The shock of recognition
How familiar this statement by Rachel Polonsky sounds…
I am very glad to report that the legal dispute that Robert Service and I have had with Orlando Figes and Stephanie Palmer has now been settled.
This dispute began in mid-April when Orlando Figes denied responsibility for the ten Amazon reviews signed ‘Historian’ in a circular email to colleagues…
Our objectives in pressing this case were…to gain a contractual undertaking from Professor Figes not to use fraud, subterfuge or unlawful means to attack or damage us or our works in the future; and to require Professor Figes to circulate a formal apology and retraction to all the recipients of his email of 15 April.
Doesn’t that sound familiar? The denial of responsibility – the “no not me I never”? The use of fraud and subterfuge and unlawful means to attack and damage people and their works? It sounds awfully familiar to me.
So does Robert Service’s version:
I am pleased that this squalid saga is over. I never wanted to go to law, but the behaviour of Prof. Figes over three months made it impossible to let matters rest. He lied through his teeth for a week and threatened to sue me for libel if I didn’t say black was white. His wife, herself a lawyer, took up his cause and lied that she was the culprit and not he. At the end of the second week he was forced by the incontrovertible evidence to admit that he had written the anonymous reviews posted on the Amazon website. There followed weeks of grinding, needless altercation as he tried to tamp down the wording of his apology and retraction…
Check; check; check.
Universities in the UK are under all manner of pressures and criticisms at the moment, and it is terrible that Figes has made it easier for the critics to pounce. He has brought shame on that fine institution Birkbeck College. In my view it is inappropriate that a lecturer teaching about the lies in public life in Stalin’s USSR should himself be so menacing and dishonest. I would also question whether such an academic should soon or ever again be trusted to supply confidential, impartial references or reports for research grant-giving bodies.
And what about his students? Who would want a menacing dishonest teacher?
At the moment I obviously feel sore about the hundreds of hours of wasted time since mid-April, not to mention the unpleasantness…In some of his statements according to the press he has come close to depicting himself as the victim.
Check; check; check.
Sadly, this is nearly universal — upon being caught in wrongdoing, people deny it and threaten the people bringing the accusations. When I was teaching high school, this tactic was ubiquitous; I finally passed a rule that any denial or attempt to shift/turn around blame that was subsequently found to be false would result in double penalty (e.g., two days’ detention instead of one). It was the only way to curb this behavior even slightly.
Even more sadly, in the adult world this tactic pays big dividends in most cases — Joran van der Sloot, for example, got away with one murder scott-free, allowing him to go and commit another. Until blatant deception starts carrying serious legal penalties, this sort of thing can only be expected. And that really gets my goat.
The shock of recognition — but without the law. You weren’t considering this option, were you? But, really, you are still owed more, Ophelia, and Mooney should climb down from his perch and acknowledge that he allowed wrong to be done to you, and then condemned you for it. This deserves redress, and Mooney should provide it.
What a bizarre story the story about Figes really is. Here is an established scholar anonymously denigrating the work of others, and then jumping through hoops in order to avoid the consequences. I mean, the man has some real doorstops out there, and he had to stoop to this. And to add insult to injury, one of them is entitled <i>The Whisperers</i>. Now that’s poetic justice for you!
For some, the limit is only what they can get away with and it’s probably true to say that we only really know about the cases in which they ultimately failed.
My goat too, Kirth. I want my goat back!
Eric, no, of course I was never considering the law. Nor was Ben Goldacre in the matter of @GillianMcKeith, but he did say that what @GillianMcKeith said was libelous.
Whisperers. Sound of hollow laughter.
There are serious legal penalties for deliberate deception (in court at any rate)
But when was the last time you saw anyone being tried for perjury?
Happens pretty regularly.
Jonathan Aitken, 1999
Jeffrey Archer, 2001
‘Scooter’ Libby, 2007
Bernie Madoff, 2009
Tommy Sheridan (ongoing, I think)
And those are just some of the famous ones.
Dan