Comments on: Libel and Academic Book Reviews

By: Substance McGravitas

Substance McGravitas — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:33:17 +0000

OT, but a very very unusual way to defend research practices.

A former University at Buffalo addictions researcher hired professional actors to testify on his behalf during an investigation into whether he fabricated data in federally funded studies, state prosecutors said Tuesday.

William Fals-Stewart paid three actors to speak by phone during a university misconduct hearing in 2007 - and then sued the state for $4 million when their false testimony helped exonerate him, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office said.

By: Ginger Yellow

Ginger Yellow — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:48:13 +0000

There’s one sentence in the review that I can even begin to imagine might qualify as libel under English law (no idea what the French standard is), and that one’s a real stretch. It’s just a statement of fact which could conceivably lower the subject’s reputation – though not likely – and might or might not be true. The rest is obviously fair comment. I’m 99% certain that even that sentence wouldn’t pass muster in England, so I find it bizarre that the case has been going on so long.

By: snuh

snuh — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 07:09:59 +0000

The editor is wrong to forward a personal email without authorization from it’s author. He is even wronger to publish it in a professional journal.

oh come on she wrote a letter to the editor. surely that carries with it a reasonable expectaction that it might be published.

By: Laleh

Laleh — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:33:21 +0000

Ben Tripp, you may be in the US, but you ain’t safe. The book editor being sued is actually an NYU prof!

LGM, you must be defending your pal. The absolute authoritarian whiney absurdity of that woman suing the book editor AT THE VERY LEAST requires an airing of her incompetent and incoherent letter. Being kicked out of academia is probably a better and more proportionate response.

By: SqueakyRat

SqueakyRat — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:41:47 +0000

I wonder what this person’s reaction would have been if John Cook Wilson had taken the bite out of her he did out of R. D. Archer-Hind’s edition of Plato’s Timaeus: “No unscholarly device seems wanting.”

By: VV

VV — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:37:59 +0000

@lgm: how’s all of the above relevant to the absurd step of taking legal action against the reviewer?
This is horrible, and there should be significant academic reaction. I am sending in my letter today.

By: lgm

lgm — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:14:39 +0000

Both the author and the editor are lazy. The author can’t bring herself to formulate her objections coherently. The editor can’t bring himself to formulate a coherent reply or to adjudicate the issues. The proper thing to do in this circumstance would be to find a third party, an independent expert reviewer, to offer an opinion on the factual issues: do judges make precident? Is is libelous to say so? If the editor had done his job properly, he would not be in this situation.

The editor is wrong to forward a personal email without authorization from it’s author. He is even wronger to publish it in a professional journal. He is wrong to publish such a self serving editorial. The proper way to put content like that into a professional journal editorial would be to have another member of the editorial board write it.

By: BillCinSD

BillCinSD — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 23:53:48 +0000

I think that if the author had just made a really good French food dish for the critic, none of this would have happened.

By: Ben Tripp

Ben Tripp — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 23:43:00 +0000

Good heavens. To think of the scurrilous things I’ve said, and the people I’ve said them to—I have just discovered a single advantage to languishing in these here United States. They can throw me in the oubliette forever without charge or trial, but I’m free to say what I will about it.

By: teraz kurwa my

teraz kurwa my — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:04:04 +0000

Somewhat related, there’s a new and rather controversial biography out of Ryszard Kapuscinski, the Polish star foreign correspondent and essayist. The author is, Artur Domoslawski, a prominent left wing foreign correspondent for Gazeta Wyborcza who specializes in Latin America. Kapuscinski’s widow is suing him for defaming his memory. She’s also gotten her lawyers to intimidate various foreign publishers into withdrawing their plans to publish the book in France, Italy, and Spain. Domoslawski apparently provides plenty of evidence that Kapuscinski was for much of his life a strong supporter of Communism and the People’s Republic, and that he wrote numerous political analyses for the Polish foreign intelligence services. The reception of the book offers an interesting in window into contemporary Polish politics. On the one you’ve got the liberals (in the European sense of the word) who are upset that he is airing the dirty laundry of one of their intellectual idols, and on the other there are the conservatives who are attacking Domoslawski for the fact that he presents Kapuscinski’s support for Communism with a great deal of sympathy.

By: LFC

LFC — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:30:12 +0000

Polemical reviews (unlike the mild one at issue here) no doubt have a long history. One 19th-century example:
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin struck a raw nerve in the South…. The vehemence of southern denunciations of Mrs. Stowe’s ‘falsehoods’ and ‘distortions’ was perhaps the best gauge of how close they hit home…. The editor of the Southern Literary Messenger instructed his book reviewer: ‘I would have the review as hot as hellfire, blasting and searing the reputation of the vile wretch in petticoats who could write such a volume.’”—J. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p.90.

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:31:48 +0000

Book reviews are a serious issue – interesting case in Germany (though concerning ficition) is the feud between Martin Walser (one of the best known living German authors) and Marcel Reich-Ranicki, the Doyen of German literary criticism.
In 1974, Reich-Ranicki had written a highly polemical review of one of Walser’s books. The first sentence read: “Ein belangloser, ein schlechter, ein miserabler Roman.” – an irrelevant, bad, awful novel.
28 years later, Walser published a novel “Death of a Critic” – said critic is, of course, an only thinly disguised stand-in for Reich-Ranicki. The novel caused a pretty serious literary scandal…

As for the “affair” at hand – it is hard to understand what she was thinking.

By: Bloix

Bloix — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 22:32:15 +0000

More – I guess what I don’t understand, really, is who will prosecute this case? Will a French government-employed prosecutor really devote time and resources to working this piece-of-shit case up for trial? Do prosecutors really dance at the end of strings pulled by deranged academics? Hard to believe.

By: Bloix

Bloix — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 22:11:26 +0000

Is it really true that anyone can simply press a pedal and the entire clanking machinery of the French criminal justice system will begin to belch and lurch and grind up ordinary people in its path? According to the link, this proceeding has been going on for a year and half now, and not a single official – prosecutor, judge, magistrate – has had the ability or the obligation to determine whether there is any reason for it to forward. And now an actual trial will be held, so that the defendant has to work up a full defense, with witnesses, evidence, and the threat of criminal liability – and no way to put a stop to it?

Can that really be so? If it is, what a ridiculous, inefficient, oppressive, capricious system the French have.

By: Barry

Barry — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:24:05 +0000

Uh, yes, that was, um, me – yup, I wrote that. I made Nozick my b*tch.