring back economics history – for some desperately needed meaning to the science.
http://www.asslh.org.au/sydney/hummer/vol4no1/irving.htm
If you read the link I posted in the previous post you may notice a name – Peter Coleman. He has something in common with Keith Windschuttle. Both editors of Quandrant.
In only have another link here – all Windschuttle is interested in is the almighty dollar but frankly he isnt thinking straight at the moment – there is more money to be made in switching from left to right to left again. Too slow.
http://atheism.about.com/b/2005/09/18/keith-windschuttle-goes-off-the-deep-end.htm
jquiggin Said:
A lot of the discussion above is about the current hoax. As I said in the post, this seems a lot less interesting than Windschuttle’s failure to deliver the goods on the central claims he made in 2002 and earlier.
JD, as regards immediate correction of hoaxes, can you point to a correction of Windschuttle’s claim to have evidence (to be published in a Volume 2 of Fabrication) refuting the historical analysis of Reynolds and others for Queensland.
JD Responds:
Is this really the best you have Professor Quiggin? This is Windschuttle’s big hoax? This justifies all the bile?
It is not Windschuttle who is under an obligation to prove or produce evidence for the non-deaths of Queensland Aborigines – it is a logical impossibility to prove a negative. It is Reynolds who is logically under an obligation to prove, or at least to present evidence for, his 1981 claim that 10,000 Queensland Aborigines were killed by white settlers. This he has never done, and until he does, Windschuttle has no evidence he can challenge.
Reynolds originally implied that his evidence was in his 1978 monograph titled Race Relations in North Queensland. But in 2000 Windschuttle revealed that it recorded only white deaths – no evidence of black deaths at all. Reynolds didn’t dispute this revelation but propagandized that: “the evidence concerning the ubiquity of conflict is overwhelming. It can be found in almost every type of document …The evidence for a great loss of life is voluminous, various and incontrovertible…I had done 10 years of research during which time I read every sort of document in every major library and archive in Australia… During my research I collected hundreds of references to frontier violence…I could have written a large and detailed book on frontier violence with copious documentation but it would have been a repetitive and ultimately depressing exercise.”
So in 1981 Reynolds presented no evidence for his estimate of black deaths in Queensland, and in 2000 he declined to present his evidence because he found the job too depressing. Three years later, in Whitewash, he made a similar claim about all the evidence he had of hundreds of black deaths in Tasmania, but on that occasion he declined to produce his evidence on the grounds that he had insufficient space. In 2004 he wrote a chapter for a book on Genocide and Settler Society, but again he declined to present any evidence of any killings.
All his career Reynolds has been supported by the academic establishment, but we taxpayers who fund it all are still waiting for a presentation of even a summary or sampling of all this evidence that Reynolds has been invoking since 1981!
And you, Professor Quiggin, have the nerve to call Windschuttle a hoaxer because, between editing Quadrant and making a living, he hasn’t found the time to write and publish the second volume of Fabrication yet!!
Like I said – it’s propaganda interminable at taxpayers’ expense.
Alganna said: “Universities encompass all views” Of course they do, the full spectrum, from Lenin to Trotsky, and everything inbetween.