Death (Of A Career), On-Air
May 24, 2019 1:11 PM Subscribe
Author (and conspiracy theorist) Naomi Wolf went on an interview with BBC Radio as part of promotion of her upcoming book, Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love. She was expecting to have a chance to talk about the thesis of her book, the way sexual expression has been criminalized.
What she was not planning for, however, was for interviewer Matthew Sweet to show, with evidence, that her book was built on Wolf's misunderstanding of the archaic legal term "death recorded".
In short, Sweet showed that, unlike Wolf's interpretation of the term as denoting an execution, it actually meant a deferral of a capital sentence, and had the release papers of one of her examples of an "executed" prisoner.
Naomi Wolf previously.
What she was not planning for, however, was for interviewer Matthew Sweet to show, with evidence, that her book was built on Wolf's misunderstanding of the archaic legal term "death recorded".
In short, Sweet showed that, unlike Wolf's interpretation of the term as denoting an execution, it actually meant a deferral of a capital sentence, and had the release papers of one of her examples of an "executed" prisoner.
Naomi Wolf previously.
Beyond this, Wolf seems to have interpreted any prosecution for "sodomy" as a prosecution of a consensual sex act; at least one example from her book, as Sweet clarifies, is someone prosecuted for sexually assaulting a six-year-old.
This is really poor work on her part, and does a real disservice to others who have done the real work and explored the very real criminalization and marginalization of homosexuality in the period.
posted by kewb at 1:25 PM on May 24, 2019 [39 favorites]
This is really poor work on her part, and does a real disservice to others who have done the real work and explored the very real criminalization and marginalization of homosexuality in the period.
posted by kewb at 1:25 PM on May 24, 2019 [39 favorites]
This article from The Guardian follows up with an academic historian.
posted by kewb at 1:27 PM on May 24, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by kewb at 1:27 PM on May 24, 2019 [8 favorites]
Fascinating.
I'm poking around search results for the term "death recorded", as one does, and liking a genealogy forum thread 'DeathR' can anyone explain from 2012.
posted by readinghippo at 1:28 PM on May 24, 2019 [4 favorites]
I'm poking around search results for the term "death recorded", as one does, and liking a genealogy forum thread 'DeathR' can anyone explain from 2012.
posted by readinghippo at 1:28 PM on May 24, 2019 [4 favorites]
So Wolf's book is crap; anyone want to recommend a better text on the same subject?
I think the subject matter is interesting, and certainly deserving of a better treatment than she apparently gave it. I assume there have to be much better books out there.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:29 PM on May 24, 2019 [2 favorites]
I think the subject matter is interesting, and certainly deserving of a better treatment than she apparently gave it. I assume there have to be much better books out there.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:29 PM on May 24, 2019 [2 favorites]
My understanding, which may be out of date, is that nonfiction books are fact-checked surprisingly infrequently.
posted by salt grass at 1:29 PM on May 24, 2019 [13 favorites]
posted by salt grass at 1:29 PM on May 24, 2019 [13 favorites]
I agree with Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottam’s tweet:
posted by sallybrown at 1:29 PM on May 24, 2019 [47 favorites]
This man's accent helped so much because he sounded like Mr. Bean just trying to get to the bottom of a round pocket square when, in fact, he was destroying her soul.YIKES
posted by sallybrown at 1:29 PM on May 24, 2019 [47 favorites]
What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall when (a) Sweet realized Klein's error (b) he decided to sit on it until the interview.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:32 PM on May 24, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:32 PM on May 24, 2019 [7 favorites]
I love the smugness in "correcting a misapprehension"
posted by PMdixon at 1:34 PM on May 24, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by PMdixon at 1:34 PM on May 24, 2019 [2 favorites]
What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall when (a) Sweet realized Klein's Wolf's error (b) he decided to sit on it until the interview.
ftfy
posted by Saxon Kane at 1:35 PM on May 24, 2019 [26 favorites]
ftfy
posted by Saxon Kane at 1:35 PM on May 24, 2019 [26 favorites]
However ... you've got to admire Wolf's gracious response to the discovery. She quickly admitted that she'd made a mistake, and plans to make corrections. Good for her!
P.S. Foci For Analysis, I think you're confusing your Naomis. We're talking about Naomi Wolf, not Naomi Klein.
posted by HoraceH at 1:35 PM on May 24, 2019 [17 favorites]
P.S. Foci For Analysis, I think you're confusing your Naomis. We're talking about Naomi Wolf, not Naomi Klein.
posted by HoraceH at 1:35 PM on May 24, 2019 [17 favorites]
She quickly admitted that she'd made a mistake, and plans to make corrections. Good for her!
From The Guardian article linked above:
Wolf is a good example of someone who has the right kinds of enemies, but who makes the kinds of sloppy mistakes that discredit the good ideas she promotes. Her first big book, The Beauty Myth, had some data problems as well.
Wolf is someone with an impressive career as a political consultant and an activist, but there are people with much better methodological training making most of the same points on a much more solid foundation.
posted by kewb at 1:52 PM on May 24, 2019 [12 favorites]
From The Guardian article linked above:
While Wolf only quotes the “death recorded” verdict in Silver’s case, Sweet challenges the wider argument put forward in Outrages.But as Sweet shows, even the news reports would have stated that the sentences were commuted...every time out.
“I think her assumptions about ‘death recorded’ have led her to the view … that ‘dozens and dozens’ of Victorian men were executed, and that one of the main subjects of her book, the poet John Addington Symonds, grew up with the fear of execution hanging over his head. I have yet to see evidence that one man in Victorian Britain was executed for sodomy.”
[....]
Wolf said she appreciated Sweet’s “important correction”, but rejected the idea that it challenged the main thrust of her book. “Outrages doesn’t purport to be a comprehensive database of eventual sentences served for sodomy,” she explained. “Its focus is on the reception of news about laws and sentences by a group of friends, as well as eventual arrests of friends of Symonds.”
The book tells the story of how Symonds absorbed information about increasingly long sentences of hard labour and reports of death sentences in the national media, Wolf said. “I don’t think it takes many reports of a death sentence for a 14-year-old for sodomy, though later commuted, to really scare a 19-year-old gay man. This fear is the focus of my book.”
Wolf is a good example of someone who has the right kinds of enemies, but who makes the kinds of sloppy mistakes that discredit the good ideas she promotes. Her first big book, The Beauty Myth, had some data problems as well.
Wolf is someone with an impressive career as a political consultant and an activist, but there are people with much better methodological training making most of the same points on a much more solid foundation.
posted by kewb at 1:52 PM on May 24, 2019 [12 favorites]
Does anyone know how integral this data is to her book/broader argument? Also no way she read through them all, more than likely an RA did. Which is fine.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 1:55 PM on May 24, 2019
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 1:55 PM on May 24, 2019
how this could have slipped not just past editors and fact checkers
I don't know about this book in particular but I can attest that for many nonfiction books, even (especially?) by academics and established authors, serious editing and fact checking are not actually supplied by the publisher.
(And I too just realized I've always conflated two different Naomis.)
posted by trig at 1:56 PM on May 24, 2019 [4 favorites]
I don't know about this book in particular but I can attest that for many nonfiction books, even (especially?) by academics and established authors, serious editing and fact checking are not actually supplied by the publisher.
(And I too just realized I've always conflated two different Naomis.)
posted by trig at 1:56 PM on May 24, 2019 [4 favorites]
I don't know how central these cases are to her main argument, but they seem remarkably easy to fact check. Here's Thomas Silver's case (mentioned in the clip) on the Old Bailey website. Clicking on his name brings you to this page, where it shows he was paroled ("granted prison license").
posted by theory at 2:01 PM on May 24, 2019
posted by theory at 2:01 PM on May 24, 2019
Naomi Klein is still Good, as far as I know.
(Wolf has been into some wacky stuff for a while, if I remember right, though this seems like a pure if very embarrassing failure of scholarship.)
posted by atoxyl at 2:05 PM on May 24, 2019 [4 favorites]
(Wolf has been into some wacky stuff for a while, if I remember right, though this seems like a pure if very embarrassing failure of scholarship.)
posted by atoxyl at 2:05 PM on May 24, 2019 [4 favorites]
I mean, that's a pretty significant oversight, but I do admire the grace with which she took the news. She appears to accept that she is likely wrong and thanks him for the information.
I think her, well... stupidity is greater than her grace, but a lot of people in her shoes would have denied the evidence with all their might rather than admit that they made a massive error.
posted by Phreesh at 2:14 PM on May 24, 2019 [11 favorites]
I think her, well... stupidity is greater than her grace, but a lot of people in her shoes would have denied the evidence with all their might rather than admit that they made a massive error.
posted by Phreesh at 2:14 PM on May 24, 2019 [11 favorites]
I have also mixed up the Naomis. Getting some good Google results for "naomi klein is not naomi wolf", though.
posted by clawsoon at 2:17 PM on May 24, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 2:17 PM on May 24, 2019 [5 favorites]
Two things: it is not surprising something like this got through with a trade book, which may well not be reviewed (especially given the fame of the author).
However it _is_ a serious issue if her supervisor, and the two academics who conducted her viva, let this pass in a DPhil examination. Unfortunately her thesis doesn't seem to be recorded in any of the usual depositories (Bodleian, etc) so it's kinda hard to know if it was the focus of the *thesis* as well as the book.
posted by AFII at 2:22 PM on May 24, 2019 [2 favorites]
However it _is_ a serious issue if her supervisor, and the two academics who conducted her viva, let this pass in a DPhil examination. Unfortunately her thesis doesn't seem to be recorded in any of the usual depositories (Bodleian, etc) so it's kinda hard to know if it was the focus of the *thesis* as well as the book.
posted by AFII at 2:22 PM on May 24, 2019 [2 favorites]
Although it's five years old, the additional conspiracy theorist link impacts my opinion of her far more than any evidence of bad scholarship.
posted by simra at 2:24 PM on May 24, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by simra at 2:24 PM on May 24, 2019 [8 favorites]
On the one hand, this is a really dumb error.
On the other hand, I don't know if it utterly destroys her argument. A deferred death sentence for sodomy still seems like a pretty extreme thing.
But then again, it doesn't sound like she looked at the details of the cases, either. Sweet pointed out at the end of the clip that the case in question (Thomas Silver) entailed the abuse of a much younger child.
Pretty embarrassing. She might have had an interesting point to make, but we'll never know.
posted by Edgewise at 2:26 PM on May 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
On the other hand, I don't know if it utterly destroys her argument. A deferred death sentence for sodomy still seems like a pretty extreme thing.
But then again, it doesn't sound like she looked at the details of the cases, either. Sweet pointed out at the end of the clip that the case in question (Thomas Silver) entailed the abuse of a much younger child.
Pretty embarrassing. She might have had an interesting point to make, but we'll never know.
posted by Edgewise at 2:26 PM on May 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
salt grass: My understanding, which may be out of date, is that nonfiction books are fact-checked surprisingly infrequently.
posted by clawsoon at 2:28 PM on May 24, 2019 [6 favorites]
As humans, we tend to be biased against our own work.Someone should've fact-checked that sentence.
posted by clawsoon at 2:28 PM on May 24, 2019 [6 favorites]
I will say it's very much worth reading Sweet's Twitter thread about this. Both parties seem gracious.
posted by ob at 2:36 PM on May 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by ob at 2:36 PM on May 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
Mod note: Several deleted. If you're not going to engage with the actual content, please also skip making declarations about it in the thread. Thanks.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 2:51 PM on May 24, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 2:51 PM on May 24, 2019 [4 favorites]
I read a lot of non-fiction and definitely have noticed a trend where an expert in one thing will have a few noted deficits. In the book Weeds for instance all the botanical scholarship was fine, but for one paragraph the author goes on a weird tangent on the history of Judaism (relating to a biblical plant I believe) that frankly betrayed that this upper-class English author probably was either lightly anti-Semitic or had never met a Jew in his life. It wasn't hateful as much as deeply incorrect. What Wolf has done- Completely cocked up her scholarship in both her first book and this one is rarer. It's interesting that she's also a conspiracy theorist. It betrays a lack of rigor in her intelligence. If she truly believes the harmful nonsense she spews about ISIS- It doesn't surprise me that she writes what she *believes* is true historically, not what actually occurred.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 2:57 PM on May 24, 2019 [17 favorites]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 2:57 PM on May 24, 2019 [17 favorites]
The Intelligencer links to the audio through this twitter link. That was the audio I listened to, and after Sweet says that Silver was accused of sodomy for an indecent act perpetrated on a minor, Wolf goes silent.
At first the silence was funny, then it dragged on and I started getting anxiety... 30 seconds in and she still hadn't responded.... Dead silence.... I started rocking back and forth, willing somebody to say something! The silence was excruciating!
Then I realized that the audio clip had stopped like 45 seconds ago and I hate the way twitter handles media sometimes.
posted by Telf at 3:00 PM on May 24, 2019 [64 favorites]
At first the silence was funny, then it dragged on and I started getting anxiety... 30 seconds in and she still hadn't responded.... Dead silence.... I started rocking back and forth, willing somebody to say something! The silence was excruciating!
Then I realized that the audio clip had stopped like 45 seconds ago and I hate the way twitter handles media sometimes.
posted by Telf at 3:00 PM on May 24, 2019 [64 favorites]
I'm referencing somebody's deleted comment here, but there should be no doubt that a big part of the public reaction to this will be to bash women and specifically women who are public intellectuals. I hope my previous comment doesn't read that way.
I interpreted Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom's tweet about this destroying Klein's soul as a 'There but for the grace of God go I' kind of reaction.
posted by theory at 3:02 PM on May 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
I interpreted Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom's tweet about this destroying Klein's soul as a 'There but for the grace of God go I' kind of reaction.
posted by theory at 3:02 PM on May 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
There but for the grace of God go I' kind of reaction.
Yes, to me this error is that Big Thing you wake up in a cold sweat worrying about, “did I make sure I double checked everything?” I doubt we’ll find out but I’m very curious how it came about. Given the connection to her academic work, it doesn’t seem like a research assistant’s oversight.
posted by sallybrown at 3:05 PM on May 24, 2019 [6 favorites]
Yes, to me this error is that Big Thing you wake up in a cold sweat worrying about, “did I make sure I double checked everything?” I doubt we’ll find out but I’m very curious how it came about. Given the connection to her academic work, it doesn’t seem like a research assistant’s oversight.
posted by sallybrown at 3:05 PM on May 24, 2019 [6 favorites]
I'm not going to take a side in the argument about whether she's being treated fairly here because, well, I don't know - I haven't read enough about the context. But I will say I think that the "soul was destroyed" line was meant with a degree of sympathy, from an academic who could imagine the horror of realizing such an error.
posted by atoxyl at 3:05 PM on May 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by atoxyl at 3:05 PM on May 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
Also, the best thing about living in the UK as an American is that people are constantly subtly insulting me and I have no I idea what's happening. So I just sort of plough through their jabs like an earnest rhino trying to make friends with a hedgehog by hugging it. My wife, who is British, spends most of our social interactions just covering her face, squirming with vicarious embarrassment as I bovinely stomp through British society.
posted by Telf at 3:06 PM on May 24, 2019 [114 favorites]
posted by Telf at 3:06 PM on May 24, 2019 [114 favorites]
This is fine, but I preferred Matthew Sweet's (SLYT) earlier work.
posted by SonInLawOfSam at 3:10 PM on May 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by SonInLawOfSam at 3:10 PM on May 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
I just finished Richard McKay's "Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic," which is (justifiably) critical of Randy Shilts' obsessive focus on Gaetan Dugas as "Patient Zero" in "And the Band Played On." (There's a whole lot wrong with identifying someone as a patient zero in any event ... the book's scope is far broader than Shilts' work.)
As I was reading McKay's account, I couldn't help but think: did Shilts have any readers who were saying "how do you know this? How can you justify this?"
Terribly mistaken books aren't the responsibility of just the author. Friends don't let friends publish horrendously wrong books ... then again, one has to a) seek out and b) find the right friends, I guess.
Obviously, publishing houses aren't going to do the scholarly homework. In Shilts' case, apparently his publisher was more than eager to sell the Patient Zero concept, perhaps even more so than Shilts.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 3:24 PM on May 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
As I was reading McKay's account, I couldn't help but think: did Shilts have any readers who were saying "how do you know this? How can you justify this?"
Terribly mistaken books aren't the responsibility of just the author. Friends don't let friends publish horrendously wrong books ... then again, one has to a) seek out and b) find the right friends, I guess.
Obviously, publishing houses aren't going to do the scholarly homework. In Shilts' case, apparently his publisher was more than eager to sell the Patient Zero concept, perhaps even more so than Shilts.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 3:24 PM on May 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
Also, the best thing about living in the UK as an American is thatpeople are constantly subtly insulting me and I have no I idea what's happening
May I suggest the helpful Anglo-EU Translation Guide?
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:25 PM on May 24, 2019 [19 favorites]
May I suggest the helpful Anglo-EU Translation Guide?
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:25 PM on May 24, 2019 [19 favorites]
However it _is_ a serious issue if her supervisor, and the two academics who conducted her viva, let this pass in a DPhil examination. Unfortunately her thesis doesn't seem to be recorded in any of the usual depositories (Bodleian, etc) so it's kinda hard to know if it was the focus of the *thesis* as well as the book.
The use of "thesis" in the post is not referring to an academic thesis (aka a dissertation). There is no academic thesis in that sense -- Wolf isn't in academia, and AFAIK doesn't have an advanced degree (beyond the BA).
posted by Saxon Kane at 3:42 PM on May 24, 2019 [4 favorites]
The use of "thesis" in the post is not referring to an academic thesis (aka a dissertation). There is no academic thesis in that sense -- Wolf isn't in academia, and AFAIK doesn't have an advanced degree (beyond the BA).
posted by Saxon Kane at 3:42 PM on May 24, 2019 [4 favorites]
A Guardian piece (article? review? interview?) Naomi Wolf: 'We're in a fight for our lives and for democracy' mentions "Outrages comes over as precisely what it is: a PhD thesis, reworked for a wider readership, which examines the effect of the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 and some other notable laws".
posted by readinghippo at 3:46 PM on May 24, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by readinghippo at 3:46 PM on May 24, 2019 [2 favorites]
>I don’t think it takes many reports of a death sentence
>for a 14-year-old for sodomy, though later commuted, to really
>scare a 19-year-old gay man. This fear is the focus of my book.
But as Sweet shows, even the news reports would have stated that the sentences were commuted...every time out.
This seems to imply that a person would be just fine with being sentenced to death as long as they were pretty sure the sentence would be commuted.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:46 PM on May 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
>for a 14-year-old for sodomy, though later commuted, to really
>scare a 19-year-old gay man. This fear is the focus of my book.
But as Sweet shows, even the news reports would have stated that the sentences were commuted...every time out.
This seems to imply that a person would be just fine with being sentenced to death as long as they were pretty sure the sentence would be commuted.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:46 PM on May 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
No it implies that like no people were executed for being Kay in Victorian Britain
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 3:51 PM on May 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 3:51 PM on May 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
I have never heard of the legal term "death recorded" until now - probably not unlike a number of us here - but it's a peculiar and nonspecific enough phrase that if I were to write a book where my thesis required me to demonstrate that actual executions took place, the very first thing I would do is research the historic context and definition of the term "death recorded." It seems like common sense. Right?!
Even if I were just casually at home, chilling and reading about Victorian-era prosecutions for sodomy, my first thought upon encountering "death recorded" would be "What! They fucking executed them? This is terrible. And why are they being so coy and just saying death recorded but not documenting the details and method of execution? What are they trying to hide? When and where did these executions take place? Were the bodies returned to their families or next of kin for burial? Are there gravesites? Oh, wait. A cursory search of Google indicates that 'death recorded' might actually mean that the executions were 'on paper' only, because capital punishment for sodomy wasn't enforced at the time? Huh. I should probably do a little more research to make sure I'm clear on what was going on."
It's hard for me to have much sympathy for her when it's clear she did not do her due diligence as a researcher. She's the one writing a book and asserting theories; she has the greater duty (much greater than her editors and fact checkers) to make sure what she's writing is sufficiently researched and factual. Yes, it's absolutely a sign of editorial negligence that this wasn't caught before publication, but I find it far more troubling that she couldn't be bothered to personally verify the historical, linguistic and legal context of the language used in her primary sources. Her credibility, as well as the public's understanding of history as it is delivered to us by the researchers and historians we'd like to think we could trust for the most part, are at stake.
posted by nightrecordings at 3:53 PM on May 24, 2019 [18 favorites]
Even if I were just casually at home, chilling and reading about Victorian-era prosecutions for sodomy, my first thought upon encountering "death recorded" would be "What! They fucking executed them? This is terrible. And why are they being so coy and just saying death recorded but not documenting the details and method of execution? What are they trying to hide? When and where did these executions take place? Were the bodies returned to their families or next of kin for burial? Are there gravesites? Oh, wait. A cursory search of Google indicates that 'death recorded' might actually mean that the executions were 'on paper' only, because capital punishment for sodomy wasn't enforced at the time? Huh. I should probably do a little more research to make sure I'm clear on what was going on."
It's hard for me to have much sympathy for her when it's clear she did not do her due diligence as a researcher. She's the one writing a book and asserting theories; she has the greater duty (much greater than her editors and fact checkers) to make sure what she's writing is sufficiently researched and factual. Yes, it's absolutely a sign of editorial negligence that this wasn't caught before publication, but I find it far more troubling that she couldn't be bothered to personally verify the historical, linguistic and legal context of the language used in her primary sources. Her credibility, as well as the public's understanding of history as it is delivered to us by the researchers and historians we'd like to think we could trust for the most part, are at stake.
posted by nightrecordings at 3:53 PM on May 24, 2019 [18 favorites]
I have never heard of the legal term "death recorded" until now
posted by nightrecordings
epony…
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eponysomething
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:55 PM on May 24, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by nightrecordings
epony…
um
eponysomething
posted by prize bull octorok at 3:55 PM on May 24, 2019 [4 favorites]
Also, the best thing about living in the UK as an American is that people are constantly subtly insulting me and I have no I idea what's happening
What kinds of things do they subtly insult you about? Are they things you actually care about or is it more like "only louche rakes wear loafers"? Do they really mean the insults or is it just the classy version of giving people shit?
I am not a subtle person even for an American, and I plan to be too busy eating cakes and regional cheeses to notice any insults, but I have this vaguely planned post-Brexit trip to the UK (assuming that the world is still standing) and this is making me anxious. I'll try not to commit any scholarship on British soil, that should help.
posted by Frowner at 3:56 PM on May 24, 2019 [10 favorites]
What kinds of things do they subtly insult you about? Are they things you actually care about or is it more like "only louche rakes wear loafers"? Do they really mean the insults or is it just the classy version of giving people shit?
I am not a subtle person even for an American, and I plan to be too busy eating cakes and regional cheeses to notice any insults, but I have this vaguely planned post-Brexit trip to the UK (assuming that the world is still standing) and this is making me anxious. I'll try not to commit any scholarship on British soil, that should help.
posted by Frowner at 3:56 PM on May 24, 2019 [10 favorites]
What kinds of things do they subtly insult you about? Are they things you actually care about or is it more like "only louche rakes wear loafers"?
I can only imagine they'd instead say, "What interesting shoes!"
posted by clawsoon at 3:59 PM on May 24, 2019 [10 favorites]
I can only imagine they'd instead say, "What interesting shoes!"
posted by clawsoon at 3:59 PM on May 24, 2019 [10 favorites]
This also shows that this is the first time an expert on the subject ever read her book and gave her feedback, which is just bonkers.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:04 PM on May 24, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:04 PM on May 24, 2019 [8 favorites]
Oh god, this was her actual Ph.D. thesis? That really is a nightmare. The hours of my life spent agonizing "but what if it's wrong"...
posted by biogeo at 4:07 PM on May 24, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by biogeo at 4:07 PM on May 24, 2019 [6 favorites]
As someone who's done some research on nineteenth-century sodomy cases, let me try to reconstruct this.
What seems to have happened here is that Wolf used the Old Bailey Online database to locate prosecutions for sodomy in the Central Criminal Court records. That's how she found the case of Thomas Silver, which is recorded with chilling brevity in the Old Bailey proceedings:
The bigger issue is that, for reasons of public decency, the printed Old Bailey proceedings rarely give much detail of homosexual offences: just the name and age of the defendant, and the verdict. Luckily for historians, the cases were often reported in more detail in the newspapers. In an article published in 2012, Charles Upchurch showed that there are over a thousand cases of sex between men reported in the London newspapers between 1820 and 1870. These newspapers are now digitized and full-text searchable, so this material is now very easily accessible if you choose your search terms carefully.
Wolf didn't do her follow-up research in the British Newspaper Archive and therefore didn't find the fuller report of Thomas Silver's trial in a local newspaper. That's how she missed the rather crucial fact that Silver was convicted, not for sex with a boy of his own age, but for assaulting a much younger boy. This requires more extensive rewriting of her text. Unfortunately, it's still not the end of the problem.
The even bigger issue here is that Wolf weaves this into a romantic fantasy about her protagonist John Addington Symonds and what he might have thought about the case:
posted by verstegan at 4:23 PM on May 24, 2019 [102 favorites]
What seems to have happened here is that Wolf used the Old Bailey Online database to locate prosecutions for sodomy in the Central Criminal Court records. That's how she found the case of Thomas Silver, which is recorded with chilling brevity in the Old Bailey proceedings:
THOMAS SILVER (14), was indicted for an unnatural offence.She misunderstood the meaning of 'Death recorded' and assumed it meant that Silver had been executed. On its own, this isn't such a big deal. It's a simple factual error which she can correct quite easily, now it's been pointed out, just by rewriting a few words of her text. Unfortunately, this is just the beginning of the problem.
MR PLATT conducted the Prosecution.
GUILTY. Death recorded.
The bigger issue is that, for reasons of public decency, the printed Old Bailey proceedings rarely give much detail of homosexual offences: just the name and age of the defendant, and the verdict. Luckily for historians, the cases were often reported in more detail in the newspapers. In an article published in 2012, Charles Upchurch showed that there are over a thousand cases of sex between men reported in the London newspapers between 1820 and 1870. These newspapers are now digitized and full-text searchable, so this material is now very easily accessible if you choose your search terms carefully.
Wolf didn't do her follow-up research in the British Newspaper Archive and therefore didn't find the fuller report of Thomas Silver's trial in a local newspaper. That's how she missed the rather crucial fact that Silver was convicted, not for sex with a boy of his own age, but for assaulting a much younger boy. This requires more extensive rewriting of her text. Unfortunately, it's still not the end of the problem.
The even bigger issue here is that Wolf weaves this into a romantic fantasy about her protagonist John Addington Symonds and what he might have thought about the case:
Symonds, still in his late teens and apparently pursuing and then grieving the end of his love affair, would have read about what happened to teenagers like Thomas Silver when word about their intimacy with other boys got out. [..] Even as Symonds and 'W' walked together on the towpath along the Cherwell, or lay on the grass next to one another watching the scudding clouds, in one of the meadows near Christ Church that slopes down to the river, Symonds must have been aware that youths of his and W's age were being sentenced to prison, and even executed, for just such love.And there you have the basic problem with Wolf's book. It's not that she's a careless researcher, it's that she's a crashing snob. She's not interested in Thomas Silver: not really interested, not interested enough to go and find out who he was, or what he did, or what happened to him. She's only interested in People Like Us: people with Oxford degrees, educated people with educated feelings, people who lie on the grass watching the scudding clouds and experiencing Deep Romantic Passion. She has totally bought into the Brideshead myth that sex between men means sex between upper-class men. And that's a huge failure of historical imagination.
posted by verstegan at 4:23 PM on May 24, 2019 [102 favorites]
So a quick google suggests the term should properly be read "sentence of death recorded" not "death recorded".
See here and here.
The phrase is often followed by a notation that the sentence was commuted to transportation or life imprisonment.
Wikipedia even links to the relevant law.
the Court shall and may and is hereby authorized to abstain from pronouncing Judgment of Death upon such Offender; and instead of pronouncing such Judgment to order the same to be entered of Record, and thereupon such proper Officer as aforesaid shall and may and is hereby authorized to enter Judgment of Death on Record against such Offender, in the usual and accustomed Form, and in such and the same Manner as is now used, and as if Judgment of Death had actually been pronounced in open Court against such Offender, by the Court before which such Offender shall have been convicted.
I mean, c'mon.
posted by madajb at 4:37 PM on May 24, 2019 [2 favorites]
See here and here.
The phrase is often followed by a notation that the sentence was commuted to transportation or life imprisonment.
Wikipedia even links to the relevant law.
the Court shall and may and is hereby authorized to abstain from pronouncing Judgment of Death upon such Offender; and instead of pronouncing such Judgment to order the same to be entered of Record, and thereupon such proper Officer as aforesaid shall and may and is hereby authorized to enter Judgment of Death on Record against such Offender, in the usual and accustomed Form, and in such and the same Manner as is now used, and as if Judgment of Death had actually been pronounced in open Court against such Offender, by the Court before which such Offender shall have been convicted.
I mean, c'mon.
posted by madajb at 4:37 PM on May 24, 2019 [2 favorites]
A Guardian piece (article? review? interview?) Naomi Wolf: 'We're in a fight for our lives and for democracy' mentions "Outrages comes over as precisely what it is: a PhD thesis
Wait... What?
A PhD thesis... reworked for wider readership. What is the story here? This is a potentially career ending revelation. Either that PhD is seriously flawed along with the institution she got it from, or that was some incredible rework for wider readership.
posted by 2N2222 at 4:40 PM on May 24, 2019 [5 favorites]
> "Also, the best thing about living in the UK as an American is that people are constantly subtly insulting me and I have no I idea what's happening"
A friend of mine here in the UK recently told me that if he signed an e-mail "Regards" (rather than, say, "Kind regards" or "Best wishes" or what have you), this essentially meant "I loathe and detest you and everything you stand for" and that this would be generally understood by any Brit who received it.
I do not speak the language spoken here.
posted by kyrademon at 4:47 PM on May 24, 2019 [24 favorites]
A friend of mine here in the UK recently told me that if he signed an e-mail "Regards" (rather than, say, "Kind regards" or "Best wishes" or what have you), this essentially meant "I loathe and detest you and everything you stand for" and that this would be generally understood by any Brit who received it.
I do not speak the language spoken here.
posted by kyrademon at 4:47 PM on May 24, 2019 [24 favorites]
Well, in that case neither do I, and I've lived here since early 1965.
I'm glad someone's written down an explanation. I saw the radio programme posted on Twitter a bunch. I wondered what it was about, tried listening to it, but bailed quite quickly, as I like metaphorical car crashes as much as I like real ones.
FWIW, my sister worked as a copyeditor, and found that over the years even academic texts would come to her less and less actually-edited until in desperation she learned Welsh to find some other form of employment. Long story, that, and not entirely relevant. Anyway, it seems that academic editing is in a parlous state.
posted by Grangousier at 5:17 PM on May 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
I'm glad someone's written down an explanation. I saw the radio programme posted on Twitter a bunch. I wondered what it was about, tried listening to it, but bailed quite quickly, as I like metaphorical car crashes as much as I like real ones.
FWIW, my sister worked as a copyeditor, and found that over the years even academic texts would come to her less and less actually-edited until in desperation she learned Welsh to find some other form of employment. Long story, that, and not entirely relevant. Anyway, it seems that academic editing is in a parlous state.
posted by Grangousier at 5:17 PM on May 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
This is the kind of thing that doctoral candidates have (many!) nightmares about happening during a dissertation defense: A single mistake or oversight that quickly snowballs into a fatal flaw or at least one that requires several years of work to correct. In the U.S. context, at least, we hope that our committee members will be collegial enough to gently point out these kinds of errors much earlier in the process than the final defense e.g., the proposal defense, chapter drafts.
It also seems to me to be unkind for the interviewer to raise these issues during this public interview instead of first doing it privately. I'm not sure if his actions were unethical or unprofessional - there's a ton of context that I don't have! - but on a human level it seems like it would have been kind to raise the issues in private before the interview. It reminds me too much of the casual cruelty that infects many pockets of academia where we routinely tear one another down because that's much easier than supporting one another (don't get me wrong - some people and some ideas must be torn down, quickly and forcefully!).
posted by ElKevbo at 5:30 PM on May 24, 2019 [8 favorites]
It also seems to me to be unkind for the interviewer to raise these issues during this public interview instead of first doing it privately. I'm not sure if his actions were unethical or unprofessional - there's a ton of context that I don't have! - but on a human level it seems like it would have been kind to raise the issues in private before the interview. It reminds me too much of the casual cruelty that infects many pockets of academia where we routinely tear one another down because that's much easier than supporting one another (don't get me wrong - some people and some ideas must be torn down, quickly and forcefully!).
posted by ElKevbo at 5:30 PM on May 24, 2019 [8 favorites]
I don't know about this book in particular but I can attest that for many nonfiction books, even (especially?) by academics and established authors, serious editing and fact checking are not actually supplied by the publisher.
I'm not sure this is true, and I would imagine a lot of this depends on the press, no? I've flirted on and off with possibly pursuing writing a book with an academic press, and my impression has been that the more reputable ones do send their manuscripts out for the book-length equivalent of peer review. While this isn't fact-checking as it's understood in journalism, it is meant to be a quality/bullshit detector test. And serious editing is a major part of writing a book with most desirable academic presses.
I assume that popular presses don't do this (and I would totally believe that the more famous the author, the more they could get away with dubious claims)... but I'd really value the perspective of anyone who's worked in academic vs popular presses to weigh in on this.
posted by mostly vowels at 6:06 PM on May 24, 2019
I'm not sure this is true, and I would imagine a lot of this depends on the press, no? I've flirted on and off with possibly pursuing writing a book with an academic press, and my impression has been that the more reputable ones do send their manuscripts out for the book-length equivalent of peer review. While this isn't fact-checking as it's understood in journalism, it is meant to be a quality/bullshit detector test. And serious editing is a major part of writing a book with most desirable academic presses.
I assume that popular presses don't do this (and I would totally believe that the more famous the author, the more they could get away with dubious claims)... but I'd really value the perspective of anyone who's worked in academic vs popular presses to weigh in on this.
posted by mostly vowels at 6:06 PM on May 24, 2019
This is really poor work on her part
Not the first time. Her journalism has mostly been rubbishy op-ed supposition and assertion for years and years. I do not rate her (And certainly not compared to Naomi Klein!).
posted by smoke at 6:40 PM on May 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
Not the first time. Her journalism has mostly been rubbishy op-ed supposition and assertion for years and years. I do not rate her (And certainly not compared to Naomi Klein!).
posted by smoke at 6:40 PM on May 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
In the U.S. context, at least, we hope that our committee members will be collegial enough to gently point out these kinds of errors much earlier in the process than the final defense
In the UK system this would be the responsibility of your supervisor, plus your secondary supervisor if you had one (I believe there’s more of a push to have secondary supervisors actively involved in the process now, although mine was just a name on paper). Your thesis is examined at the viva by two academics who don’t know your work, one from your institution and one from outside. It shouldn’t get to that stage with major flaws but there are always horror stories.
One I knew: the external examiner refused to pass the thesis because the supervisor hadn’t been supervising, but the host department practically begged him not to outright fail it b/c a problem like that is really their fault, so it went through as ‘major corrections’ but with 3 years to carry them out. Which is basically ‘start again’.
posted by Catseye at 1:21 AM on May 25, 2019 [6 favorites]
In the UK system this would be the responsibility of your supervisor, plus your secondary supervisor if you had one (I believe there’s more of a push to have secondary supervisors actively involved in the process now, although mine was just a name on paper). Your thesis is examined at the viva by two academics who don’t know your work, one from your institution and one from outside. It shouldn’t get to that stage with major flaws but there are always horror stories.
One I knew: the external examiner refused to pass the thesis because the supervisor hadn’t been supervising, but the host department practically begged him not to outright fail it b/c a problem like that is really their fault, so it went through as ‘major corrections’ but with 3 years to carry them out. Which is basically ‘start again’.
posted by Catseye at 1:21 AM on May 25, 2019 [6 favorites]
She styles herself (quite rightly if she has been awarded a PhD) as Dr. Naomi Wolff on Twitter, but I can’t find any sign of her thesis in the usual places. However, this article in the Oxford Toady (as it is generally known by those who receive it) suggests that she returned to Oxford back in 2011 to complete a doctorate on “the origin of discourses about sexuality in the nineteenth century”.
It does kind of sound like this book might be based on that work & her viva cttee must bear some responsibility for not noticing it since it seems to have been fundamental to much of her thesis. Presumably there was no one with any relevant historical expertise on the cttee, which seems something of an oversight in retrospect. Even before then, it really should have been caught by her supervisor. Frankly, she was writing a history thesis whilst working in the English department under a cultural theorist & this whole debacle ought to be even more embarrassing for the department than it is for her.
(Side note: I can’t find her actual thesis anywhere: there doesn’t seem to be a copy of her thesis in the public digital archive but there’s a default 3 year embargo after submission & a student can have request a further extension which she might well have done (possibly at the request of her publisher) in order to not compromise the sales of the book she intended to publish based on the work. There’s also no sign of her thesis in the Bodleian catalogue either but again it looks like theses from the last 5 years aren’t in the catalogue (you can’t search for theses past 2014) so if she submitted some time around 2014-15 it wouldn’t be available.)
posted by pharm at 2:06 AM on May 25, 2019 [5 favorites]
It does kind of sound like this book might be based on that work & her viva cttee must bear some responsibility for not noticing it since it seems to have been fundamental to much of her thesis. Presumably there was no one with any relevant historical expertise on the cttee, which seems something of an oversight in retrospect. Even before then, it really should have been caught by her supervisor. Frankly, she was writing a history thesis whilst working in the English department under a cultural theorist & this whole debacle ought to be even more embarrassing for the department than it is for her.
(Side note: I can’t find her actual thesis anywhere: there doesn’t seem to be a copy of her thesis in the public digital archive but there’s a default 3 year embargo after submission & a student can have request a further extension which she might well have done (possibly at the request of her publisher) in order to not compromise the sales of the book she intended to publish based on the work. There’s also no sign of her thesis in the Bodleian catalogue either but again it looks like theses from the last 5 years aren’t in the catalogue (you can’t search for theses past 2014) so if she submitted some time around 2014-15 it wouldn’t be available.)
posted by pharm at 2:06 AM on May 25, 2019 [5 favorites]
First of all, if this was indeed her PhD thesis then it's more than slightly tragic that her advisor and reviewers missed this entirely.
Second, this moment can be seen as a triumph of keen journalistic analysis during an interview. This is just an example of journalists doing a great job. As horrifying a moment as it is for Wolff, it's going to be one that Sweet will be bashfully dining out on for the rest of his career now.
Third, as an American in the UK with Japanese in-laws, I will say that British polite cut-you-downs have nothing on Japanese passive-aggressive jabs. We're talking about a culture where the most popular way to tell someone "no" is to say "yes" with a put-upon and dejected affect, for example.
I am pretty good at detecting and sometimes generating a lot of this British sort of precise overstated courtesy when I'm being dismissive, if only because I did a lot of that as a smug "Daria"-style GenX teen. And my CNN-Yank accent means I can blow past any of that from other people with confidence in many cases. I can see how someone from one of the more big-hearted smiling parts of the US would have trouble, though.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:26 AM on May 25, 2019 [2 favorites]
Second, this moment can be seen as a triumph of keen journalistic analysis during an interview. This is just an example of journalists doing a great job. As horrifying a moment as it is for Wolff, it's going to be one that Sweet will be bashfully dining out on for the rest of his career now.
Third, as an American in the UK with Japanese in-laws, I will say that British polite cut-you-downs have nothing on Japanese passive-aggressive jabs. We're talking about a culture where the most popular way to tell someone "no" is to say "yes" with a put-upon and dejected affect, for example.
I am pretty good at detecting and sometimes generating a lot of this British sort of precise overstated courtesy when I'm being dismissive, if only because I did a lot of that as a smug "Daria"-style GenX teen. And my CNN-Yank accent means I can blow past any of that from other people with confidence in many cases. I can see how someone from one of the more big-hearted smiling parts of the US would have trouble, though.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:26 AM on May 25, 2019 [2 favorites]
I'd really value the perspective of anyone who's worked in academic vs popular presses to weigh in on this.
That's me unfortunately, having been hired privately by a few academic authors to do such work on books published by well-regarded academic publishers who don't provide those services on their own. And yes, I'm sure that's not universal and that there are publishers who are willing to sacrifice some profit to make sure the work they put out is legitimate and well-written. It was a shock to learn not to take that for granted, though.
posted by trig at 3:00 AM on May 25, 2019
That's me unfortunately, having been hired privately by a few academic authors to do such work on books published by well-regarded academic publishers who don't provide those services on their own. And yes, I'm sure that's not universal and that there are publishers who are willing to sacrifice some profit to make sure the work they put out is legitimate and well-written. It was a shock to learn not to take that for granted, though.
posted by trig at 3:00 AM on May 25, 2019
(by the way, Sweet's Inventing the Victorians was really good, if you're looking for a little light historical reading!)
posted by mittens at 4:16 AM on May 25, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by mittens at 4:16 AM on May 25, 2019 [5 favorites]
(Seconding Mittens' rec for Inventing the Victorians. Capsule version: it points out that much of what we believe about the Victorians was made up by their children and grandkids who wanted to make themselves look bright! and shiny! and modern! by contrast, and so turned their predecessors into a kind of burlesque of pre-modernism. Meanwhile the real Victorians were inventing stuff like the movie industry, the serial killer, junk food, and tabloid news.)
But I came here to say: fact-checking is not what publishers are paid to do. Publishers are paid to publish books, sell as many as they can, and thereby turn a profit. It's a marginal business at best, so they outsource whatever they can and control costs like crazy. Even those who are in business because they love literature or books—which is most of them, nobody goes into publishing in order to get rich—have to keep an eye on the bottom line at all times.
At best, Wolfe's original book proposal might have been sent to a specialist in the field for an opinion. Or the finished MS might have been read by a publisher's reader—an external reviewer who'd compile a report on the manuscript so the acquiring editor didn't have to plough through it in person (their job is to manage workflow, not to actually edit). Readers' knowledge of a speciality may be patchy, and there's no second opinion.
So I find it entirely plausible that Wolfe tripped up and nobody in the publishing pipeline knew enough to call her on it.
What I do find somewhat worrying is that she didn't run her book past any experts in the field before she sent it to her editor as a finished work.
posted by cstross at 4:53 AM on May 25, 2019 [6 favorites]
But I came here to say: fact-checking is not what publishers are paid to do. Publishers are paid to publish books, sell as many as they can, and thereby turn a profit. It's a marginal business at best, so they outsource whatever they can and control costs like crazy. Even those who are in business because they love literature or books—which is most of them, nobody goes into publishing in order to get rich—have to keep an eye on the bottom line at all times.
At best, Wolfe's original book proposal might have been sent to a specialist in the field for an opinion. Or the finished MS might have been read by a publisher's reader—an external reviewer who'd compile a report on the manuscript so the acquiring editor didn't have to plough through it in person (their job is to manage workflow, not to actually edit). Readers' knowledge of a speciality may be patchy, and there's no second opinion.
So I find it entirely plausible that Wolfe tripped up and nobody in the publishing pipeline knew enough to call her on it.
What I do find somewhat worrying is that she didn't run her book past any experts in the field before she sent it to her editor as a finished work.
posted by cstross at 4:53 AM on May 25, 2019 [6 favorites]
Wolf has also been wading into chemtrail territory, at least on Twitter. It was hard for me to follow, but she argues that the skies are being altered by powerful forces which nearly nobody else is seeing or paying attention to.
posted by doctornemo at 5:38 AM on May 25, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by doctornemo at 5:38 AM on May 25, 2019 [3 favorites]
Second, this moment can be seen as a triumph of keen journalistic analysis during an interview.
Wow, I don't think I could disagree more with this statement. Sweet knew going into the interview that he was going to ambush his subject. He easily could have sent a note. I hope for everyone's sake no one ever agrees to be interviewed by him again.
As horrifying a moment as it is for Wolff, it's going to be one that Sweet will be bashfully dining out on for the rest of his career now.
Sadly, yes. It makes one yearn for the days of the dignified journalist, but screwing with people in public is where it's at now.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:09 AM on May 25, 2019 [2 favorites]
Wow, I don't think I could disagree more with this statement. Sweet knew going into the interview that he was going to ambush his subject. He easily could have sent a note. I hope for everyone's sake no one ever agrees to be interviewed by him again.
As horrifying a moment as it is for Wolff, it's going to be one that Sweet will be bashfully dining out on for the rest of his career now.
Sadly, yes. It makes one yearn for the days of the dignified journalist, but screwing with people in public is where it's at now.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:09 AM on May 25, 2019 [2 favorites]
My guess is Sweet sprung this on Wolf in a live interview because in journalism (and other fields like the law) it’s thought to be the best way to get to the truth, which is (for many journalists) the whole point of journalism. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong to call it unkind.* It feels bad to confront someone this way. But when you do so, you leave them no space to come up with an alternate, constructed explanation or defense, so you’re more likely to get the bare truth, at least in theory. A journalist figuring out that Wolf’s argument was wrong wouldn’t have known why the error was in the book—whether it was an honest error, an intentional inflation, or some kind of fabrication. Wolf’s immediate reaction of chagrin and acceptance suggests to me she overlooked something and she knows her research wasn’t thorough. That tells a larger story about the value of the book. Sweet’s choice and use of journalistic technique gave us information.
*There are jobs that sometimes call for us to treat other people in ways we would not want to be treated, and while that’s worth debating I don’t think that makes Sweet’s behavior bad journalism (though some may think him a bad person).
posted by sallybrown at 7:28 AM on May 25, 2019 [33 favorites]
*There are jobs that sometimes call for us to treat other people in ways we would not want to be treated, and while that’s worth debating I don’t think that makes Sweet’s behavior bad journalism (though some may think him a bad person).
posted by sallybrown at 7:28 AM on May 25, 2019 [33 favorites]
I will also note that once a book gets to the stage where the publishers' marketing people are fixing the author up with speaking gigs on radio stations, it is very difficult to stop the publication bandwagon for any reason short of a lawsuit. Printing presses are running, bookstores are placing orders, the monster must be fed.
By publicly exposing this problem, Sweet may have done Wolf a favour: if she tells her publisher "I screwed up, you have to pull this version and give me time to rewrite", it'll be very hard for them to ignore her at this point. (Whereas publishers are predisposed to discount author complaints once the sausage machine is cranking up to speed.It's expected that a certain proportion will get cold feet and demand to re-write at the last moment, no matter how inconvenient, so the system tends to ignore them unless there's a deafening level of background noise backing them up.)
posted by cstross at 7:46 AM on May 25, 2019 [17 favorites]
By publicly exposing this problem, Sweet may have done Wolf a favour: if she tells her publisher "I screwed up, you have to pull this version and give me time to rewrite", it'll be very hard for them to ignore her at this point. (Whereas publishers are predisposed to discount author complaints once the sausage machine is cranking up to speed.It's expected that a certain proportion will get cold feet and demand to re-write at the last moment, no matter how inconvenient, so the system tends to ignore them unless there's a deafening level of background noise backing them up.)
posted by cstross at 7:46 AM on May 25, 2019 [17 favorites]
I could not even watch this because of anxiety. Wolf has done sloppy work, but damn, my mirror neurons ache.
(“I don't know who needs to hear this but you have not made a fundamental vocabulary error in your research and you are not going to have the invalidity of your argument exposed in a radio 3 interview”)
posted by Countess Elena at 8:13 AM on May 25, 2019 [6 favorites]
(“I don't know who needs to hear this but you have not made a fundamental vocabulary error in your research and you are not going to have the invalidity of your argument exposed in a radio 3 interview”)
posted by Countess Elena at 8:13 AM on May 25, 2019 [6 favorites]
> I have never heard of the legal term "death recorded" until now - probably not unlike a number of us here - but it's a peculiar and nonspecific enough phrase that if I were to write a book where my thesis required me to demonstrate that actual executions took place, the very first thing I would do is research the historic context and definition of the term "death recorded." It seems like common sense. Right?!
I would take "death recorded" to mean that a death had been recorded. It doesn't sound at all odd.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:27 AM on May 25, 2019 [1 favorite]
I would take "death recorded" to mean that a death had been recorded. It doesn't sound at all odd.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:27 AM on May 25, 2019 [1 favorite]
I have to think Oxford is coming down pretty hard on her thesis committee right now.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 10:45 AM on May 25, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by Big Al 8000 at 10:45 AM on May 25, 2019 [3 favorites]
If you write a nonfiction book and claim authority about a subject, then you can't claim to be "ambushed" by ordinary questioning about it. Journalists are supposed to ask questions without feeding and warning their subjects. The interviewer didn't do anything wrong. Naomi Wolf was wrong in not knowing what she was talking about, and claimed authority to talk about. But she turned out to be an emperor with no clothes
posted by knoyers at 11:01 AM on May 25, 2019 [25 favorites]
posted by knoyers at 11:01 AM on May 25, 2019 [25 favorites]
Completely losing my mind over the idea that a DISSERTATION was predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of one foundational CATEGORY of data. Jesus Christ. I just finished an advanced degree in the social sciences last week (yay!) and this kind of disciplinary malpractice is nothing short of astonishing.
I wrote an essay in the 8th grade about "Hamlet" in which I misspelled Laertes' name, and I still think of that sometimes and feel dumb. I just...fucking CHRIST, Naomi Wolf!
posted by clockzero at 12:07 PM on May 25, 2019 [4 favorites]
I wrote an essay in the 8th grade about "Hamlet" in which I misspelled Laertes' name, and I still think of that sometimes and feel dumb. I just...fucking CHRIST, Naomi Wolf!
posted by clockzero at 12:07 PM on May 25, 2019 [4 favorites]
I would take "death recorded" to mean that a death had been recorded. It doesn't sound at all odd.
Yeah if it’s in a tweet or in an Internet comment. This was for her dissertation. She should’ve known better. Plenty of people make mistakes like this but they’re fixed before , oh publication.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:34 PM on May 25, 2019 [3 favorites]
Yeah if it’s in a tweet or in an Internet comment. This was for her dissertation. She should’ve known better. Plenty of people make mistakes like this but they’re fixed before , oh publication.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:34 PM on May 25, 2019 [3 favorites]
Not having read the book, why is this supposed to have destroyed it? I thought it's thesis was much broader than "it was possible to be executed for homosexuality".
posted by the agents of KAOS at 2:02 PM on May 25, 2019
posted by the agents of KAOS at 2:02 PM on May 25, 2019
Yeah, as an academic this is definitely nightmare fuel. But I think she was also lacking a bit of necessary academic curiosity. Wolf said in one of the early interviews that most scholars said executions for sodomy had stopped much earlier, and so her research was important because she was showing that executions continued for decades after they had supposedly stopped. I can imagine misunderstanding "death recorded" (and I too would certainly think it meant that the death had actually happened), but then I think the obvious question is--why did everyone else think that executions had ended earlier? Looking into the sources cited for THAT proposition should have revealed her own mistake to her.
posted by Emera Gratia at 2:07 PM on May 25, 2019 [19 favorites]
posted by Emera Gratia at 2:07 PM on May 25, 2019 [19 favorites]
If you write a nonfiction book and claim authority about a subject, then you can't claim to be "ambushed" by ordinary questioning about it.
This was not ordinary questioning. This was "I have found a verifiable fault in what you have written and I'm now telling you about, first time, on the air."
Journalists are supposed to ask questions without feeding and warning their subjects.
Investigative journalists are supposed to do that. People who are serving the public good by exposing corruption and lies. Journalists who find themselves working the promo tour circuit need to live with their life choices.
The interviewer didn't do anything wrong.
We'll have to agree to disagree here, because as far as I'm concerned this is some serious bullshit. Absolutely no one but Matthew Sweet was served by calling this out on air, and once again I hope any and all future potential guests wave off.
And who knows, maybe that's the real story here. Matthew Sweet doesn't want any more book tour interviews.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:23 PM on May 25, 2019 [1 favorite]
This was not ordinary questioning. This was "I have found a verifiable fault in what you have written and I'm now telling you about, first time, on the air."
Journalists are supposed to ask questions without feeding and warning their subjects.
Investigative journalists are supposed to do that. People who are serving the public good by exposing corruption and lies. Journalists who find themselves working the promo tour circuit need to live with their life choices.
The interviewer didn't do anything wrong.
We'll have to agree to disagree here, because as far as I'm concerned this is some serious bullshit. Absolutely no one but Matthew Sweet was served by calling this out on air, and once again I hope any and all future potential guests wave off.
And who knows, maybe that's the real story here. Matthew Sweet doesn't want any more book tour interviews.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:23 PM on May 25, 2019 [1 favorite]
The only one responsible for Naomi Wolf learning about this for the first time on air is Naomi Wolf. She is the one who apparently skated by in knowledge and research for all of those years, until one day she stopped getting away with it. If she had possessed the curiosity and put in the work required to understand this subject instead of faking it to whatever extent, she could never have been exposed so easily on something so basic. And that is her problem. The journalist did not owe her anything. It was certainly not his job to cover for her or protect her apparently undeserved reputation at least in this subject matter. The emptiness and fallacy of this book deserved to be exposed. And if it wasn't exposed, scholarship in this field and the overall modern understanding of criminality and homosexuality in Victorian England would have been infected by it. And in the end, truth is more important than Naomi Wolf's career
If you are publishing or being interviewed about something and don't want to get humiliated in public, then put in the work until you have substance that can stand up to scrutiny. That is all she had to do, but she treated it like another casual essay topic and ended up with egg on her face. Because in the end, she wasn't curious to find out why, when and where 14-year old Thomas Silver's execution took place, and what the reaction to it was. If you are a historian even mentioning an event in your book or dissertation, you should know much more about it than whatever makes your final manuscript
posted by knoyers at 7:41 PM on May 25, 2019 [26 favorites]
If you are publishing or being interviewed about something and don't want to get humiliated in public, then put in the work until you have substance that can stand up to scrutiny. That is all she had to do, but she treated it like another casual essay topic and ended up with egg on her face. Because in the end, she wasn't curious to find out why, when and where 14-year old Thomas Silver's execution took place, and what the reaction to it was. If you are a historian even mentioning an event in your book or dissertation, you should know much more about it than whatever makes your final manuscript
posted by knoyers at 7:41 PM on May 25, 2019 [26 favorites]
I read some of the links about the conspiratorial beliefs she's invested in. Maybe she could use a demonstration of the fact that you can be very bright while still being mistaken.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:49 PM on May 25, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:49 PM on May 25, 2019 [1 favorite]
if this was indeed her PhD thesis then it's more than slightly tragic that her advisor and reviewers missed this entirely.
I can't believe this was possible. A scholar in English social history, even if lacking the ability to decipher the elliptical text, could not but have absorbed a basic framework of how executions were handled that would have had them asking "Were there pamphlets, or published sermons? What did the papers say?" Executions were public and exemplary. If you were interested in the impact of reporting of such events on a young person, you would absolutely want to know that.
Speaking honestly as a lapsed historian, I don't know if I would have reached an initial conclusion different than hers about "death recorded"--but then, for anything more advanced than an undergraduate paper, I would have read all around it and almost certainly realized that my conclusion must be wrong.
I'm not sure if his actions were unethical or unprofessional - there's a ton of context that I don't have! - but on a human level it seems like it would have been kind to raise the issues in private before the interview.
I really don't think his is the best approach if you are trying to talk about the work of a scholar who works in good faith rather than, say, exposing someone who has fabricated documents. You're not going to get a good thoughtful response on the spur of the moment like that, without an ability to read anything.
posted by praemunire at 8:07 PM on May 25, 2019 [3 favorites]
I can't believe this was possible. A scholar in English social history, even if lacking the ability to decipher the elliptical text, could not but have absorbed a basic framework of how executions were handled that would have had them asking "Were there pamphlets, or published sermons? What did the papers say?" Executions were public and exemplary. If you were interested in the impact of reporting of such events on a young person, you would absolutely want to know that.
Speaking honestly as a lapsed historian, I don't know if I would have reached an initial conclusion different than hers about "death recorded"--but then, for anything more advanced than an undergraduate paper, I would have read all around it and almost certainly realized that my conclusion must be wrong.
I'm not sure if his actions were unethical or unprofessional - there's a ton of context that I don't have! - but on a human level it seems like it would have been kind to raise the issues in private before the interview.
I really don't think his is the best approach if you are trying to talk about the work of a scholar who works in good faith rather than, say, exposing someone who has fabricated documents. You're not going to get a good thoughtful response on the spur of the moment like that, without an ability to read anything.
posted by praemunire at 8:07 PM on May 25, 2019 [3 favorites]
So Wolf's book is crap; anyone want to recommend a better text on the same subject?
Nameless Offences: Homosexual Desire In The 19th Century by H.G. Cocks is written by a proper historian, has some decent reviews, and is a fabulous example of nominative determinism.
The great Rictor Norton has an archive of primary sources for the 19th century which you can access for free. Having not looked at these for a very long time I looked at a couple at random; the case of Archibald Mann starts with an introduction from Norton "The following case illustrates the difficulty of interpreting records of legal proceedings." which Woolf seems not to have heeded. Norton also has a page on the subject of Woolf's book, John Addington Symons consisting of a short introduction to his life and then links to excerpts/full short works by Symons.
(As an aside, I have not been onto Rictor Norton's website since I was an undergrad and it is an absolute delight to find that it's still there, with all its fantastic, accessible primary source information. Time to go and buy one of his books to show my appreciation!)
posted by Vortisaur at 2:49 AM on May 26, 2019 [14 favorites]
Nameless Offences: Homosexual Desire In The 19th Century by H.G. Cocks is written by a proper historian, has some decent reviews, and is a fabulous example of nominative determinism.
The great Rictor Norton has an archive of primary sources for the 19th century which you can access for free. Having not looked at these for a very long time I looked at a couple at random; the case of Archibald Mann starts with an introduction from Norton "The following case illustrates the difficulty of interpreting records of legal proceedings." which Woolf seems not to have heeded. Norton also has a page on the subject of Woolf's book, John Addington Symons consisting of a short introduction to his life and then links to excerpts/full short works by Symons.
(As an aside, I have not been onto Rictor Norton's website since I was an undergrad and it is an absolute delight to find that it's still there, with all its fantastic, accessible primary source information. Time to go and buy one of his books to show my appreciation!)
posted by Vortisaur at 2:49 AM on May 26, 2019 [14 favorites]
With all this talk of fact-checking, can we please reach a consensus here about how the author's name is spelled? In this thread I've seen Wolf, Wolfe, Wolff, and Klein.
The Guardian article is pretty explicit about there having been a thesis written, and even names her PhD supervisor at Oxford as Dr Stefano-Maria Evangelista. But... was the thesis ever defended?
posted by heatherlogan at 8:59 AM on May 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
The Guardian article is pretty explicit about there having been a thesis written, and even names her PhD supervisor at Oxford as Dr Stefano-Maria Evangelista. But... was the thesis ever defended?
posted by heatherlogan at 8:59 AM on May 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
From The Guardian, before Matthew Sweet's interview:
posted by heatherlogan at 9:31 AM on May 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
Wolf began her doctorate in 1986, as a Rhodes scholar in Oxford. But she never completed it: “My subject didn’t exist. I wanted to write feminist theory, and I kept being told by the dons there was no such thing.” In the end, she turned the research that she’d done into The Beauty Myth, her first book and the one that made her name [...]Something in this makes me itchy. Is there any evidence that she actually completed a doctorate?
“But I come from an academic family, and I’d always wanted to do a doctorate,” she says (Wolf grew up in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, to liberal parents who were utterly unshockable). “I reapplied to finish it – I’m 56 now, so I must have been 48 then – and they let me come back, and the beautiful end to this story is that by this point queer studies and feminist studies did exist at Oxford.” It was the supervisor of her PhD, Dr Stefano-Maria Evangelista, author of a book about Victorian homosexuality and the Greeks, who put her on to Symonds. [...]
“I’m lucky. I had a good education. I know my books are true. They’re well sourced. They have hundreds of footnotes.”
posted by heatherlogan at 9:31 AM on May 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
We can’t know for sure because the embargo on her thesis appearing in any of the publicly accessible catalogues would probably still be in place - but she styles herself as Dr.Wolff so I certainly hope so!
I don’t think the Viva itself will be listed anywhere - they were publicised internally in the department I was in & according to the website of the Oxford Gazette there’s no need to make any public listing of a Viva Voce examination. (Even if it was advertised in the Gazette, it might well be redacted from the publicly available copies on the grounds that it contained personally identifying information.)
posted by pharm at 9:45 AM on May 26, 2019
I don’t think the Viva itself will be listed anywhere - they were publicised internally in the department I was in & according to the website of the Oxford Gazette there’s no need to make any public listing of a Viva Voce examination. (Even if it was advertised in the Gazette, it might well be redacted from the publicly available copies on the grounds that it contained personally identifying information.)
posted by pharm at 9:45 AM on May 26, 2019
We'll have to agree to disagree here, because as far as I'm concerned this is some serious bullshit. Absolutely no one but Matthew Sweet was served by calling this out on air, and once again I hope any and all future potential guests wave off.
So many things come to mind, but one is that Naomi Wolf's used bullshit stats and bad research before in her books and been called on them, so my sympathy for her getting major facts wrong is really limited. I appreciated The Beauty Myth as a thought piece when it came out, but false scholarship only takes down the points she may have been trying to make, and her books have gotten progressively worse.
But also, I'm kind of stunned that you think that journalists are required to somehow cooperate with book authors on critiques of their work. Are you upset that the PR bargain of access in exchange for promotion was violated? It is the 'gotcha' moment? Because I can tell you what would likely have happened if there'd been an email to the PR person in advance of the interview...it would have been cancelled. The idea that Naomi Wolf would have instead had time to prepare an answer and engage in collaborative scholarship is...naive at best.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:06 AM on May 26, 2019 [17 favorites]
So many things come to mind, but one is that Naomi Wolf's used bullshit stats and bad research before in her books and been called on them, so my sympathy for her getting major facts wrong is really limited. I appreciated The Beauty Myth as a thought piece when it came out, but false scholarship only takes down the points she may have been trying to make, and her books have gotten progressively worse.
But also, I'm kind of stunned that you think that journalists are required to somehow cooperate with book authors on critiques of their work. Are you upset that the PR bargain of access in exchange for promotion was violated? It is the 'gotcha' moment? Because I can tell you what would likely have happened if there'd been an email to the PR person in advance of the interview...it would have been cancelled. The idea that Naomi Wolf would have instead had time to prepare an answer and engage in collaborative scholarship is...naive at best.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:06 AM on May 26, 2019 [17 favorites]
We'll have to agree to disagree here, because as far as I'm concerned this is some serious bullshit. Absolutely no one but Matthew Sweet was served by calling this out on air, and once again I hope any and all future potential guests wave off.
This sort of confrontation is normal in British interviewing. It has always struck me, too, as kinda silly and dumb insofar as it seems to boil down to:
Interviewer: [states result of investigative reporting that could stand on its own] What do you have to say?
Subject: [whatever they have to say]
Because the presence of the interview subject is entirely superfluous to the information being presented; neither the interviewer nor the audience are learning anything of value from the interview subject, but I guess watching people squirm is fun.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:12 AM on May 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
This sort of confrontation is normal in British interviewing. It has always struck me, too, as kinda silly and dumb insofar as it seems to boil down to:
Interviewer: [states result of investigative reporting that could stand on its own] What do you have to say?
Subject: [whatever they have to say]
Because the presence of the interview subject is entirely superfluous to the information being presented; neither the interviewer nor the audience are learning anything of value from the interview subject, but I guess watching people squirm is fun.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 10:12 AM on May 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
I don't see how this would have any effect on Matthew Sweet's book tour intervews at all... if one actually knows their stuff.
posted by TwoStride at 10:12 AM on May 26, 2019
posted by TwoStride at 10:12 AM on May 26, 2019
until in desperation she learned Welsh to find some other form of employment.
That is some exquisite desperation.
posted by chavenet at 11:09 AM on May 26, 2019 [5 favorites]
That is some exquisite desperation.
posted by chavenet at 11:09 AM on May 26, 2019 [5 favorites]
So, apparently one of Wolf's sources was a notorious academic hoaxer (twitter thread) and while Wolf now seems to be emphasizing a different source, she doesn't seem to be addressing the fact that Silver seems to have been the rapist of a 6 year-old (so, not so much with the "young boys in love" angle she'd gone with in the book).
posted by TwoStride at 12:00 PM on May 26, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by TwoStride at 12:00 PM on May 26, 2019 [8 favorites]
Not having read the book, why is this supposed to have destroyed it? I thought it's thesis was much broader than "it was possible to be executed for homosexuality".
I also haven't read it and unfortunately her talk at Hay was sold out or I would have gone to it yesterday but I think the issues is that the book is meant to be about the effect that the late Victorian legal system had on the lives and work of a number of Victorian poets. It sounds like a lot of it would still stand up even without the executions but some of the bits that have been trailed heavily in the publicity material are about those executions, so in that light it looks pretty foolish.
I think more generally, her later work has been criticised as being sloppy and this does unfortunately fit the pattern. It's not that she's not serious, clearly an immense amount of research has gone into this but it's typical of her work that she didn't do all the details and as a result missed something fundamental.
I've always thought of her as more of a public intellectual or journalist than an academic but then I prefer the former to the latter anyway.
It was the supervisor of her PhD, Dr Stefano-Maria Evangelista, author of a book about Victorian homosexuality and the Greeks, who put her on to Symonds
I wonder how this kind of mistake could happen when her supervisor was an expert on Victorian homosexuality, even if he is in the English and not the history department. Surely there must have been a point where he could have said, "Naomi, could you check this because by the Victorian period the death penalty was never carried out in these cases". Surely he must know that.
posted by atrazine at 2:55 PM on May 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
I also haven't read it and unfortunately her talk at Hay was sold out or I would have gone to it yesterday but I think the issues is that the book is meant to be about the effect that the late Victorian legal system had on the lives and work of a number of Victorian poets. It sounds like a lot of it would still stand up even without the executions but some of the bits that have been trailed heavily in the publicity material are about those executions, so in that light it looks pretty foolish.
I think more generally, her later work has been criticised as being sloppy and this does unfortunately fit the pattern. It's not that she's not serious, clearly an immense amount of research has gone into this but it's typical of her work that she didn't do all the details and as a result missed something fundamental.
I've always thought of her as more of a public intellectual or journalist than an academic but then I prefer the former to the latter anyway.
It was the supervisor of her PhD, Dr Stefano-Maria Evangelista, author of a book about Victorian homosexuality and the Greeks, who put her on to Symonds
I wonder how this kind of mistake could happen when her supervisor was an expert on Victorian homosexuality, even if he is in the English and not the history department. Surely there must have been a point where he could have said, "Naomi, could you check this because by the Victorian period the death penalty was never carried out in these cases". Surely he must know that.
posted by atrazine at 2:55 PM on May 26, 2019 [1 favorite]
NB. Naomi Wolff is on Start the Week on BBC Radio 4 this morning in a program that was recorded live at the Hay festival.
posted by pharm at 1:12 AM on May 27, 2019
posted by pharm at 1:12 AM on May 27, 2019
Wow, TwoStride, I'm reading the TLS article linked in that twitter thread and it's an amazing deep dive. Thanks for the link!
posted by Vortisaur at 11:14 AM on May 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Vortisaur at 11:14 AM on May 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
Ah, my bad on the "thesis" misunderstanding :(
posted by Saxon Kane at 12:44 PM on May 27, 2019
posted by Saxon Kane at 12:44 PM on May 27, 2019
More interesting bits from Twitter: first, that it seems unclear when Wolf was actually awarded her degree (2014, 2015, and 2016 are all dates given in print).
Next, I thought that this joke about Wolf inventing medieval SCUBA gangs by Popehat was funny.
posted by TwoStride at 5:32 PM on May 27, 2019 [2 favorites]
Next, I thought that this joke about Wolf inventing medieval SCUBA gangs by Popehat was funny.
posted by TwoStride at 5:32 PM on May 27, 2019 [2 favorites]
The idea that Naomi Wolf would have instead had time to prepare an answer and engage in collaborative scholarship is...naive at best.
The question is what you think the point of such a conversation is. Because the kind of critical discussion where people have read each other's work in advance and are able to speak thoughtfully in response to criticism is one of the major purposes of an academic seminar or conference. This is what grown people trying to have fruitful intellectual engagement do, and I find it more than a little surprising that you regard it as some kind of impossible utopian ideal. If you are setting up conditions in which it is actually impossible for thoughtful scholarship to take place, what are you doing? Literally, what are you doing? I know the English are super into random public humiliation exercises, but they are not the answer to every question.
posted by praemunire at 5:40 PM on May 27, 2019
The question is what you think the point of such a conversation is. Because the kind of critical discussion where people have read each other's work in advance and are able to speak thoughtfully in response to criticism is one of the major purposes of an academic seminar or conference. This is what grown people trying to have fruitful intellectual engagement do, and I find it more than a little surprising that you regard it as some kind of impossible utopian ideal. If you are setting up conditions in which it is actually impossible for thoughtful scholarship to take place, what are you doing? Literally, what are you doing? I know the English are super into random public humiliation exercises, but they are not the answer to every question.
posted by praemunire at 5:40 PM on May 27, 2019
If you are setting up conditions in which it is actually impossible for thoughtful scholarship to take place, what are you doing? Literally, what are you doing?
In a book interview for a consumer audience? You are interviewing authors about their books and ideas in order to share them -- the books and ideas -- with your audience. It's about service to the reader/listener. Not about discourse...I mean here in Canada there is the odd CBC show that can get close to some discourse but really it's about putting the ideas in front of an audience that doesn't have the background.
When I did author interviews about their books (not on radio), I always read a lot before each interview, especially if the book was reacting to something else, so that I could ask good questions. But I had zero part in advancing the intellectual thinking about any line of scholarship.
I did however spend a lot of time thinking about what my particular readers would want to know about it. I never personally did a gotcha interview, because it wasn't a part of my publications' brand -- the way we did a 'gotcha' was to just not cover the book at all. But I can see how a particular kind of show would want to ask questions about facts like that.
I did do a few interviews that were a bit more hostile than others, particularly books like French Women Don't Get Fat and Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. In those cases it seemed important to be a part of the conversation, but also to make sure that we asked good and skeptical questions.
I think I see the disconnect in this discussion though, because I don't think most academics get the idea of service to the general reader, just like I would have very little idea of how to follow the rules of academic conference disagreement, so I see why they're taking it like a big unfair outside-the-rules attack on the author. So that's interesting.
For me, I do see it as a bit of an ambush but I see the thinking...to provide the radio audience with some pretty important insight into the book and a chance to be a part of a key conversation with the author that was really spectacular.
I also maintain that when I was dealing with publisher PR, there was a pretty good chance that a hint of a question like that would have resulted in no interview at all. (And possibly no interviews with the next three big books from that publishing group although I never tested that.)
posted by warriorqueen at 8:02 PM on May 27, 2019 [11 favorites]
In a book interview for a consumer audience? You are interviewing authors about their books and ideas in order to share them -- the books and ideas -- with your audience. It's about service to the reader/listener. Not about discourse...I mean here in Canada there is the odd CBC show that can get close to some discourse but really it's about putting the ideas in front of an audience that doesn't have the background.
When I did author interviews about their books (not on radio), I always read a lot before each interview, especially if the book was reacting to something else, so that I could ask good questions. But I had zero part in advancing the intellectual thinking about any line of scholarship.
I did however spend a lot of time thinking about what my particular readers would want to know about it. I never personally did a gotcha interview, because it wasn't a part of my publications' brand -- the way we did a 'gotcha' was to just not cover the book at all. But I can see how a particular kind of show would want to ask questions about facts like that.
I did do a few interviews that were a bit more hostile than others, particularly books like French Women Don't Get Fat and Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. In those cases it seemed important to be a part of the conversation, but also to make sure that we asked good and skeptical questions.
I think I see the disconnect in this discussion though, because I don't think most academics get the idea of service to the general reader, just like I would have very little idea of how to follow the rules of academic conference disagreement, so I see why they're taking it like a big unfair outside-the-rules attack on the author. So that's interesting.
For me, I do see it as a bit of an ambush but I see the thinking...to provide the radio audience with some pretty important insight into the book and a chance to be a part of a key conversation with the author that was really spectacular.
I also maintain that when I was dealing with publisher PR, there was a pretty good chance that a hint of a question like that would have resulted in no interview at all. (And possibly no interviews with the next three big books from that publishing group although I never tested that.)
posted by warriorqueen at 8:02 PM on May 27, 2019 [11 favorites]
Once you start writing pop-science books, I think it's fair to expect that you play by public figure rules, not academic rules. If this had been, say, Richard Dawkins or Jordan Peterson getting called out on something obvious they'd overlooked in a book, I think the response from some quarters would be a bit different - not even because of their ideological leanings, but because they're assumed to be making complete arguments with their books. I think that's the big difference - I didn't see anything wrong with the question being part of the interview, because it's a perfectly reasonable thing to ask as part of what warriorqueen talks about above - a consumer review.
Sweet was not, presumably, employed by anyone *producing* the book; his duty certainly isn't with the publisher to make sure they have a viable profit.
Also, this is Naomi Wolf's most recent tweet on the issue. I can't tell if I think it's a good solution, in terms of letting people at evidence, or a weird attempt to manage responses, given that she's reading from her own book and letting people "decide for themselves".
posted by sagc at 8:35 PM on May 27, 2019 [5 favorites]
Sweet was not, presumably, employed by anyone *producing* the book; his duty certainly isn't with the publisher to make sure they have a viable profit.
Also, this is Naomi Wolf's most recent tweet on the issue. I can't tell if I think it's a good solution, in terms of letting people at evidence, or a weird attempt to manage responses, given that she's reading from her own book and letting people "decide for themselves".
posted by sagc at 8:35 PM on May 27, 2019 [5 favorites]
I'm an academic and don't think that the interview was out of line. Perhaps if Wolf had ever gone to an academic conference with this work or engaged in any peer review she would have gotten feedback about her misunderstanding of the key information or some of her more dubious sources... but she didn't. And agreed to a ton of interviews to promote book sales. If she's gonna style herself as an academic denouncing entire known fields of research, she needs to be able to back up her claims, which she couldn't. I just fundamentally don't think it's some cruel humiliation for a book discussion about the research one is claiming to have expertise in to include the challenge that, "your conclusion is not based on accurate evidence." He was gentle and, in fact, much nicer than he needed to be.
posted by TwoStride at 8:41 PM on May 27, 2019 [16 favorites]
posted by TwoStride at 8:41 PM on May 27, 2019 [16 favorites]
I am very confused by what model of the world the people who think Sweet should have told in her advance are working from, because my prediction in that scenario is that the interview gets cancelled and the next one on her slate goes on unperturbed. That is, I think the error just gets buried in that scenario, until someone else does something as hard to ignore as bringing up mid interview that in fact one of the key premises of the book is completely wrong.
Really the only way I can understand, in a cause and effect sense, making an error this large of this sort is if she worked exclusively from primary materials and completely ignored existing literature.
posted by PMdixon at 5:24 AM on May 28, 2019 [12 favorites]
Really the only way I can understand, in a cause and effect sense, making an error this large of this sort is if she worked exclusively from primary materials and completely ignored existing literature.
posted by PMdixon at 5:24 AM on May 28, 2019 [12 favorites]
Because the kind of critical discussion where people have read each other's work in advance and are able to speak thoughtfully in response to criticism is one of the major purposes of an academic seminar or conference.
Surely a lot of academic seminars and conferences are also about point scoring?
posted by atrazine at 6:43 AM on May 28, 2019 [5 favorites]
Surely a lot of academic seminars and conferences are also about point scoring?
posted by atrazine at 6:43 AM on May 28, 2019 [5 favorites]
Coming back to this thread after it is long dormant, because Rictor Norton himself has gone through the book and looked out inaccuracies and tweeted about it. (Though I'm part way through Helena Kennedy's "Eve was Shamed" and think she's a great writer, so I don't appreciate the diss - but Kennedy is a lawyer, not a historian)
posted by Vortisaur at 12:57 PM on June 14, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by Vortisaur at 12:57 PM on June 14, 2019 [5 favorites]
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