Author: Ophelia Benson

Interesting. The University of Colorado has released a report on its investigation of Ward Churchill. And?

Among the violations that the committee found Churchill had committed were falsification, fabrication, plagiarism, failure to comply with established standard regarding author names on publications, and a “serious deviation from accepted practices in reporting results from research.”

Uh – that’s bad. That’s what you don’t do. You know like when you go to the dentist? The dentist isn’t supposed to take the sharp things and jam them into the roof of your mouth on purpose. That’s contraindicated. Same thing with this. Academics aren’t supposed to falsify, fabricate, or plagiarize. It doesn’t matter whether they’re controversial or offensive or rowdy or longhaired; they don’t get to falsify and fabricate. They just don’t. Being controversial and offensive doesn’t mean they do get to, as some kind of compensation for the fatigue or risk of being controversial and offensive. It doesn’t work that way. Made-up social science just isn’t wanted, no matter how thrillingly controversial the maker-up is.

It’s like David Irving, again. Ward Churchill doesn’t have a free speech or First Amendment right to falsify and fabricate. It’s not a criminal offense and not an imprisonable one, but it’s not a protected free speech right, either. He doesn’t get to say ‘it’s my First Amendment right to fabricate and falsify my research’ and carry on doing it.

He doesn’t get to say his hand slipped, either. They thought of that, and said No.

The Committee found that Professor Churchill’s misconduct was deliberate and not a
matter of an occasional careless error. The Committee found that similar patterns recurred
throughout the essays it examined. The Committee therefore concluded that the degree of his
misconduct was serious, but differed on the sanction warranted.

The committee also pointed out that the controversy is one thing and the misconduct is another. Important point, that.

The Committee notes that the Laws of the Regents of the University of Colorado
define “academic freedom” as “the freedom to inquire, discover, publish and
teach truth as the faculty member sees it, subject to no control or authority save
the control and authority of the rational methods by which truth is established.”
We understand and were careful to distinguish “misconduct in research”…from the issue of “truth” addressed by
the Regents’ Laws’ definition of academic freedom. The Committee observes
also that the allegations we were asked to investigate were initiated in the wake of
the public outcry concerning some highly controversial essays by Professor
Churchill dealing with, among other things, the 9/11 tragedy. While not
endorsing either the tone or the contents of those essays, the Committee reaffirms,
as the University has already acknowledged, that Professor Churchill’s right to
publish his views was protected by both the First and Fourteenth Amendment
guarantees of free speech. Although those essays played no part in our
deliberations, the Committee expresses its concern regarding the timing and
perhaps the motives for the University’s decision to forward charges made in that
context.

The timing and context are highly unfortunate. Too bad Churchill provided so much ammunition for his critics.

Here’s some, shall we say, flexible thinking in action. Someone (the name sounds male so I’ll decide it is male, in order not to have to say s/he, which I do not like to say) admitting in the first words of a ‘review’ that he has not read the book he is reviewing, then blithely and absent-mindedly proceeding to discuss said book quite as if he had indeed read it and taken detailed notes. I can tell you he hadn’t and hasn’t and didn’t, though, because everything he says about it is flat wrong, and I know that on account of I co-wrote the book.

Behold his artless frankness at the beginning –

I can imagine, and i’ve heard from friends that this is a good and funny read if you’re coming from the same camp as the authors (which i guess much of the general public will), but the (apparently witty) attacks on the “fashionable lunatics” of modern philosophy and religious believers are as far is it goes.

There you go. He can imagine, and he’s heard from friends, but he doesn’t know. The ‘attacks’ are ‘apparently’ witty but he doesn’t know that from personal knowledge. Not until the next sentence, when suddenly he does know all about it.

Look at them! They’re saying things which we don’t seem like intuitive common sense! They must be idiots! Ho ho.

Right. That’s just what Why Truth Matters is like. That’s all we do: we just point and laugh. Spot on.

It’s clear neither of the authors really understand post-modern philosophy, particularly its effect on ethics, and worse the book lumps together everything from art to history that anybody might have described as post modern into a single post modern opinion, so it can ridicule them all at the same time, apparently failing to realise the extremely wide range of phenomena that it covers.

Yup, that’s right, that’s an accurate description all right, we lump together everything from art to history and then ridicule the whole stew; we have no clue about the wide range of whatnots. What we did is we found a couple of columns by George Will and just kind of riffed on them, and let it go at that.

Okay, so, speaking of the effect of ‘post-modern philosophy’ on ethics, this Mojo fella has an interesting idea of ethics. He apparently considers it ethical to tell a pack of flat, brazen lies about a book he hasn’t read in hopes of damaging its chances because he doesn’t like what he thinks he knows (but doesn’t) about the contents. Fortunately, he’s also stupid enough to say he hasn’t read it and only then set about the lying. Perhaps that’s the effect of ‘postmodern philosphy’ on the intellect.

So, where were we. Here’s one thing JS said in the discussion.

The other general point is that I think people make the best cases for
scientific method when there are genuine threats to the scientific process.
I don’t think having imaginary arguments does the job nearly as well. So,
for example, Dawkins, Dennett, Jones, etc., are all doing what they’re doing
at least in part because they think that evolution is under threat as an
accepted truth. So there’s an instrumental reason for wanting dissent.

That did make sense to me, and since that made sense to me, I was better able to see what he was getting at in the interview. (The interview, being so brief, was a little cryptic. I think the subject probably needs more room to breathe than that.) I don’t really know for sure that Dawkins, Dennett, Jones and co are doing what they’re doing better than they would be doing it if they did not think evolution was under threat as an accepted truth – but I think it’s at least possible. Because for one thing the misunderstandings that ID-defenders keep kicking up perhaps show what needs explaining. (On the other hand, I know PZ for instance thinks those misunderstandings are just repetitive and futile and a waste of time that biologists could be spending on research rather than on endlessly arguing the same points over and over again with ID-defenders who will just repeat the process tomorrow. But the two needn’t be in contradiction. It could be that people who write about the public understanding of science are in a way helped by misunderstandings while people who are doing research are not. It could be a matter of division of labour.)

There’s a lot more, but we ended up pretty much agreeing, I think, except possibly on some not particularly important details. There’s an issue about what foundational beliefs B&W takes for granted, or is committed to, and whether they are rationally grounded or not – but it probably doesn’t matter all that much, because I certainly see the point at issue even if I’m not sure I agree with him on the details. The details have to do with my view that apart from a commitment to rational inquiry, which I don’t think could be revisable even in principle, the other truth-claims B&W perhaps takes for granted are nevertheless in principle revisable, if new evidence turned up. His view is that many foundational truth claims aren’t really revisable even in principle, or (stretching) that they just barely are in principle but not psychologically. I can buy the second version, the in principle but not psychologically one; but the first one, I don’t. Maybe that’s just because I’m too ignorant! That could be. It could be that I’m so ignorant that all my foundational beliefs about how the world is are quite loosely held, simply because I don’t know enough to hold them more firmly. But I think it’s also simply because I can imagine in a thought-experiment way some sort of inside-out universe evidence that could turn up; but I can’t imagine deciding that rational inquiry is systematically wrong, because I don’t see how one could get there except with some kind of rational inquiry. If I try to imagine it I always end up with some version of rational inquiry at some stage – and some pretty early stage at that. The very idea of revising a commitment to rational inquiry involves rational inquiry – so – I can’t get my mind around it, it keeps sliding off.

But that’s a detail. (We talked about it while writing the book, too, I think. Went round and round for awhile and then gave it up and went back to work.) But I find this kind of thing inexhaustibly interesting, so I thought you might too. Anyway there’s no need to produce one of those nice Erratum slips to shove in the remaining copies of WTM saying ‘Never mind’. Amusing though that would be.

So, about those puzzling issues to do with what B&W’s basic commitments are and how one goes about figuring stuff out – I’ve had a chance to discuss them with JS now and it turns out we don’t disagree all that much and that he wasn’t saying quite what I thought he was. It all turns – as I said in a comment but didn’t make enough of – on the word ‘adopt’. I thought he meant adopt as in ‘decide to believe’, but he meant not ‘believe’ but ‘act as if I believe’ – which is a whole different thing, as we said in those comments. So that clears that up!

There are some interesting issues involved, which I want to ponder a little, but I also want some fresh air and abrupt violent movement, so I’ll ponder later. The weather forecast says it’s going to be 87 here today. ? Is that possible? In mid-May? I object. I don’t like that kind of thing in mid-July, but I realize I have to put up with it, but in mid-May? No. Weather forecast says it will be in the 80s all week. This is not right.