Orlando
Remember Orlando Figes? Remember what he got up to?
The future of one of Britain’s leading historians was looking increasingly uncertain tonight after he admitted that he was the author of anonymous reviews that praised his own work as “fascinating” and “uplifting” while rubbishing that of his rivals.
Oh that. He used a pseudonym to trash people. This was considered a bad thing. Not an excusable little lapse in manners, but a seriously bad thing.
John Sutherland, professor of English at University College London, suggested Figes’s position at Birkbeck could be under threat. “On the whole academics are pretty tolerant,” he said. “Clearly in the present climate he’s a star, and Birkbeck needs stars because of the upcoming research assessment exercise. They’ll find it easy to prove that he provides impact. On the other hand, he’s done something that’s dishonest and possibly actionable.”
It’s not the kind of thing an academic ought to do, you see. It could be seen as antipathetic to the values academics ought to support and live by.
Why, Ophelia, what are you possibly driving at?
;-)
You’re not getting the important distinction, though. Figes was doing it on purpose. Wally Smith simply kept forgetting who he was. Classic Dissociative Identity Knowledge (DIK) disorder. He’s a victim, you see. He deserves our sympathy.
Does this indicate just how corrupt and desperate certain institutions are becoming? Are not institutions also subject to their integrity and good name? I’m reminded of Orwell’s Animal Farm, where the pigs are having a jolly good time at the expense of the other farmyard animals.
Perhaps Prof Sutherland should realize that he’s in academia, not Hollywood, I wonder how he would treat one of his students who was sabotaging the work of others. Jeez,how very, very depressing.
I read a book by Figes on Russia a number of years ago and rather enjoyed it, but this news is disturbing. Ophelia, did you mean antithetical? I have not seen antipathetic used in that way, but perhaps it is my own ignorance.
“On the other hand…”
On the other fucking hand?
Orlando Figes should be keelhauled, roundly shat upon, and left for the sharks, academically speaking.
The administrators who cite his star status and their need for stars before acknowledging that “on the other hand” he’s dishonest… well, they should be keelhauled, puked on, and left for the sharks.
It really ought to be a firm rule in academia that this sort of thing is just Not Done. Not “not done” in the sense that you tsk and tut about it and let somebody remain a star, or even keep their job. I mean NOT FUCKING DONE, and if somebody does it anyway, their entire career is permanently ruined and they’re a notorious pariah.
The fact that academics are “under tremendous pressure” isn’t a good reason to go easy on them. It is precisely why we need to crack down really hard. I can pity the poor self-interested humans who fall into the trap, but I can’t see letting them get away with it and serve as an example of getting away with it to others.
More in sorrow than in anger, we should ensure that when somebody gets caught doing this sort of shit, they are completely destroying their careers.
The fact that Figes is a star makes it far less forgivable, not more. He didn’t have to do it. He wasn’t going to go hungry if he didn’t. He wasn’t going to lose his nice job and have trouble feeding his family. He has no fucking excuse, and nothing remotely like an excuse.
The weaselly administrative pukes at his university who think his star status counts against severely punishing him should be fired.
And for trying to use libel law to shut up his critics for saying the truth about him, he should actually go to jail like a common criminal, for years, if possible—and if that’s not possible, the law should be changed, and the next time some successful dishonest asshole tries the same trick, abusing he legal system to silence the people he’s been dishonestly abusing, that asshole should go to jail and spend several years in prison with the other common criminals.
I have a lot more respect for common criminals who resort to criminality because they’re poor and want no to be poor than for white collar shits who do it because they’re very successful, but still not quite successful enough for their ambitious tastes.
Heh, but you see, there’s a difference: Figes was only doing this to promote his own selfish interests, while Wally was lying for the greater cause! That’s why so many academics seem to have no problem standing by him, excusing his behavior with “well, he lied, but what he said needed to be said and, anyway, it still may have happened”.
On a totally different topic: I’m wondering if Stangroom, Rosenau and Jean are enjoying a quite weekend getaway together … the news of Wally doesn’t seem to have reached them yet. Oh, I bet they’re each drafting their own sincere “mea culpa” letter.
OK, so this is last year’s news. I was wondering, what has happened to Figes. Nothing, it seems. Apparently, the discussion at Birkbeck about how being know as a unit that placed academic integrity over reputation might attract talent in the future never took place.
@4: think “antipathy”; but antithetical is I think pretty much a synonym.
Tea:
I think there’s a chance Jean will have something like a reasonable reaction, but definitely not Josh and Jeremy. Mea Culpas are about as likely as Richard Dawkins getting elected president of Egypt.
I think I was wondering aloud last week, before I got confirmation that Hammill is Wally is Hammill is Wally, about the bizarro filter of the anti-gnu faction, who are in such a frenzy about the evil gnus but say never a word about good old Wally (though I didn’t call him Wally at the time). They do have a very bizarro filter.
Maybe their lack of comment is because they’re on Wally’s moral level.
It seems if you do use a pseudonym, and get caught, life goes on pretty much as usual…
http://www.bbk.ac.uk/history/our-staff/full-time-academic-staff/orlandofiges
http://www.orlandofiges.com/index.php
Oh, I just saw Tea’s interesting speculation now, after I had written the following in a mail to Ophelia (it’s nothing I couldn’t have put online anyway, but as I was mailing about something else I put it in there):
Speaking of whatever happened to… stories, particularly as relates to peculiarities of academic employment, Amy Wallace, who wrote a brilliant article in Wired about the anti-vaccine movement, now presents a long piece on Amy Bishop, the biology professor who murdered her colleagues.
Russell W and Paul W, I’m not sure why John Sutherland’s remark merits such hostility. He was just giving his frank assessment of how he thought academic politics would play out at a different university (which he probably assumed was not much different from the academic politics at his own university). It seems his assessment was correct. Is no one allowed to comment upon the political situation without simultaneously calling for Figes to be drawn and quartered?
Hamilton Jacobi @ 15,
But John Sutherland used the word “impact” and that is unforgivable!
Yes, but he used it as a noun, so his conduct is righteous, and Jesus will smile upon him.
Hamilton,
Excellent question.
I confess I read the post carelessly, and thought the Sutherland quotes were from an administrative type.
I missed the fact that Sutherland’s just an English professor, and apparently commenting from the sidelines. I thought the quotes were from somebody involved, although I didn’t assume it was from anybody actually making the calls about what to do with/to Figes. (I guess I thought it was some administrator reporting the sense of discussions they were in on, however peripherally, but probably not anybody with ultimate deciding power.)
My outrage isn’t directed toward Sutherland at all, but whoever’s position he’s characterizing, who is actually in a position to judge things that way and make the decisions—assuming Sutherland has it right about how the balance of those issues matters to those people.
Apologies for any impression I may have given that I was critical of Sutherland himself. Near as I can tell he hasn’t done a thing wrong, and I appreciate his willingness to comment on what’s likely to matter when it comes down to it.
If he’s right about how the people in power will assess things, though, some keelhauling of somebody is in order. :-) It should be a no-brainer that Figes’ star status shouldn’t count in his favor when deciding what to do with him.
Oops… that previous comment was from me.
(I confess! I’m Negligent Bystander!)
Off with his head!
And yes, I agree that such behavior ought not to be condoned, but I suspect that whenever and wherever a “star researcher” steps in it, the most hard-nosed of administrators will rejoice to discover that his heart grew three sizes that day.
Hamilton Jacobi,
Fair comment,perhaps I misunderstood, although I still wonder what the academic staff at Birkbeck would think of Prof.Sutherland’s assessment of their options.
I do like Marc Alan Di Martino. While the Stangroom blog has been quiet since the “Outing of Wally,” leading to some of the speculation above, I did notice that the gentleman himself has been active on Twitter (spare yourselves unless you’re into lederhosen), but Marc beat me to it: http://marcalandimartino.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/i-dont-want-to-get-in-the-middle-of-this-debate/
This has gone beyond farce. If we had reason to suspect PhysicistDave was an attempt to bring the strawman representation of us to life, he’s more than balanced by Stangroom’s unhinged flailings against us. I think I would have recognised Di Martino’s parody of Stangroom describing Jerry Coyne even out of context, without any identifiers. I mean, who else could this describe and who else could have written the description?
Orlando Figes dropped about ten thousand rungs on my ladder of respect for that stunt. It’s pathetic.
Oh, and thanks for the appreciation, Stewart! ; )
Wow, new super-power discovered: I can make anyone appear just by saying I like them. Wonder who I should try next.
Try Jesus!
That’s too simple, Marc.
Try Chris Mooney!
Can you summon all the usual accommodationist suspects? They’ve been hiding under a rock ever since the whole Wally thing erupted.
No summoning! It’s too risky, too unpredictable, too frightening. I forbid it.
Your sentence is commuted, Paul. I of course knew it was you, but since you weren’t using it to play silly buggers, I was unperturbed.
Marc’s post is great. I was going to say something about it yesterday but ran out of time.
I think there must be some kind of Point to doing OTT-rude posts and tweets and email replies about the perceived rudeness of others, but it’s way too subtle for me.
I should do a confession myself, since I’m being all self-righteous about Wally. Last year when my computer dropped dead and I had to get a new one, I did a few pseudonymous comments at Talking Philosophy. They had to be pseudonymous to be made at all, because I’m banned from commenting there. It’s a no-no to evade a ban by using a fake name. But on the other hand, my banning was itself quite odd – in fact something of a violation of norms or at least etiquette. One, there was no warning – no “stop being so rude or you’re banned”; and two, I was being irritable but not OTT irritable. There are also 3-5 at least, but I won’t go into those.
I was trying to discuss why new atheism is such a sore point, but doing it from the perspective of someone who isn’t up on all the local gossip. It was going swimmingly until the other party checked my IP address. :- )
Using a pseudonym is one thing (I use it all the time) but to deliberately mislead and attempt to destroy people’s careers, while working as an academic, is another. And so I don’t see that you did anything wrong Ophelia ;)
Thankfully, most of us sane people are aware of the difference of, say, using a critical tone to argue a point to, say, blowing people up. Of course the insane crowd don’t seem to realise this, and like to confuse the two by describing both as militant, or evil, in one big blob of disinformation.
Yes. I’ve been thinking about the implications of doing this “using many socks to damage reputations” for an academic. How could anyone trust an academic who has a history of doing this not to do nefarious things to students or rivals or perceived enemies?
It just seems like a generic disqualifier to me. It’s a red flag for someone who is willing to do obviously dishonest malicious things to people. That’s just not a quality you want in a teacher! Or a researcher either.
It takes a certain quality to do that kind of thing. An ability to conceive of something actively mendacious and malevolent, and then to do it and persist in it over a long period.
Well I guess the “quality” I’m talking about borders on psychopathy. A hardened indifference to other people.
What Ophelia is describing having done is hardly in the YNH league. Nobody here is frowning on anonymity in principle. Would it perhaps be correct to say that you wanted to hear what certain people might say to a stranger that they wouldn’t say to someone they knew to be you?
I don’t see what you did as being all that wrong. Deceptive, sure, but as you were just trying to voice your opinions in a forum you were excluded from for no real reason, it registers a meh on my scale of wrongitude. Deception in and of itself isn’t wrong. Using deception to sow havoc, discontent, libel people and draw attention away from legetimate concerns is another story.
Stewart, yes that was it exactly. I wanted to find out the reasons for the strong antipathy to new atheism, as someone other than me. I had tried plenty of times as me, and still didn’t really understand (and could no longer try that method in any case), and I thought it would be interesting to start from scratch. It was, too! But only for two or three comments, and then everything was deleted.
julian, sure, I think it’s a meh too. Otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. But…well, there’s at least one person who probably doesn’t see it that way. :- )
I’m going to be a little more, eh, “judge-y” and say that the confessed sockpuppeting Ophelia engaged in at Talking Philosophy was probably not okay, as far as it goes. Not that I’m a saint or anything — we all do things that are less than ethical from time to time.
But the point is that W. Smith’s unethical behavior was systematic, excessive, repeated, and intended specifically ruin others’ reputations. This is worlds away from an isolated ethical lapse.
When I buy dog food at the supermarket, I usually buy more than one bag at a time, since we go through it so fast. Sometimes the cashier won’t notice and will only ring me up for one. Sometimes I point out the mistake; other times I take the free dog food and run. That is clearly not ethical, and I don’t feel great about it. (Lately I’ve resorted to telling them up front how many bags I have, so that way I never even find out if I had the opportunity to save twenty bucks, and so I’m not tempted)
But I think I still have enough moral high ground to criticize serial shoplifters. I do not think that makes me a hypocrite.
By the same token, even though I think Ophelia’s story of socking in order to avoid a ban, and to pose as someone with a different perspective than she actually brought, was clearly unethical, I still think she very much has the moral high ground to condemn W. Smith!
James Sweet said
James, I think we should get our teminology correct here. Looking up the definition of sockpuppet gave me this wiki definition:
“a New York Times article claims that “sockpuppeting” is defined as “the act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one’s self, allies or company.”
What Ophelia describes is more like creating an anonymous pseudonym to get around an inexplicable banning. That is not the same as sock puppetry since there is no interaction with your original persona.
Merely to use a different name is one thing, but sock-puppetry is a presence-multiplier. A desire to participate while preserving anonymity does not seem to me to be in and of itself morally reprehensible, but I’m having a hard time thinking of scenarios in which sock-puppetry is not dishonestly manipulative. This just came my way and is somewhat related, even though it belongs to a different medium: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/07/exclusive-limbaughs-parent-company-still-using-actors-to-fake-radio-call-ins-exec-tells-raw/
I think Ophelia did nothing wrong in her use of a screen name. BTW, when I first read the title of this thread I thought, yea, a discussion on Virginia Woolf’s superb gender-bending classic. Hmm, maybe Orlando will be my next screen name….yet another persona from which to attack accomodationists.
Actually, Ophelia’s conduct could have been ethical, it entirely depends on the situation, what is said, and so to judge her as unethical seems silly to me. I mean, are undercover reporters unethical? Whistleblowers?
I certainly had Woolf’s Orlando in mind, as well as Shakespeare’s, to say nothing of the town in Florida. It’s just an all-around good name, so it was enough for a title.
The question is, if Orlando Figes, should the rest of us fige too?