The Fake Sex Doctor Who Conned the Media
March 1, 2019 11:05 AM Subscribe
If you look up Dr. Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler online, you might think he has a MD and a PhD from Harvard Medical School. He presents himself as the chief of sexology at a non-profit health research foundation based in New York. His website states he’s one of the youngest elected members of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law, and that Barack Obama gave him a President’s Gold Service Award for his contributions in medicine and mental health.
Based on the information available online, Sendler could be one of the most accomplished 28-year-olds in medicine.
But he’s not. Those are all lies.
Warning: This article includes discussion about suicide and sexual assault. The subject sometimes speaks about sensitive mental health topics with language that departs from best practices.
Warning: This article includes discussion about suicide and sexual assault. The subject sometimes speaks about sensitive mental health topics with language that departs from best practices.
"The American Psychiatric Association (APA) could not share membership information and couldn’t tell me if he is in the database. But an APA representative asked me for his name and typed it into a computer, while I waited on the phone. A moment later, she told me Sendler could be a member since he has a MD from Columbia and Harvard.posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:31 AM on March 1, 2019 [30 favorites]
I asked how she knew that.
It’s on his website, the APA representative told me."
Ley also called out a Sendler study on live-streamed suicides. “He is identifying working with people experiencing suicidal ideation and self-harming behaviors,” Ley said, “And my God, I simply can’t come up with a more vulnerable population where we don’t want amateurs involved. That makes me very concerned. If he’s doing anything like that, people could be dying.”
I hope this doesn't get proven to be true, but if it does, this guy belongs in jail for a very long time.
posted by allkindsoftime at 11:37 AM on March 1, 2019 [8 favorites]
I hope this doesn't get proven to be true, but if it does, this guy belongs in jail for a very long time.
posted by allkindsoftime at 11:37 AM on March 1, 2019 [8 favorites]
I’m a Journalist. Apparently, I’m Also One of America’s “Top Doctors.” seems relevant here. Wouldn't be surprised if Sendler had one of these "awards".
OMG he looks like bearded Adam Scott (with an especially Trevor look in his eye).
posted by emkelley at 11:37 AM on March 1, 2019 [10 favorites]
OMG he looks like bearded Adam Scott (with an especially Trevor look in his eye).
posted by emkelley at 11:37 AM on March 1, 2019 [10 favorites]
“Travis insists he’s a ‘sexpert’ but if there’s a degree on his wall I haven’t seen it.”
posted by Parasite Unseen at 11:38 AM on March 1, 2019 [33 favorites]
posted by Parasite Unseen at 11:38 AM on March 1, 2019 [33 favorites]
there's a social norm in (at least American) academia that you have to try to sell your work, that a little harmless puffery is probably fine, as long as the actual research is sound. like in this story, Yi Zhang recognized that this guy had a tendency to exaggerate, but seemed to think he was just the self-promoting type and that he wouldn't cross any lines. "He can sell."
i'm imagining a different world, where the norm is near-comical self-flagellation, like a Renaissance courtier or something. it wouldn't stop research misconduct but it would mean guys like this would immediately stand out.
of course a big problem is also really terrible science journalism.
posted by vogon_poet at 11:40 AM on March 1, 2019 [6 favorites]
i'm imagining a different world, where the norm is near-comical self-flagellation, like a Renaissance courtier or something. it wouldn't stop research misconduct but it would mean guys like this would immediately stand out.
of course a big problem is also really terrible science journalism.
posted by vogon_poet at 11:40 AM on March 1, 2019 [6 favorites]
...nevermind, I kept reading.
Sendler said he found subjects by reaching out to people after he saw their online posts about attempting to end their life, and eventually gathered a “group of over 24 people who unsuccessfully committed suicide.”
“You know they had a good plan for ending their life but they sucked at executing it,” Sendler said. “And most of them tried hanging themselves but somehow the ropes don’t work or they didn’t know how to really tie it up.”
As he described the suicide attempt of one of his apparent subjects, he cracked a smile. “It’s sort of a funny, you know it’s like laughing in tears.
This guy should be in jail for a very long time. Why TF isn't he locked up yet?
posted by allkindsoftime at 11:41 AM on March 1, 2019 [5 favorites]
Sendler said he found subjects by reaching out to people after he saw their online posts about attempting to end their life, and eventually gathered a “group of over 24 people who unsuccessfully committed suicide.”
“You know they had a good plan for ending their life but they sucked at executing it,” Sendler said. “And most of them tried hanging themselves but somehow the ropes don’t work or they didn’t know how to really tie it up.”
As he described the suicide attempt of one of his apparent subjects, he cracked a smile. “It’s sort of a funny, you know it’s like laughing in tears.
This guy should be in jail for a very long time. Why TF isn't he locked up yet?
posted by allkindsoftime at 11:41 AM on March 1, 2019 [5 favorites]
...nevermind, the guy explained it himself in the end.
“You have to understand that in the world where people use—even the President of this country uses Twitter and creates falsehoods every day,” Sendler said. “How do we then quantify the degree of guilt that you can do, right? Because, you see, if the most powerful man can do this eight, nine thousand times... and he doesn’t care. He still does his thing, and people still support him because they believe in the agenda that he executes.”
posted by allkindsoftime at 11:49 AM on March 1, 2019 [8 favorites]
“You have to understand that in the world where people use—even the President of this country uses Twitter and creates falsehoods every day,” Sendler said. “How do we then quantify the degree of guilt that you can do, right? Because, you see, if the most powerful man can do this eight, nine thousand times... and he doesn’t care. He still does his thing, and people still support him because they believe in the agenda that he executes.”
posted by allkindsoftime at 11:49 AM on March 1, 2019 [8 favorites]
Man, so many red flags in this man's bios--PsyD and PhD "fellows," for example, with no publication histories, or this account of his specialities:
the treatment of patients with psychological and psychiatric conditions, ranging from post-traumatic stress among military veterans, and extending all the way to complex forensic cases involving paraphilias.”
is doubly absurd: he ricochets from military trauma to sexual paraphilias as though he's picking interesting psychological topics off a list, not choosing a mixture of topics that hold together as a coherent research or therapeutic specialty. Which is probably precisely what he did.
But they're the kind of red flags you need a particular kind of expertise to identify. I can't decide if I fault journalists for not knowing how to vet people according to the standards of their professional organizations--if he's a psychological researcher, for example--but I certainly judge the APA rep that the author spoke to.
And then there's this:
“We basically work with a local hospital, Jackson Park,” he told me. “And we tried to recruit women who have been suspected of being victims of sexual assault. And we try to very casually introduce them to a support system. I’m very interested in sexual medicine, especially trauma that can occur as a result of sex. It’s really interesting in the reality of the Me Too movement and how it has been affecting women’s ability to come forward.”
Oh my god. I don't want this man anywhere near traumatized women, for one thing: and for another, what the everloving fuck kind of hospital would pressure women in this way; and for a gripping thing, that's not how you handle traumatized or potentially traumatized people! The "very casually introduce them to a support system" thing reeks. If this existed, it would be so many kinds of unethical the hospital could and would be sued into oblivion if it came out.
This dude is a whole month older than me. I remember talking to a few academic friends of mine who were doing work touching on human sexuality in 2010, 2011, when I was toying with where I wanted to take my academic work: I am interested in human sexuality as I am (and was) interested in infectious disease, behavioral genetics, evolutionary biology and ecology, and a number of other topics. A big reason I cleaved away from human sexuality work is that the lack of funding and respectability meant that I saw a lot of weakness in the research I was reading--hypotheses that missed things that seemed to be obvious to me, that sort of thing--and I was unimpressed by the rigor of the education of a lot of the people whose credentials I was looking at. I didn't want to be trained in that discipline.
I don't know what to do about the journals this guy is publishing in, but I feel weirdly responsible (even though I'm not in a position of power or even in a field that works with humans). It looks like he's publishing in journals that are only loosely rigorous, and what do you do with peer review when entire fields are behaving in non-rigorous ways? What do you do when entire subdisciplines adopt standards that make other, related disciplines uncomfortable? I'm reminded of evolutionary psychology, and the papers from that field I've read from my current perch in integrative biology; those are all peer reviewed, and they're reviewed by people who think that arguments which look flawed are acceptable.
I'm angry and upset. This looks so unacceptable in so many ways. Where are the IRBs? Where is the professional decency of the journals? Where is the honesty? There are so many people who should have known better and blown a whistle before now: why in the hell has it taken this long?
posted by sciatrix at 11:51 AM on March 1, 2019 [29 favorites]
the treatment of patients with psychological and psychiatric conditions, ranging from post-traumatic stress among military veterans, and extending all the way to complex forensic cases involving paraphilias.”
is doubly absurd: he ricochets from military trauma to sexual paraphilias as though he's picking interesting psychological topics off a list, not choosing a mixture of topics that hold together as a coherent research or therapeutic specialty. Which is probably precisely what he did.
But they're the kind of red flags you need a particular kind of expertise to identify. I can't decide if I fault journalists for not knowing how to vet people according to the standards of their professional organizations--if he's a psychological researcher, for example--but I certainly judge the APA rep that the author spoke to.
And then there's this:
“We basically work with a local hospital, Jackson Park,” he told me. “And we tried to recruit women who have been suspected of being victims of sexual assault. And we try to very casually introduce them to a support system. I’m very interested in sexual medicine, especially trauma that can occur as a result of sex. It’s really interesting in the reality of the Me Too movement and how it has been affecting women’s ability to come forward.”
Oh my god. I don't want this man anywhere near traumatized women, for one thing: and for another, what the everloving fuck kind of hospital would pressure women in this way; and for a gripping thing, that's not how you handle traumatized or potentially traumatized people! The "very casually introduce them to a support system" thing reeks. If this existed, it would be so many kinds of unethical the hospital could and would be sued into oblivion if it came out.
This dude is a whole month older than me. I remember talking to a few academic friends of mine who were doing work touching on human sexuality in 2010, 2011, when I was toying with where I wanted to take my academic work: I am interested in human sexuality as I am (and was) interested in infectious disease, behavioral genetics, evolutionary biology and ecology, and a number of other topics. A big reason I cleaved away from human sexuality work is that the lack of funding and respectability meant that I saw a lot of weakness in the research I was reading--hypotheses that missed things that seemed to be obvious to me, that sort of thing--and I was unimpressed by the rigor of the education of a lot of the people whose credentials I was looking at. I didn't want to be trained in that discipline.
I don't know what to do about the journals this guy is publishing in, but I feel weirdly responsible (even though I'm not in a position of power or even in a field that works with humans). It looks like he's publishing in journals that are only loosely rigorous, and what do you do with peer review when entire fields are behaving in non-rigorous ways? What do you do when entire subdisciplines adopt standards that make other, related disciplines uncomfortable? I'm reminded of evolutionary psychology, and the papers from that field I've read from my current perch in integrative biology; those are all peer reviewed, and they're reviewed by people who think that arguments which look flawed are acceptable.
I'm angry and upset. This looks so unacceptable in so many ways. Where are the IRBs? Where is the professional decency of the journals? Where is the honesty? There are so many people who should have known better and blown a whistle before now: why in the hell has it taken this long?
posted by sciatrix at 11:51 AM on March 1, 2019 [29 favorites]
Normally I'm a fairly peaceable woman but between Trump and anti-vaxxers and now this guy, I'm at the point where I just want liars dragged out in the street and shot. I don't even care about their agendas any more. I just want a public mechanism for hurting smug liars who are currently getting away with it.
posted by daisystomper at 11:54 AM on March 1, 2019 [22 favorites]
posted by daisystomper at 11:54 AM on March 1, 2019 [22 favorites]
I think I'm especially angry and upset about this case because I am thinking about the rigor and honesty I want to reach for as a scientist, about the conversation I had with a postdoc in my lab yesterday about the confidence that makes scientists--real ones, sure--boldly make errors that entangle the careers of other people for years, thinking about shiny analyses I don't trust sitting in prestigious journals.
It makes me sad. I'm going to take a break from MeFi now so I can focus on presenting my methods and results section in my upcoming draft as honestly as I can, but--it makes me sad because I feel like small-c conservative approaches and people who prefer them are passed over by flashier approaches and people who sell, and I feel scared about my trajectory and the competitive environment I sit in and very small, all told.
I wish I didn't see how this man could fool so many people.
posted by sciatrix at 11:58 AM on March 1, 2019 [26 favorites]
It makes me sad. I'm going to take a break from MeFi now so I can focus on presenting my methods and results section in my upcoming draft as honestly as I can, but--it makes me sad because I feel like small-c conservative approaches and people who prefer them are passed over by flashier approaches and people who sell, and I feel scared about my trajectory and the competitive environment I sit in and very small, all told.
I wish I didn't see how this man could fool so many people.
posted by sciatrix at 11:58 AM on March 1, 2019 [26 favorites]
He publishes a lot in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine. More than anything else, I hope that journal and its presiding society have to answer for his prominence, and in particular will be publicly asked to discuss its criteria for vetting and corresponding with the IRBs that approve studies it publishes.
That's what fucking IRBs are for.
His papers state that an IRB approved his studies. Which ones? The Journal is supposed to vet that shit. Did he report it? If he's working at a fake institute, I can't imagine they looked past whatever he reported. How can IRBs do their jobs if journals don't work to justify their results? Is this a common practice in working with humans?
posted by sciatrix at 12:07 PM on March 1, 2019 [7 favorites]
That's what fucking IRBs are for.
His papers state that an IRB approved his studies. Which ones? The Journal is supposed to vet that shit. Did he report it? If he's working at a fake institute, I can't imagine they looked past whatever he reported. How can IRBs do their jobs if journals don't work to justify their results? Is this a common practice in working with humans?
posted by sciatrix at 12:07 PM on March 1, 2019 [7 favorites]
I certainly judge the APA rep that the author spoke to.
I wouldn't - I suspect the person is an administrator with no expertise in the field. They would just know what their records say.
posted by jb at 12:15 PM on March 1, 2019 [4 favorites]
I wouldn't - I suspect the person is an administrator with no expertise in the field. They would just know what their records say.
posted by jb at 12:15 PM on March 1, 2019 [4 favorites]
Where are the IRBs? Where is the professional decency of the journals?
Oh, yes! The journal reviewers should have flagged the research on ethical grounds at least. When you publish, you usually have to state which IRB/REB approved your study.
posted by jb at 12:18 PM on March 1, 2019
Oh, yes! The journal reviewers should have flagged the research on ethical grounds at least. When you publish, you usually have to state which IRB/REB approved your study.
posted by jb at 12:18 PM on March 1, 2019
it makes me sad because I feel like small-c conservative approaches and people who prefer them are passed over by flashier approaches and people who sell, and I feel scared about my trajectory and the competitive environment I sit in and very small, all told.
I wish I didn't see how this man could fool so many people.
This happens in TOO MANY fields. I was trained as a historian, and every time I hear about Niall Ferguson getting attention, I think about how sloppy his work is. It's sexy and controversial, so he has a very prestigious position. But it doesn't hold against any serious examination. But very few of the institutions in history (universities, granting agencies or journals) wish to support the careful, tedious, meticulous work necessary to do serious socioeconomic history. If it can be done quicker, all the better, even if you can't answer lots of complex questions that way.
'Publish or Perish' isn't just hurting people (though it does) - it hurts scholarship. Combine it with the self-promotion industry, and it's toxic.
posted by jb at 12:26 PM on March 1, 2019 [16 favorites]
I wish I didn't see how this man could fool so many people.
This happens in TOO MANY fields. I was trained as a historian, and every time I hear about Niall Ferguson getting attention, I think about how sloppy his work is. It's sexy and controversial, so he has a very prestigious position. But it doesn't hold against any serious examination. But very few of the institutions in history (universities, granting agencies or journals) wish to support the careful, tedious, meticulous work necessary to do serious socioeconomic history. If it can be done quicker, all the better, even if you can't answer lots of complex questions that way.
'Publish or Perish' isn't just hurting people (though it does) - it hurts scholarship. Combine it with the self-promotion industry, and it's toxic.
posted by jb at 12:26 PM on March 1, 2019 [16 favorites]
> if there’s a degree on his wall I haven’t seen it.
If I was a sexpert, I'd totally keep my diploma on the mirror over my bed. You know, so my partner could see it.
posted by spacewrench at 12:42 PM on March 1, 2019 [3 favorites]
If I was a sexpert, I'd totally keep my diploma on the mirror over my bed. You know, so my partner could see it.
posted by spacewrench at 12:42 PM on March 1, 2019 [3 favorites]
I don’t understand how anybody thought a reputable peer-reviewed journal article would have the phrase “butt-fisting” in the title. Like, not even the BMJ Christmas issue is that edgy afaik.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 12:49 PM on March 1, 2019 [10 favorites]
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 12:49 PM on March 1, 2019 [10 favorites]
I'll have you know that Doctor Who does not "fake sex", he loves tenderly and passionately.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 1:05 PM on March 1, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by J.K. Seazer at 1:05 PM on March 1, 2019 [4 favorites]
Amazing how far a nice website and an expensive suit can get a person.
If the article is relatively thorough, the guy appears to have virtually no actual qualifications. He seems to have only a passing, superficial interest in the field that he's conning people in. And he is unable to speak intelligently about the area of he's claimed expertise.
Is the bar really this low? A suit and a website.
posted by booksarelame at 1:24 PM on March 1, 2019 [3 favorites]
If the article is relatively thorough, the guy appears to have virtually no actual qualifications. He seems to have only a passing, superficial interest in the field that he's conning people in. And he is unable to speak intelligently about the area of he's claimed expertise.
Is the bar really this low? A suit and a website.
posted by booksarelame at 1:24 PM on March 1, 2019 [3 favorites]
Although I guess now we know why the UC system is boycotting Elsevier.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 2:00 PM on March 1, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 2:00 PM on March 1, 2019 [3 favorites]
Man, so many red flags in this man's bios--PsyD and PhD "fellows," for example, with no publication histories, or this account of his specialities:
yeah. this is a journalism scandal, imperfectly concealed under a fake doctor scandal. as a public embarrassment it couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of publications, but they should all be understood as the ones exposed here, in addition to the lying sex guy. dan savage at least realizes he should have been paying attention.
nothing was stopping any reporter from actually reading and thinking about the articles they cited and summarized, or actually listening to the man they quoted. believing in his harvard credentials does not excuse or explain the level of credulity or incuriousness it would require to take his claims seriously or accept them uncritically.
But they're the kind of red flags you need a particular kind of expertise to identify.
yes. but the kind of expertise you need is readily attainable by an intelligent lay person. you don't need to have a medical or science degree to have critical reading and thinking skills. journalism training is sufficient, though not necessary. but the ability alone does not confer the will to apply it.
posted by queenofbithynia at 2:31 PM on March 1, 2019 [18 favorites]
yeah. this is a journalism scandal, imperfectly concealed under a fake doctor scandal. as a public embarrassment it couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of publications, but they should all be understood as the ones exposed here, in addition to the lying sex guy. dan savage at least realizes he should have been paying attention.
nothing was stopping any reporter from actually reading and thinking about the articles they cited and summarized, or actually listening to the man they quoted. believing in his harvard credentials does not excuse or explain the level of credulity or incuriousness it would require to take his claims seriously or accept them uncritically.
But they're the kind of red flags you need a particular kind of expertise to identify.
yes. but the kind of expertise you need is readily attainable by an intelligent lay person. you don't need to have a medical or science degree to have critical reading and thinking skills. journalism training is sufficient, though not necessary. but the ability alone does not confer the will to apply it.
posted by queenofbithynia at 2:31 PM on March 1, 2019 [18 favorites]
The bit I found most laughable is his "MD" from either Warsaw Medical University, UJ Collegium Medicum or Medical University of Lublin (which all likely didn't respond to fact-checking because GDPR paranoia). The fun thing about Polish medical education is that it's very stringent with a six-year course before you get that MD. Guess how much time he actually spent in Poland. The playing up on 'this strange Eastern Europe with their lack of regulation' is infuriating.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 2:21 AM on March 2, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by I claim sanctuary at 2:21 AM on March 2, 2019 [6 favorites]
For what its worth, if you suspect someone is lying about having a degree from Harvard and you know someone else who you know did go to Harvard, the latter person can look the other person up in the alumni directory.
posted by vacapinta at 6:48 AM on March 2, 2019
posted by vacapinta at 6:48 AM on March 2, 2019
Did no one stop to think how unlikely it is to complete an MD, PhD, psychiatry residency, and achieve independent investigator status by age 28? I don't know what the situation in Poland is like, but in the US, that's a minimum of 17 years post-college. If the guy was a decade older, he might have been harder to catch, but his narcissistic need to be a child prodigy is a giant red flag. Like, can-be-seen-from-the-Moon sized red flag.
posted by basalganglia at 6:51 AM on March 2, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by basalganglia at 6:51 AM on March 2, 2019 [4 favorites]
And this, at long last in succinct form, is the harm of the American president being a person of broken character — the enabling and empowerment of society’s worst hucksters, and the dangerous legitimization it dangles to drag marginal cases over to the side of hucksterism.
Hucksterism is a toxic and contagious worldview that eats trust and shits calamity.
posted by Construction Concern at 7:04 AM on March 2, 2019 [5 favorites]
Hucksterism is a toxic and contagious worldview that eats trust and shits calamity.
posted by Construction Concern at 7:04 AM on March 2, 2019 [5 favorites]
basalganglia, in Poland that'd be a minimum of six years' studies, five years psychiatric residency for first-level specialisation, three years extra residency for second level specialisation, four years' PhD which technically you can do parallel to residency but only if you have a time-turner. No idea how long after that for independent investigator status, but I'd be surprised if it's under 2 years, so that works out to the same 17 or more. The only difference is that we don't have universalist college, so the clock starts ticking at 19-ish.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 1:58 PM on March 2, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by I claim sanctuary at 1:58 PM on March 2, 2019 [1 favorite]
Joint MD/PhD programs do exist. They're generally about 7-10 years to finish and famously do about require time turners to complete; that said they don't necessarily require a Master's upon entry. They're usually geared towards people who want to do a mixture of clinical practice and research in their day to day. Like I said, I'm about a month younger than this guy, and he could conceivably have cut his way through one of those programs by now... but if he had, no way he'd be out on his own as a PI by now. Conversely, I've known one or two faculty members who made it to PI by 29, but they're people who cut their way through a PhD quickly and didn't stick around for the amount of time a concurrent MD requires.
And he's been doing this for a good few years now, to boot.
posted by sciatrix at 7:03 PM on March 2, 2019 [2 favorites]
And he's been doing this for a good few years now, to boot.
posted by sciatrix at 7:03 PM on March 2, 2019 [2 favorites]
Normally I'm a fairly peaceable woman but between Trump and anti-vaxxers and now this guy, I'm at the point where I just want liars dragged out in the street and shot.
I once challenged a narcissist after catching them in one of their lies. I spent the following weeks and months in horror as I watched that person convince friends and neighbours with incomprehensible ease that I was an evil manipulative person who was attacking them to further my own agenda. I couldn't even find out what people had been told - neighbours I had known for years would simply refuse to speak to me.
It has taken years to unpick the damage, starting only after that person moved away and ceased to take an interest in me and the other people around me.
I can assure you, if the world tried to do what you suggest, you would quickly find yourself among those getting shot. I fear for the journalist who wrote this.
posted by automatronic at 4:25 AM on March 3, 2019 [2 favorites]
I once challenged a narcissist after catching them in one of their lies. I spent the following weeks and months in horror as I watched that person convince friends and neighbours with incomprehensible ease that I was an evil manipulative person who was attacking them to further my own agenda. I couldn't even find out what people had been told - neighbours I had known for years would simply refuse to speak to me.
It has taken years to unpick the damage, starting only after that person moved away and ceased to take an interest in me and the other people around me.
I can assure you, if the world tried to do what you suggest, you would quickly find yourself among those getting shot. I fear for the journalist who wrote this.
posted by automatronic at 4:25 AM on March 3, 2019 [2 favorites]
I am not super surprised to learn that journalists depended on the dude's own site to verify his credentials.
Back in the day, a print magazine would have had a person whose entire job was to do things like call Harvard and verify someone's degree.
Now, a lot of online publications don't fact check or depend on authors to do it for them, and I definitely suspect a few of the listed publications of falling into this category (Bustle and Insider especially). My experience has been that such sites also require writers to churn out content at a breakneck pace, leaving very little time for them to make sure they did it right. So someone pounds out a 500 word article based on stuff they found online, maybe goes back to check names, and hits publish, with no one else having read or vetted their work. And then, instantly, that article is available to millions of people.
So quality has tanked at the very same time that reach has exploded.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 7:12 AM on March 3, 2019 [3 favorites]
Back in the day, a print magazine would have had a person whose entire job was to do things like call Harvard and verify someone's degree.
Now, a lot of online publications don't fact check or depend on authors to do it for them, and I definitely suspect a few of the listed publications of falling into this category (Bustle and Insider especially). My experience has been that such sites also require writers to churn out content at a breakneck pace, leaving very little time for them to make sure they did it right. So someone pounds out a 500 word article based on stuff they found online, maybe goes back to check names, and hits publish, with no one else having read or vetted their work. And then, instantly, that article is available to millions of people.
So quality has tanked at the very same time that reach has exploded.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 7:12 AM on March 3, 2019 [3 favorites]
every time I hear about Niall Ferguson getting attention, I think about how sloppy his work is
Now there's a smug motherfucker who should be first up against the wall when we're deciding who to punish. Someone should force-feed him Jordan Peterson. Not the writing, the actual person.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:13 AM on March 3, 2019 [1 favorite]
Now there's a smug motherfucker who should be first up against the wall when we're deciding who to punish. Someone should force-feed him Jordan Peterson. Not the writing, the actual person.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:13 AM on March 3, 2019 [1 favorite]
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But these stories always leave me with a bit of awe at how well they succeed until they don't.
posted by jb at 11:27 AM on March 1, 2019 [4 favorites]