Look, put yourself in Lott’s shoes. You get a kick out of posting to Usenet. Unfortunately, you’re a relatively well-known scholar who has written extensively in a controversial field. If you use your real name, there will be problems; if nothing else, the crackpot to normal person ratio alone would make your task difficult.
So you invent a pseudonym. You add a little back story so you can still plausibly put out your opinion (“From what I’ve seen, Prof. Lott is not a die-hard right winger” vs. “I am not a die hard right winger”). Whoopitee doo.
A little weird, true. But hardly the awful, unprofessional, unscholarly thing that many here are making it out to be. Good Lord, save your vitriol for guys like Michael Bellesies, who really are a discredit to academia.
hey, Dewey while you’re backpeddeling, why not just come out and admit that the pot/kettle bs was poorly thought out and not particularly applicable, (or did you find somewhere where beagledave had posted stuff about his real life and not claimed it??)
gotta admit it takes guts to keep on claiming no harm/no foul for some one who’s admitted themself that they did something wrong. Well, guts or something.
I’m saying that to the extent the pseudonym plus backstory was necessary to effectively participate in Usenet discussions then yeah, that’s OK. None of this affects the credibility or scholarship behind Lott’s work. I’m hard-pressed to see why this is worth getting worked up over.
The dude pretended to be someone else when talking about himself. That is way the fuck beyond simple anonymity, that is flat out lying.
If you want to be anonymous, don’t fucking talk about yourself. That shouldn’t be hard to figure out.
I suspect that even if “Mary Rosh” only posted fairly straightforward information about Lott’s work (“Prof. Lott addressed that claim in article X”, etc, etc) that the OP would still be making his claim. So yeah, point stands. What you are essentially saying is that Lott cannot discuss his work using a pseudonym. Claims to the contrary notwithstanding, anonymity is the central issue.**
Actually, I see nowhere where Lott has admitted wrongdoing. I see him saying “I shouldn’t have done it,” which is hardly the same thing. That plausibly could mean “I shouldn’t have done it, because I should’ve known some geek would look up the IP addresses and make a big stink over it on his blog. Now I know how Joel Klein feels.”
Okay, then you’re basically conceding that what he did was not okay, since it’s simply not necessary to falsify one’s identity to effectively participate in an online debate. Anonymity does that just fine. What Lott did instead was to create “Mary Rosh” as a means of fraudulently boosting his own real-life reputation. (“We all loved Lott so much that we took every class he taught. He was the best professor I ever had. And let me tell you, he was the sexiest guy I’ve ever seen.”)
So, you think it was necessary to lie about his (her!) identity to participate in discussions? To make up an alternate name and persona and back story to maintain the illusion? That’s absolutely remarkable. Given that Usenet is already a largely anonymous system, can you explain exactly why that was “necessary”?
Again, the question you haven’t answered is, why the smokescreen? I fail to see the necissity of outright dishonesty.
I disagree… if he’s willing to lie to this extent to support his arguments, then what else is he willing to lie about? At the very least, it calls his integrity into question.
actually, you don’t have to ‘presume’ anything about what the OP would or would not claim. since the OP is here and is also still wondering why you haven’t at the very least dropped the “pot/kettle” bs.
and since all the rest of us have indeed focused on the proping up by virtue of claiming ‘gee he was such a great prof’ stuff, you still seem to be setting up quite the straw man. (we say very directly that the issue is the bs about claiming to be a former student etc is what’s troubling. I’d have zero problem w/him posting as John smotgorph making his points w/o admitting to be John Lott. however, the way that he did it is indeed up for derision. )
This is contradictory, since to be anonymous you pretty much have to use a pseudonym – you pretty much have to “pretend to be someone else.”**
So no scholar can participate in a Usenet discussion about his own work unless he uses his own name? Good heavens, why? If a scholar is doing his job in the ordinary course – publishing articles in peer-reviewed journals, answering the criticisms of fellow scholars, making panel appearances to discuss his research – why on earth is a negative for him to participate in Usenet discussions anonymously?
We have the Bad Astronomer here and he participates as himself. However, if he’d preferred, it would have been perfectly fine for him to log in as BadNewsBears and post the same stuff (but here’s the kicker that you keep on avoiding) **but not to post stuff like “I personally know Bad Astronomer, was in his classes, he was a fine fellow and very smart as well, and this is what I learned there”.
see, in that second thing, in addition to his ‘point’ he’s also suggesting stuff about the author of the work without admitting that he is the author
No shit Sherlock. :rolleyes: I assume your real name isn’t Dewey Cheatem Undhow, my real name sure as hell isn’t grendel72. That doesn’t change the fact that TALKING ABOUT YOURSELF under those circumstances is dishonest and honestly pretty pathetic.
Sure. It’s the only way to communicate Lott’s thoughts without giving the game away. You cant have “Mary” just say “Lott thinks X” because the next logical question is “how the hell do you know?” So you have “Mary” be a former student and whenever you want to communicate Lott’s perceptions on a matter, you have “Mary” describe it as one of Lott’s lectures (or office-hour conversation, or whatever).
“To this extent”? Shit, man, it isn’t like this is a Witness-Protection-Program level backstory. It doesn’t take a staggering level of creativity to create an online persona that “used to be a student” of the poster. I’m gonna step out on a limb here and say Lott whipped it up in about 30 seconds, on the fly, while he was posting.
This affects his credibility as a scholar about as much as would a revelation that a single Lott used to lie in singles bars to get laid.
See, I doubt this, if not for you in particular, then for most of the posters in this thread. The general criticism is basically “thou shalt not use a false name to bolster one’s reputation.” But of course, almost any post referring to Lott’s work in a positive light constitute “bolstering.”
If “Mary” posts that “John Lott has effectively responded to this argument; his research conclusively proves that it is wrong; here is the cite” well, how far removed from “John Lott is a really great scholar”?
I contend that almost any participation by Lott in a thread involving his work would necessarily involve some level of bolstering by Lott’s pseudonym.
