The Windschuttle response seems to have been taken down from the Quadrant website.
But the “Sharon Gould” article remains on the site, with no disclaimer or other indication of strife.
UPDATE: Thanks to Jon Seymour for correcting me here. The response has been moved, not taken down, and a new response has been added. In the new response, Windschuttle again suggests that I am behind the hoax, but now as part of a “team”.
“One of the inevitable consequences of the placement of a bogus article in the January-February edition of Quadrant by a team associated with the online publication Crikey and its writer Margaret Simons is that, in future, we will scrutinise more closely the personal credentials of authors who submit freelance contributions to the journal. Indeed, as the journalism educator Kayt Davies pointed out yesterday, we will not be alone. “This hoax is bad news for all magazine freelances,” Davies wrote, “because it will make all editors more suspicious of new writers.”
I’m getting sick of saying this. I am not Sharon Gould. Nor am I part of a “team” that placed the hoax article. By the time I knew about it, Windschuttle had already accepted the piece.
9 Comments
The original response is still there at:
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2009/01/margaret-simons-and-an-apparent-hoax-on-quadrant
There is another response here:
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2009/01/this-hoax-a-dud-cheque
jon.
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, sit down and think about the larger issues involved before you get moist and hot about the pleasure you’ve just had watching an assisting in an unethical act.
Margaret, I’m glad you’ve continued to keep this story running because I’d never have encountered the word “perfervid” otherwise. Now I just have to think of a sentence sufficiently pretentious and self-righteous to use it in.
Andy, can I have a dollar for every time you use the word “fraud” or a derivative? This is all a “hoax”, not a “fraud”. This is not a “crime”, and certainly not a violent crime, so your attempts to compare a literary hoax with murder or rape are a pretty cheap rhetorical trick.
The the definition of a fraud below is taken from a web dictionary
It seems to me that the ‘hoax’ pretty well meets the test. Furthermore there was clear malice involved and damage inflicted.
1. deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage.
2. a particular instance of such deceit or trickery: mail fraud; election frauds.
3. any deception, trickery, or humbug: That diet book is a fraud and a waste of time.
4. a person who makes deceitful pretenses; sham; poseur.
@sceptic I stand corrected. Personally I wouldn’t use the word “fraud” to cover any deception or trickery, but if others do then “a web dictionary” records that usage fairly.
I still think comparing the Sharon Gould affair to a rape or murder is stretching it a bit far.
Fair enough
Just in case you think that I made it up here is the url
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fraud
The hoaxer probably regards his actions as “pious fraud” but further reading below is pretty definitive.
Pious fraud “deception practiced for the sake of what is deemed a good purpose” is from 1563.
Main Entry: fraud
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin fraud- fraus
1 a : any act, expression, omission, or concealment calculated to deceive another to his or her disadvantage; specifically : a misrepresentation or concealment with reference to some fact material to a transaction that is made with knowledge of its falsity or in reckless disregard of its truth or falsity and with the intent to deceive another and that is reasonably relied on by the other who is injured thereby b : the affirmative defense of having acted in response to a fraud
2 : the crime or tort of committing fraud
In any event I think that I will disappear with my prejudices intact.
Sceptic, you seem to have missed the point. when you say…”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.”
He did no such thing, he cherry picked footnotes and references, that due to multiple handling, data entry errors, and/or poor recording by authors, were not what they originally purported to be. That is the elegance of this particular fraud, these are the same footnote issues that Windschuttle used to tear down larger more lucid arguments, by pouring over footnotes for errors and using them against his proponents. To quote Crikey yesterday:
In the midst of the History Wars, Stuart Macintyre made the fairly uncontroversial point that all historians err. He acknowledged that, when he went back to his own footnotes, he often discovered that as many as ten per cent contained errors. At the time, Windschuttle seized on the point as an admission of the shoddiness of academic engaged in “concerted invention”.
“The degree of misinformation in the work of these authors — even if their colleagues want to excuse it all as error — would be unacceptable in any other profession, and certainly unacceptable in journalism.”
If that truly is Windschuttles opinion, and his method, then this hoax would have been impossible to perpetrate, because he would not allow for failings on his own side of the idealogical fence that he picks up on the other, surely. There is no excuse for failure to detect this other than Mr Windschuttles own blinkered world view.
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 perfervid (yes Stilgherrian it was used correctly) fraud (yes Stilgherrian it was used correctly) of the Fitrzroy organic veggie farmer raises many ethical issues (and how appropriate that such a person should figure centrally in a Crikey story – Fitzroy thinking for a Fitzroy crowd). What are the takeaways:
1. Windschuttle and we need to recognise that every writer is a potential fraudster liar and deceiver, not just histoiry 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. Margaret Simons and Crikey should consider their journalistic ethics, or else we’ll all let them shill for crooks conmen and fraudsters
3. I repeat, 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.
@andy george: Are you Christian Kerr’s sock puppet? It’s just that the clichéd language describing anyone to the left of John Howard as part of some global conspiracy harking back to events three decades ago is so clichéd. And I can visualise Christian with a glass in hand lecturing folks about how they “should think long and hard”.
Personally, as soon as someone starts a sentence with “You should…” my interest wanes. The world has enough people telling other people how they thing those other folks should behave. Smacks of a lack of tolerance of diversity, if you ask me. And diversity is what engenders progress.