The Trials of Alice Goffman
January 13, 2016 10:52 AM   Subscribe

‘‘Alice used a writing style that today you can’t really use in the social sciences.’’ He sighed and began to trail off. ‘‘In the past,’’ he said with some astonishment, ‘‘they really did write that way.’’ The book smacked, some sociologists argued, of a kind of swaggering adventurism that the discipline had long gotten over. Goffman became a proxy for old and unsettled arguments about ethnography that extended far beyond her own particular case. What is the continuing role of the qualitative in an era devoted to data? When the politics of representation have become so fraught, who gets to write about whom? posted by roomthreeseventeen (59 comments total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
Fit to Print, Paul Campos
Which brings us to Goffman’s claim that skepticism about her version of events constitutes a “failure to take seriously the complaints of disempowered minority communities.” Alice Goffman was and is a white person of immense social privilege. Nothing illustrates that more forcefully than Lewis-Kraus’s article itself, which, for all its ponderous disquisitions on the nature of sociological inquiry, ends up being in substance a content-free puff piece, designed, wittingly or not, to provide social absolution in the paper of record to a white person of immense social privilege, after she published a purportedly true book full of implausible stories, not one of which Lewis-Kraus ended up being able to actually confirm, even in part, despite what were surely his best efforts to do so.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 11:11 AM on January 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


I read the article yesterday and was left not really knowing what to think of either Goffman or her field.

The article felt puffy. Some of the criticisms seem sound. How could there not be errors? Six years and she burned the notes. But an error is not the same as a conscious lie to advance an agenda. It is not clear to me either that pure objectivity was ever the goal; as described, the method was from birth intended to rely on subjective sympathy to uncover new perspectives, new truths. Is that proper science? Something else? There's also a two strands to the criticism, which fight against each other: it is untrue vs. it is improper. You lied vs. You ought not to write this because of who you are. She spends six years. If she reports what she sees honestly -- if, if, the if is conceded --- is that never okay? Never worth doing? Never worth trying? (Does Treach from Naughty by Nature get the final word?) That doesn't sit right either. Dunno, as I said.
posted by Diablevert at 12:08 PM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


I read the article yesterday and was left not really knowing what to think of either Goffman or her field.

I had the same reaction, and it honestly felt like the author was pretty ambiguous on that subject as well. Her naivete is contrasted with her experience and insight, and it's hard to reconcile the two.
posted by Dip Flash at 12:16 PM on January 13, 2016


You ought not to write this because of who you are.

There may be those making that criticism, but I think there's a more nuanced version of the same basic point that's stronger. Goffman told Lewis-Krauss: The point of the book is for people who are written off and delegitimated to describe their own lives and to speak for themselves about the reality they face, and this is a reality that goes absolutely against the narratives of officials or middle-­class people.

But the book is not people describing their own lives and speaking for themselves. It's about Goffman describing their lives, and selecting from six years of conversations the ones she thinks are important to record. That's not necessarily a dishonest or worthless endeavor, but when the person who creates this kind of book sees themself (and holds themself out) as a window revealing things as they are rather than a lens that selects and distorts, I think it's a good idea to point that out.

If on top of that, you've got the You lied criticism levied with some convincing evidence that the author did lie, the value of the work really is called into questions.
posted by layceepee at 12:19 PM on January 13, 2016 [13 favorites]


A kind of benign self-­neglect, along with a comprehensive absent-­mindedness, extends outward to everything in Goffman’s life that isn’t fieldwork or her students. People who spend a lot of time with her often arrange themselves to take care of her, lest she get lost. I knew her for only two days before I found myself making sure, for example, that her phone was plugged in. In our four days in Madison, she could not remember that her room was a right turn out of the elevator. Goffman is short, with big, round chestnut eyes, dirty-­blond hair that she rarely knows what to do with, a slightly reedy quaver in her voice and a performatively childlike manner that softens a relentlessly inquisitive and analytic intelligence. If she ever stopped asking questions, you might notice her only as someone’s tagalong little sister.

This is really gross and sexist.

I myself am somewhat put off by Goffman's writing style and attitude toward positionality, and thought this article did a pretty fine job contextualizing some of the conflicts and controversies about sociology fieldwork and ethnography. I almost didn't get that far, though, because the reporter undermined himself so much IMO with that unnecessarily shitty opening description.
posted by desuetude at 12:21 PM on January 13, 2016 [11 favorites]


On the Run is a hugely compelling read-- I couldn't even put it down in the bookstore-- and is as up-to-the-minute-topical a work as anyone could hope for in its focus on race, crime, and the city, but while I was drawn in, I had so many reservations reading it. Why did this voice speak with such authority when it so clearly came from an outsider, a tourist in this world? Why did the book scarcely bother with openly considering the ethics of telling this narrative? Did all of these people really consent to not just being talked about, but talked about in this way, objectified and treated as representatives of their social and racial groups, being always looked-at, never looking? I don't know much about positionality and the field, I just like reading, but even I could pick that up. The narrative is Goffman's alone, a literary work, which makes for a more inviting read than the typical social science text for sure, but I just get this whiff of Sir Richard Burton telling me about the natives, which you'd think is the first pitfall a work like that would avoid.
posted by thetortoise at 12:36 PM on January 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


If we all agree that it's problematic for White people to keep being the ones who tell these stories, at what point do we stop rewarding White academics so richly for doing so? I get what Alice Goffman is saying about the complaints of disempowered minority communities; as a graduate student in sociology, I understand and appreciate the internal and external context. I also realize that she may want to remove herself from the equation to some degree, to get people to focus on the work rather than her personal characteristics. And they should, to a significant degree.

But I'm not confident that this defense of her book is worth very much. The author notes that Goffman will not or cannot defend her work against its harshest critics, which cannot possibly inspire confidence in anyone:

It does not help that Goffman, when challenged about her book — or about the privilege, defiance and sloppiness to which critics attribute its weaknesses — tends to respond with willful naïveté or near-­grandiose self-­possession.

Nor does it seem especially helpful that even the putative defenders she has among professional sociologists don't actually want to be publicly associated with her:

There has been a lot of hand-­wringing about Goffman, and even her sympathizers mostly declined to speak to me on the record for fear of contamination.

It is also hard to read this wince-inducing line without concluding that the author is totally unaware of how it seems to reveal a variety of special treatment that nobody -- like, nobody -- gets in their sociological career:

Even while Goffman was still an undergraduate, word of her intensive fieldwork circulated among senior ethnographers, and one recruited her to study under him in a Ph.D. program at Princeton

I also think that there's some not-so-subtly flawed logic involved in the claim that maybe White people like Alice Goffman shouldn't be the ones telling these stories:

It’s true that ethnography has come somewhat back into fashion since the 1970s and that no contemporary sociologist would agree with the call, tweeted by a Buzzfeed writer and echoed elsewhere, to ‘‘ban outsider ethnographies.’’ As one sociologist put it to me, ‘‘If Alice Goffman isn’t allowed to write about poor black people, then sociologists who come from poor communities of color, like Victor Rios, aren’t allowed to write about elite institutions like banks or hedge funds, and that, in the end, hurts Victor Rios much more than it hurts Alice Goffman.’’

Whoever this (deliberately anonymous) sociologist is, they've apparently failed to consider that power is directional and historical. The more I re-read that quote, in fact, the more I wonder how a sociologist could say something that betrays such a simplistic and narrow conception of historical context and the 'rules' of sociological inquiry.

And this is not very convincing, given that not even one of her defender was willing to be named:

Regarding most of the book’s internal inconsistencies, virtually every single ethnographer I talked to described the enormously difficult logistical problem of how to keep track of pseudonymous notes over years and admitted that if you subjected almost any work in the field to that kind of punitive audit, you would almost certainly come up with similar trivial confusions.

Name them! Name even one who will go on record with this kind of bizarre defense, which amounts to "Well, if you look closely enough at any of this work in our field, you will find lots of internal inconsistencies, it's just how we are!" I mean, that's awfully dispiriting, and reads more like a condemnation of ethnographic sociology than a defense of Goffman.

Then, near the end, comes what must be one of the most inexplicable and frustrating things I've ever read:

Goffman has declined to make public the long, point-by-point rebuttal of her anonymous attacker, but after we got to know each other well, she shared it with me. It is blunt and forceful and, in comparison with the placidity of her public deportment, almost impatient and aggrieved in tone, and it is difficult to put the document down without wondering why she has remained unwilling to publicize some of its explanations. She acknowledges a variety of errors and inconsistencies, mostly the results of a belabored anonymization process, but otherwise persuasively explains many of the lingering issues. There is, for example, a convincing defense of her presence in the supposedly closed juvenile court and a quite reasonable clarification of the mild confusion over what she witnessed firsthand and what she reconstructed from interviews — along with explanations for even the most peculiar and deranged claims of her anonymous attacker, including why Mike does his laundry at home in one scene and at a laundromat in another.

There is no excuse for this kind of hand-waving. Goffman is an adult and purportedly a scholar; scholars don't write forceful defenses of criticized work and then lock them in a drawer so nobody else in their field can actually read them. This alone makes me distrust both Goffman and the reporter, utterly. I just can't wrap my head around the idea that it was smart to say "She fully rebuts the arguments of her critics, and I totally saw the evidence of that, but shh it's a secret!" This is not how scholars behave. It's not even how journalists are supposed to behave.

I was cognizant of On the Run's issues before, though I wanted to keep an open mind; but the the more I read, the worse everything looks. I have zero confidence in Goffman's integrity at this point; but all it would take to restore that confidence, and I think I can speak for a substantial proportion of frustrated sociologists, would be for her to present that point-by-point rebuttal public. Publish it in ASR or AJS or one of the other top journals: people are constantly attacking and defending theirs and other people's work there. That's what journals are for! There seems to be something going on with Goffman herself that makes her think she doesn't need to play by the same professional guidelines and conventions as her ostensible colleagues, and I don't mean arcane forms of courtesy or anything, but rather what amount to evidentiary rules that help ensure empirical validity.

I can really only see two conclusions: first, that Goffman is a fine sociologist who refuses to publicly defend her own work due to personal preference, which is absurd on its face; second, that Goffman made errors, some of them very serious, but that this is how every ethnography is, in actuality. If the latter is true, we should not do ethnographies anymore; if the former is, it's not clear to me why Goffman deserves a place in the academy.
posted by clockzero at 12:38 PM on January 13, 2016 [25 favorites]


‘‘I can’t even muster that much interest,' she wrote by way of conclusion. "Because there’s a big, mysterious world out there, and I want to understand a little more of it before I die. That and tear down the prisons."

I mean, people who respond to weighty accusations in this tone are generally full of it, yeah? It's what you say when you know you're about to be proved wrong.

There's treating specifics a certain way for a certain purpose (for example, anonymization) and then there's just straightforwardly not caring that much about specifics, and she sounds a lot more like the latter.

[The details of this article don't say much for her attention to specifics, either. "In this tote was some material she had forgotten about: unpaid bills, bail receipts, letters from prison and a few extant fragments of hastily scrawled in situ field notes. But it wasn’t until the security line that she remembered what the tote probably once held, memorabilia from her time on Sixth Street: bullets, spent casings, containers for drugs. She passed safely through the scanner in a state of agitation, not about the risk she took but by how blithely she was treated by T.S.A. agents. "And who did they stop?" she said. "Not me and my bag of contrabandy stuff . . ."

"Contrabandy stuff" that was no longer in the bag! Sure, TSA is racist security theater, but she expected what, magic metal detectors that can see the past?
posted by ostro at 12:39 PM on January 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


‘‘And who did they stop?’’ she said. ‘‘Not me and my bag of contrabandy stuff, but a young man with brown skin. I tried to exchange a look of solidarity with him

I assume that - and everything that follows - is subtle parody.
posted by jpe at 12:53 PM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Also, any thoughts on the fact that Goffman distributes part of the book's royalties to the people she wrote about? On the one hand, it's good that she's not just looting their life experiences to her own benefit and none of theirs. On the other hand, they're the only other people who could tell the full truth about what happened, and it's not like their names are on any of the royalty checks; she's choosing to give them the money, and she could choose to stop, and everybody involved is probably aware of that. Involving them in the book-as-moneymaking-enterprise this way could easily be read as pressure to go along with the narrative of the book-as-document, especially considering the economic disparity involved. I don't actually believe that this is what's going on with Goffman and the people she wrote about, because it sounds like they are in fact close friends and they probably wouldn't want to go on the record about the illegal activities described in the book anyway, but talk about MASSIVE POTENTIAL FOR AND APPEARANCE OF IMPROPRIETY, Batman.
posted by ostro at 12:56 PM on January 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


It takes some serious chutzpah to claim with a straight face at this point that the serious specific concerns about Goffman's work and her ethics amount to a referendum on "the continuing role of the qualitative in an era devoted to data" or whatever other grandiose methodological waffle. This kind of thing is basically just the academic version of backpedalling furiously while trying to change the subject.
posted by RogerB at 12:56 PM on January 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


Also, any thoughts on the fact that Goffman distributes part of the book's royalties to the people she wrote about?

This is absolutely not standard practice in the discipline, per se, but ethnographers do often keep in touch with people they've studied, and it's not inherently unethical to help those people when the ethnographer can; I know one ethnographic scholar, for example, who intervened to try to help someone he wrote about navigate the legal system and hopefully avoid an excessive sentence for a negligible drug-related crime (which he was probably facing, in large part, because of his ethnicity and class background). That was totally above-board and I admired him for working so hard to help.

So while helping one's former research subjects or participants, in general, is not necessarily problematic, giving them cash does admittedly feel a little off. Then again, it's pretty obvious that for better or worse, Alice Goffman absolutely doesn't give a fuck what anyone thinks.
posted by clockzero at 1:07 PM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


I had read the Goffman book. had a few reservations on some things. Was nonetheless impressed. Then I began to read the critical articles. Many seemed decent but struck me as often a way to discount the Goffman book mostly out of its success. If you discount any number of things in Goffman but pay attention to the issues she raises, you come to understand what the Baltimore writer, author of the book Homicide: A year on the Killing Streets (in Baltimore), and writer of The Wire called "ghetto pathology."
posted by Postroad at 1:14 PM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


If you discount any number of things in Goffman but pay attention to the issues she raises

Also known as "never letting the facts get in the way of a good story."
posted by tonycpsu at 1:33 PM on January 13, 2016


From the previous thread: I Fact-checked Alice Goffman With Her Subjects.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 1:34 PM on January 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


tonycpsu

good but no brass ring. What facts are missing or ignored? What I meant was that she has reported from being embedded what life is like living in an inner city...the police, drugs, schools, gangs, fatherless homes, etc etc...those are the things I take away from her work. There are some instances where critics suggest she may have either fudged a bit or been overly involved (called going native) when she should have been objective. But the facts, overall? If you have read the book, can you tell us what facts are really untrue?
posted by Postroad at 5:11 PM on January 13, 2016


Outsider ethnography is really important, because it's from the outside. Insiders have one view, and a very important one, but outsiders may see things that aren't visible from the inside (just as insiders see things outsiders don't).

When I've done history research, I've always had an outside perspective - and it's one of the reasons that I love studying history. I want to learn about people and places that are different from what I know.
posted by jb at 6:45 PM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Also, any thoughts on the fact that Goffman distributes part of the book's royalties to the people she wrote about

She might not have any; academic publishers give notoriously bad royalties and sometimes none. I don't know how it happened, but I knew a senior professor who had written a history book for a series, but didn't get any of the American royalties. It was assigned in classes and sold thousand of copies a year, but he said all he got was £9 from its British sales.

seriously: don't ask me how. I have no idea. But I also know I haven't see a single penny from the chapter I published in a book that sells for just about $100. It just wasn't part of the deal - I got a publication, and Ashgate made money (well, until they were bought out ... )
posted by jb at 6:50 PM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Don't underestimate the seething resentment of ageing tenured sociologists with zero profile outside of the academy being suddenly outshone on the public stage by a young woman with her very first book.

I'm an academic - sheer pettiness is everywhere in the profession.
posted by modernnomad at 7:00 PM on January 13, 2016 [9 favorites]


Don't underestimate the seething resentment of ageing tenured sociologists with zero profile outside of the academy being suddenly outshone on the public stage by a young woman with her very first book.

Couple that with the pretty strong evidence that she made a bunch of shit up in her research!
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:57 PM on January 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


For the record, Goffman also has a trade publisher for On the Run.
posted by Dr. Send at 8:09 PM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


She might not have any; academic publishers give notoriously bad royalties and sometimes none

In the article, she distributes royalty checks with the journalist present:

Goffman had come down in part to catch up with the family and in part to distribute the royalty checks she shares evenly with the book’s central characters. (She did the math last year without setting aside money to cover taxes, so she had to pay them out of pocket.) ...

Alice fished in her wallet and handed him a check. ‘‘This for our book?’’ She nodded.

posted by Dip Flash at 8:20 PM on January 13, 2016


I am really glad no one cares this much about my scholarship.
posted by k8t at 10:17 PM on January 13, 2016 [8 favorites]


People don't like Goffman's affect, so therefore, her work is invalid. Nice.
posted by wuwei at 11:00 PM on January 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


Couple that with the pretty strong evidence that she made a bunch of shit up in her research!

Did you read the fact checking article? There isn't strong evidence that she made things up. The reporter spoke to some of her informants, who corroborated the big issues (like the 11-year old being arrested - couldn't remember his exact age, but that he was in elementary school. Does it matter if he was 10 or 12?)
posted by jb at 11:09 PM on January 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


I don't doubt the broad strokes of what actually happened are more or less accurate. But there are a vast number of inaccuracies, and many of these are in support of the conclusion of her research. There are a number of things that don't make any sense at all or are highly implausible. Taken on their own, they could be believable. But the list is pretty damning.

For example: The speech by Taylor who mentions the new era of Obama, yet Taylor died before Obama close to being the candidate for the Democrats.

How she meets Chuck in prison in the fall of 2007, months after his death.

Her description of undercover police officers is laughable--to the point that if it were true that would mean that the Philadelphia SWAT team conducts interrogations with guns.

The even more absurd claim that--contrary to HIPAA--that cops in Philadelphia can check patient logs for outstanding warrants. This is a huge howler and so clearly bullshit. (From the fact-checking article: "But Goffman’s claims about hospital arrests are stronger than this, and so far they aren’t quite holding up.")

The data in the American Sociological Review article is clearly suspect and poorly done. This is her fault but also the fault of the reviewers. She hasn't released her data and said that she destroyed all her notes. No one should believe her results.

As a memoir or storytelling, all of this is fine and I wouldn't have a problem with it. But this is research from top institutions in top journals where the reward is a top job. She clearly made some shit up and embellished other things.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:57 AM on January 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


Also, she sounds like an asshole. This is her description of when she visited Princeton:

"More than discomfort and awkwardness, I feared the hordes of white people. They crowded around me and moved in groups. I skipped the graduate college’s orientation to avoid what I expected would be large numbers of white people gathered together in a small space. In cafeterias and libraries and bus and train stations, I’d search for the few Black people present and sit near them, feeling my heart slow down and my shoulders relax after I did."

When Goffman was growing up she was one of the most priviledged people in the city of Philadelphia. Kindergarten at the Baldwin school costs over 20k a year.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:29 AM on January 14, 2016


The even more absurd claim that--contrary to HIPAA--that cops in Philadelphia can check patient logs for outstanding warrants. This is a huge howler and so clearly bullshit. (From the fact-checking article: "But Goffman’s claims about hospital arrests are stronger than this, and so far they aren’t quite holding up.")

But it was what her informants believed, which is itself significant.
posted by jb at 5:53 AM on January 14, 2016


Don't underestimate the seething resentment of ageing tenured sociologists with zero profile outside of the academy being suddenly outshone on the public stage by a young woman with her very first book.

Given her family connections, it's very, um, tactful to regard her as a scrappy underdog here.
posted by thetortoise at 5:53 AM on January 14, 2016 [7 favorites]


But it was what her informants believed, which is itself significant.

Its also not true. Also she didn't present it as, "hey, this is what my informants believed". She said this happened. But the chance of that happening is extraordinarily unlikely. She also hasn't been able to produce any evidence that it actually did happen.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:56 AM on January 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


For example: The speech by Taylor who mentions the new era of Obama, yet Taylor died before Obama close to being the candidate for the Democrats.

I have not read the book nor any of the articles criticizing it. I have only read the article in the FPP. However, this seems pretty easy to explain. It's standard practice in writing up ethnography to change identifying details of participants. A date of death is pretty damn identifying. She may have moved the death date a year and not realized how this created an inconsistency.

I am not saying she did not make things up and I'm not saying she did. I actually don't know what to think, but this particular point seems so easily accounted for by good practice that I don't think it's a thing. Oh, and perhaps this is the kind of thing the other guy was referring to when he said that it's hard to maintain confidentiality without introducing inaccuracies.

Finally, I wonder if the document explaining the inconsistencies by necessity contains information that would break confidentiality (like explaining that the date of death was actually XYZ) and that's why she's not releasing it. Again, I'm not saying that's why and though I imagine this could be read as a defense of her, it really isn't. I have no idea if she made things up or even if I think she made things up.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 6:16 AM on January 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


I have not read this book. I have only read a few reviews and a few articles casting suspicion and doubt on its author. The fact that she seems to be flighty, insanely privileged, and comes off as sanctimonious does not surprise me -- surely the superstars of academia are populated by a lot of the same, and I bet journalists and colleagues are often (but not always) willing to not see and not record the male genius's behavior and background in such an unflattering light. But it's interesting to me that the attention given this book has become about the author and researching the veracity of facts that may or may not relate to the thesis or findings of the book. Where are we talking about the systematic oppression that the book points out? Why is all this energy going toward the author? Are we finding any way we can not to confront the continuing gross inequality and racism in our country? Are we trying to poke holes and create outrage to get out of that conversation? I don't know. It kind of reminds me of Melissa Click, and of the woman who wrote an essay on being poor that people jumped on as being completely fabricated. We don't want to deal with the larger issues being pointed out (racism and poverty) and instead become outraged by smaller details.
posted by theefixedstars at 6:44 AM on January 14, 2016 [3 favorites]


But it was what her informants believed, which is itself significant.

As far I read the relevant excerpts, she said she herself talked to the cops after the arrest and they said they do the patient-checking routinely and they had done it in this case. It wasn't presented as a sort of oral history.
posted by mark k at 6:58 AM on January 14, 2016


But it's interesting to me that the attention given this book has become about the author and researching the veracity of facts that may or may not relate to the thesis or findings of the book. Where are we talking about the systematic oppression that the book points out?

It's precisely the people in the communities that Goffman was embedded with who have the most to lose when someone plays fast and loose with the facts of their situation to make for a more compelling read. Whether she did it out of carelessness, a desire to make these important issues more compelling to readers, or any other reason doesn't really matter -- the damage done is the same.

This notion that peer review and journalistic fact-checking of her work amounts to an attack on her personally goes against the whole idea of academic debate. On the Run was not a peer-reviewed study, but it purported to be a work of non-fiction within Goffman's field of study, so it's entirely appropriate for observers to expect her to adhere to the facts, and, when questioned, come up with better explanations than she's been able to provide.

There are very real questions one can ask about whether these same kinds of criticisms would be levied against someone else studying the same issues and whether some of the vitriol directed toward her personally is over the top, but the blame for the debate being obscured by the questions of her scholarship belongs with Goffman for not being more careful when researching the book and not being more forthcoming when defending her claims. Facing an inordinate level of criticism does not absolve a scholar of the responsibility to stand behind their claims and provide evidence when questioned.
posted by tonycpsu at 7:33 AM on January 14, 2016 [5 favorites]



It's precisely the people in the communities that Goffman was embedded with who have the most to lose when someone plays fast and loose with the facts of their situation to make for a more compelling read. Whether she did it out of carelessness, a desire to make these important issues more compelling to readers, or any other reason doesn't really matter -- the damage done is the same.


Honest, non-rhetorical question: What, exactly, is the damage?

Also: I know nothing about the ethics and best practices of sociological research. But how big or small does a 'fact' have to be for it to be problematic if it gets "altered"?

(I'd also like to point out that you and I are still doing the thing I talked about: scrutinizing details of the story and ignoring the larger issue).
posted by theefixedstars at 9:36 AM on January 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


I don't understand why talking about racism and talking about how a sociology dissertation turned into a massively popular book and then it turned out that the author made up a bunch of stuff in the book are mutually exclusive.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 9:49 AM on January 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


Don't underestimate the seething resentment of ageing tenured sociologists with zero profile outside of the academy being suddenly outshone on the public stage by a young woman with her very first book.

Given her family connections, it's very, um, tactful to regard her as a scrappy underdog here.
She can't simultaneously be wealthy and privileged and also subject to sexism and pettiness? Her work can't be flawed and at the same time be criticized unfairly?

This entire discussion deals with so many difficult and complicated issues -- race and class in urban America, sociological/ethnographic methodology and ethics, gender and seniority in academia -- I don't really see how anyone can actually think it's as pat as "she's clearly a charlatan" or "she's being crucified by the establishment."
posted by DLWM at 11:02 AM on January 14, 2016


Honest, non-rhetorical question: What, exactly, is the damage?

There are several levels of damage.

The most direct is the harm that the exaggerated parts (or, at the very least, the "implausible and in contradiction to much more plausible accounts from others parts") do to the rest of the book, which would otherwise be very compelling. Remember the ClimateGate email controversy? The allegations were bullshit, but the reason they were so harmful was because people saw what they thought was evidence of some data being fudged, and the natural inclination is to wonder what else was fudged. Eight committees found the allegations to be without merit, but nonetheless, climate researchers were asked to be more open with their methods, respond more quickly to inquiries, etc. so as to avoid the appearance of impropriety, as they say.

Then there is the effect on the larger struggle for economic and racial justice, which is indirectly but still significantly harmed in the same way that the struggle for sexual assault victim rights was harmed by the now-discredited Rolling Stone UVA story. It's sort of like he Twain cliche "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes", except this is a second-order effect where a false story being discredited can erase the progress gained from the telling of many true stories that just never got as much coverage as the false one, because they weren't sensational enough, or because of the media's bias toward controversy over substance, or whatever other reasons might be behind that.

Also: I know nothing about the ethics and best practices of sociological research. But how big or small does a 'fact' have to be for it to be problematic if it gets "altered"?

In a work of non-fiction, my tolerance for embellishment is "zero."

David Simon was mentioned up-thread, and of course we know The Wire and the Homicide TV series were fictionalized, but we believe The Corner and the Homicide book to be works of non-fiction. Were someone to find details in those books that were embellished or fabricated, I would expect Simon to have a good answer. I don't see why we shouldn't expect the same of Goffman.

(I'd also like to point out that you and I are still doing the thing I talked about: scrutinizing details of the story and ignoring the larger issue).

My gut response was to say we can walk and chew gum at the same time, but of course walking and chewing gum don't have much to do with each other, while the issue of Goffman's credibility is central to the issues she wrote about. So I guess it's more like we can walk and pay attention to the direction we're walking at the same time. I talk about these issues all the time, here and elsewhere, and I care about them deeply, which is why I find Goffman's alleged misconduct so offensive, and feel she owes a better explanation than she's given.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:11 AM on January 14, 2016 [4 favorites]


Given her family connections, it's very, um, tactful to regard her as a scrappy underdog here.

She can't simultaneously be wealthy and privileged and also subject to sexism and pettiness? Her work can't be flawed and at the same time be criticized unfairly?

The family connections in question aren't her general wealth and privilige, but the fact that she is daughter of sociological royalty. This is not an exaggeration.

In a work of non-fiction, my tolerance for embellishment is "zero."

If you consider changing facts to be embellishment, then you shouldn't be reading any qualitative research because it is standard practice to change facts in order to preserve confidentiality: Occupations, ages, number of kids, all sorts of things need to be changed. Oh, and also don't read anything based on the census, because they do the same also to preserve privacy.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 4:15 PM on January 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


What a silly thing to do, to interpret my use of the word "embellishment" to include things like anonymization, protecting privacy of individuals, etc. Of course I don't mean to include those things in the list of things I would consider to be academic or journalistic malpractice, and if that's what Goffman were accused of doing, there would be no issues whatsoever.
posted by tonycpsu at 4:21 PM on January 14, 2016


Maintaining confidentiality (not anonymity -- there's no anonymity here) requires that the author take a true thing and replace with a fabricated false thing. So yeah, even in non-fiction works like The Corner, there may be some fabrication (my understanind is that the Corner was written by journalists, not researchers, so I don't know what their standard practices are. Maybe they did just publish all the identifying info, I don't know). But if they attempted to maintain confidentiality, then there are surely fabrications.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:13 PM on January 14, 2016


But if they attempted to maintain confidentiality, then there are surely fabrications.

I see you're committed to this gotcha attempt, so I'm just going to reiterate that I wasn't talking about the kinds of changes that are necessary to protect sources, and neither are the critics who have been questioning Goffman's many apparent fabrications. Again, if that's what had happened here there would be no issue, but it's not, and those are not the kind of changes I would term "embellishment."
posted by tonycpsu at 5:19 PM on January 14, 2016


Calling routine practices like changing the names of those involved "fabrications" is either disegenuous or just plain stupid.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:31 PM on January 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


My point wasn't that you are calling things like changing names embellishments nor that everything she's accused of can be explained by the need to maintain confidentiality. But "embellishment" isn't a black-and-white thing. It's not obvious where the line is. So everyone can agree that changing names is fine and say, saying that you were at a party where everyone was poisoned and died (when there was no party, no poison, no deaths) is not. But there are a lot of changes that need to be made that are in a gray area. Changing occupations is one example that I think falls on the OK side of the gray area, what about saying someone was raising their 4 grandchildren, when actually it was their 3 great-grandchildren or 4 nieces and nephews? If someone is a cocaine addict and you say they're a heroine addict, is that ok? If they've been clean 7 years but you say it was 11? What if the hospital thing was actually about kindergarten registrations rather than births? (that last example I would call poor scholarship for sure, but dishonesty seems a little iffier)?

The second point I was making is that it's difficult to guess/predict which of the issues could be explained by the need to maintain confidentiality. There's a lot more to maintaining confidentiality than hiding people's names, addresses and birth dates. Now she hasn't actually SAID this is the issue, so maybe I'm being to generous in thinking it might be, since she could say "these are changes made for confidentiality reasons" without releasing a detailed explanation of each thing.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:51 PM on January 14, 2016


So yeah, I wasn't talking about changing names, I was talking about the many many details that are changed in ethnographies in order to maintain confidentiality.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:56 PM on January 14, 2016


I have not read the book nor any of the articles criticizing it.

[…]

It's not obvious where the line is.



posted by RogerB at 6:11 PM on January 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


And we are not talking about changing small details. Goffman made up some shit. Who is protected by fabricating a story about how cops check the names of hospital visitors and then arrest them? If that's not a gross falsehood because of maintaining anonymity in an ethnography then ethnographies are not reliable forms of research.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 6:14 PM on January 14, 2016


As RogerB points out, I'm not in any position to address the specific accusations against her. The points I made were that A) One of those accusations could be explained by maintining confidentiality. B) All ethnographers make changes and all those changes are fabrications in order to maintain confidentiality. C) There exists gray area in what changes are ok (in ethnographies in general, not necessarily in the specific accusations made against Goffman).

so I wasn't suggesting that every example could be explained by this (I don't even know what every example is). Who would be protected by taking a story about being arrested at a kindergarten registration and changing it to at a hospital post-birth would be the arrested person (and their partner? other family members?). Assuming it was a story about a specific thing happening to a specific person. If it was just "Here is a thing that happens." then I can't think of anyone being protected.

I have no reason to believe that's what happened wrt to the hospital arrest thing. My point wasn't "here's what I think happened" but "things that are not true in the details may be not true in the details because they were based on events that were different in key details and altered for ethics reasons." Whether that is the case for any of the issues at play here, I have no way of knowing and I'm not claiming it is. In fact, I don't even think it's likely to be the case for the hospital thing. So again, my argument is not "Here's the explanation" but rather "This explanation could account for more than is obvious at first thought."

But then as I said, if that were the explanation, why wouldn't she just say that? There's no reason she couldn't.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 6:24 PM on January 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


Who is protected by fabricating a story about how cops check the names of hospital visitors and then arrest them?

I'm not in the field nor do I have any stake in the argument, but for what it is worth this is addressed directly in the article:
When it comes to Goffman’s assertion that officers run IDs in maternity wards to arrest wanted fathers, another short Internet search produces corroborating examples in Dallas, New Orleans and Brockton, Mass., and a Philadelphia public defender and a deputy mayor told me that the practice does not at all seem beyond plausibility.
That the practice happened elsewhere and some people locally consider it plausible does not mean that she is telling the truth, of course, nor does it answer the question of what has been changed for reasons of confidentiality and what is an actual error or exaggeration.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:27 PM on January 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


I also noticed in one of the articles about this that she credited interviews with police officers, as well as her (first hand, maybe juxtaposed from another location?) account of the arrest, for the details of the practice. It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to see how stories of arresting young men in the maternity ward would loom large for both the young men and the police, even if it only happened very rarely. It plays into such stereotypical tropes on both sides and is the kind of thing that can contain truths whether or not it actually happens.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:22 PM on January 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


the kind of thing that can contain truths whether or not it actually happens.

This, by the way, is the opposite of scholarship.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:39 AM on January 15, 2016


Mod note: I guess I don't really understand why the idea of arresting someone who has a warrant against them in a hospital maternity setting would be so unbelievable?

Here's a story about a man arrested when he returned for his mother's funeral, and he was just wanted for not showing up in court for charges of driving on a suspended license.

So, depending on how much time, cause, and incentive LE has for expending effort on any particular individual wanted on a warrant, they may look at related life events that might draw that person out.

The situation may not be that police regularly trawl visitor logs (if they are able to do so, which may be variable depending on hospital practices and applicable laws) but they want a particular person (or people) who they believe may show up for an event such as a funeral, birth, or wedding, so they are on the lookout.

Or maybe some precincts do randomly check logs if they can, and others don't or can't. (It seems to me like a lot of effort as a random thing.)

The questions that occur to me are:

What if a policeman did tell Goffman that they looked at visitor logs? This could be either true or untrue. It's not like a court of law where they are required to tell the truth. The officer could have a) been lying because they didn't want to reveal their actual strategy*, b) telling the truth, but (maybe carelessly) revealing information that they might deny later.

* Say they wanted to question someone in relation to a homicide because they think the person might have particular knowledge, but don't want to tip off the target that their good friend was picked up perhaps specifically related to that crime. Might they say something like, "eh, we were here anyway, so just decided to check the visitor list"?

Does HIPAA protect visitor logs? This seems unclear, and to me, at least, seems more likely to fall to hospital policy, but let's say that either by law or policy, visitor logs in a given hospital are not open to casual LE perusal. Does that mean that they are also sealed against specific requests? For example, for patients themselves, "The HIPAA rules provide a wide variety of circumstances under which medical information can be disclosed for law enforcement-related purposes without explicitly requiring a warrant.[iii] These circumstances include (1) law enforcement requests for information to identify or locate a suspect, fugitive, witness, or missing person." ACLU site

So if police say they are looking for suspect(s) or witness(es) they believe might be visiting, it seems unlikely to me that this would that be more protected than actual patient info, unless the hospital's own policy is more strict.

I really don't know, and no strong feelings either way or any particular belief about whether Goffman was completely accurate, or accurate as far as she could determine, or outright lied, or exaggerated or embellished – I'm just honestly confused why the maternity related arrest seems to be such a big smoking gun to so many.
posted by taz (staff) at 5:28 AM on January 15, 2016 [3 favorites]


I guess I don't really understand why the idea of arresting someone who has a warrant against them in a hospital maternity setting would be so unbelievable?

But that's not an accurate characterization of what Goffman reported. She said that it is a common police practice for cops in Philadelphia to get names off of hospital visitor lists and run them for outstanding warrants. This is unheard of in Philadelphia hospitals.

From New York Magazine:

As part of her defense against Lubet’s accusations, for example, Goffman wrote that Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia “selectively run[s] the names of ... visitors in criminal databases.” CHOP responded to Science of Us that visitors’ names are indeed checked against a Megan’s Law database of sex offenders, and these individuals aren’t allowed in, but that CHOP doesn’t share these names with law enforcement. When asked about the existence of a broader policy, perhaps unofficial, of sharing visitors’ names with the police, half a dozen people who work on CHOP’s front lines — nurses, ER intake workers, and doctors — all told Science of Us the same thing: It doesn’t happen, and rumors about it weren’t even on these employees’ radars.

posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:47 AM on January 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


Okay, so CHOP does "selectively" run names through criminal databases, but only for sex offenders, so Goffman not specifying what "selectively" means when specifically including them as an example of "some" hospitals that do this is not untrue but is misleading. Also, employees of CHOP say they don't share visitors’ names with the police. Whether they respond to specific police requests similar to HIPAA laws regarding actual patients isn't known.

Goffman says:
Professor Lubet also takes issue with my account of Alex being arrested at a hospital where he was attending the birth of his child. He argues that Alex could not have been arrested at the hospital on a warrant, because a “police spokesperson” claims that the police are not allowed to examine visitor’s logs or run the names for warrants. Furthermore, Professor Lubet asserts that HIPAA guidelines would prevent this type of surveillance.

Once again, Professor Lubet has it wrong. Many hospitals in Philadelphia require visitors to show ID at the registration desk and register as a visitor; some, like the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania, selectively run the names of these visitors in criminal databases. Maternity wards often have tighter security than hospitals as a whole and involve additional ID checks and visitor registration. HIPAA protects patients, not visitors, and so does not prohibit the police from reading and running visitors’ names for warrants.
If Alex was arrested at CHOP (which we don't know), according to CHOP employees, it wouldn't have been as a result of the hospital itself checking his name and then notifying police, and it wouldn't have been the result of police just being like, "yo, let me take a gander at the visitor list." We don't know their specific policy if police say "we are looking for Alex Doe related to an outstanding warrant and think he may be a visitor here, can you verify?" though it may be that they do not share that information, period, and don't have to because visitor lists aren't covered by HIPAA which would require them to share that sort of info about a patient, and we don't know if police were just waiting for Alex to show up because he was particularly on their radar, and this was actually independent of any visitor list.

We don't know if police meant checking against the visitor list in her quote from the book ("According to officers I interviewed, it is standard practice in the hospitals serving the Black community for police to run the names of visitors or patients while they are waiting around..."), or if they maybe run info from license plates, for example. We don't know if Goffman asked police about this in relation to Alex, or just generally, and we don't know if they lied about looking at visitor lists, or they didn't specify that they looked at visitor lists when running names, or didn't lie about looking at visitor lists at some hospitals other than CHOP, or if Goffman lied when she said they said they run visitor and patient names.

You can see the section of the book where she talks about this (page 34) here. Again, I'm not here to say that all she said was true. I don't know, and don't really want to spend more time (semi)arguing her position, but this still does not seem like a huge AHA! SHE'S MAKING IT ALL UP instance to me.
posted by taz at 7:35 AM on January 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


If Alex was arrested at CHOP (which we don't know)

We have a pretty good idea that he wasn't. Goffman also mentioned that the mother was laboring in the hosptal for 14 hours--if she was at CHOP that means that it was most likely a high-risk birth, and CHOP would be very reluctanct to have a mother with a high-risk birth labor in the hospital for 14 hours. (A poor black women laboring for 14 hours in a Philadelphia hospital without being induced or cut is a rarity to begin with.) You also have to pass by a half a dozen hospitals from North Philly to get to CHOP. But all of that is beside the point.

but this still does not seem like a huge AHA! SHE'S MAKING IT ALL UP instance to me.

Its not. But when you have a bunch of these, its a pretty clear mark of bad scholarship.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 7:42 AM on January 15, 2016


So a little off topic, but what exactly are visitor logs?

I've been in the hospital many times and visited many people in hospitals and visitors always just come and go. They don't have to check in with anyone or leave names or anything. Is this a maternity-ward specific thing due to all the security? I confess I haven't visited a maternity ward since they started going security nuts.

I'm picturing some kind of sign-in sheet? If it is, A) Why couldn't anyone just sign in with a fake name and B) Couldn't anyone coming "to visit" next see names already on the sign in sheet?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:57 AM on January 15, 2016


Her description of undercover police officers is laughable--to the point that if it were true that would mean that the Philadelphia SWAT team conducts interrogations with guns.

I'm a criminal defense attorney. I'm a repeat player in the justice system, and I'm broadly familiar with how police do their work, as well as how they portray their work in official documents. If someone told me this story, about being interrogated by SWAT with a gun pointed at them, in my jurisdiction, I would find it not just plausible, but in fact utterly unremarkable. I've heard similar descriptions of events from disinterested eyewitnesses in my jurisdiction. I've seen videotapes of events that I would put in the same category as this, where officers indirectly threaten witnesses or suspects they're interrogating by referring, either physically or verbally, to the fact that they are armed. If you think this description of undercover police officers is laughable, I'd like to know what your experience of undercover police officers is, because it's very different from mine.

(This is not to say that there aren't problems with the book, or that it's impossible that this incident could be exaggerated or even fabricated. It's just to say that, based on my fairly extensive personal knowledge, I found this claim to be completely reasonable, and it didn't raise any red flags for me.)
posted by decathecting at 11:01 AM on January 15, 2016 [8 favorites]


If someone told me this story, about being interrogated by SWAT with a gun pointed at them, in my jurisdiction, I would find it not just plausible, but in fact utterly unremarkable. . . If you think this description of undercover police officers is laughable, I'd like to know what your experience of undercover police officers is, because it's very different from mine.

Are you saying that in the jurisdiction where you practice it's common for SWAT teams to function as undercover officers? And for SWAT teams to conduct interrogations?
posted by layceepee at 5:20 AM on January 16, 2016


layceepee, the article, as I read it, appeared to refer to two incidents: one where SWAT broke into the house and pointed guns at her and started asking questions, and another where she was interrogated with a gun on the table. It's not clear to me whether those are meant to be the same officers, or the same incident. But you're absolutely right, the word undercover doesn't appear in the article. And you're right, I should have used the terms used in the article, rather than the term used in the comment I was responding to. I should have made clear in my comment that I was referring to two different things: the behavior of SWAT teams, and the behavior of UCs. A SWAT team, when working as SWAT, is normally not undercover, you're right. And there's nothing in the article that suggests that the SWAT team referred to by Dr. Goffman was undercover, or that the officer she says questioned her with a gun on the table was undercover.

Where I live, the same police division that provides our SWAT teams also performs a number of different functions, including large-scale crowd control, hostage negotiation, responding to bomb threats, high-risk raids, anti-terrorism, specialized weapons training within the department, and liason to other branches of law enforcement or other jurisdictions. I know that different agencies are organized in different ways, so it wouldn't shock me if there were a department where UC and SWAT were part of the same unit. But I think that's probably beside the point, because you're right, there's no indication in the article that anyone was undercover. I took the word from the comment I was responding to, and it doesn't appear in the article.

But even if somewhere in the book (which I haven't read yet, but plan to), Dr. Goffman refers to SWAT and UC interchangeably, that doesn't really raise a red flag for me. Civilians (including me) don't always know what to call certain kinds of cops. The division of our police department that houses vice and is responsible for street recovery of guns and drugs (e.g., stop-and-frisk, buy/bust) is an undercover unit in that they drive unmarked cars, wear plainclothes or other clothing that is not the traditional police uniform, and generally try not to be seen until they're ready to stop someone or enter a building. But they can also seem kind of SWAT-like in that when they do jump out on someone or bust down a door, they often wear paramilitary equipment and carry really big guns. And they do sometimes raid houses and perform other functions that seem (at least to me) to be SWAT-like in nature. And there have been lots of cases documented in the media in lots of jurisdiction where SWAT-like teams broke down people's doors and raided houses not in uniform, such that the occupants of the house weren't sure whether they were being raided or robbed, so I don't think it would be outlandish for a person who had been a victim of such a raid to refer to the people who broke down the door as undercover. So the idea that someone would make the same mistake I did and elide the difference between different kinds of specialized units doesn't surprise me.

And yes, I know of cases of SWAT doing interrogations, especially if you count as interrogation (and both I and the Supreme Court do) questioning that takes place in the field with in-custody suspects. It's not the preferred, by-the-book method, but it definitely happens. But again, it's not clear to me from the article whether the interrogation she's referring to is the same incident where SWAT broke into the house. Nor is it clear to me whether the table she refers to is a table in a formal police interrogation room, or, say, her kitchen table where the officers made themselves at home and started demanding answers to their questions.

All this is to say that while the telling of the story may be sloppy (and that may be Dr. Goffman being sloppy, the Times being sloppy, or both), it doesn't set off alarm bells for me, and there are a number of different readings of the stories related that strike me as plausible. But yeah, brain blip in referring to SWAT and undercover interchangeably when, at least as described in the Times article, no one was undercover. Sorry about that.
posted by decathecting at 9:26 AM on January 16, 2016 [3 favorites]


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