The Plagiarism of Wendy McElroy
Tim Starr
I'm posting this for a friend of mine, George H. Smith, author of ATHEISM:
THE CASE AGAINST GOD, the book ATHEISM, AYN RAND & OTHER HERESIES, etc. I
haven't personally verified every claim he makes, but I believe him. Please
feel free to forward this anywhere you consider appropriate.
Tim Starr
Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 05:41:11 -0700
Reply-To: vam...@sj.bigger.net
Subject: Wendy McElroy, Plagiarist
URGENT – PLEASE POST AND CIRCULATE
ON THE PLAGIARISM OF WENDY MCELROY
BY GEORGE H. SMITH
THIS IS A SAMPLE OF PARALLEL PASSAGES BETWEEN WENDY MCELROY’S RECENT
BOOK, “THE REASONABLE WOMAN” (PROMETHEUS, 1998), AND AN UNPUBLISHED
MANUSCRIPT BY GEORGE H. SMITH, “THE FUNDAMENTALS OF REASONING,” FROM
WHICH MUCH OF MCELROY’S BOOK WAS PLAGIARIZED. MY MANUSCRIPT IS BASED ON
CLASSES THAT I CONDUCTED IN LOS ANGELES FROM 1975-1987, IN SAN DIEGO IN
1979, AND IN SAN FRANCISCO IN 1996.
MCELROY HAS POSSESSED A FULL AND COMPLETE COPY OF MY MANUSCRIPT AT LEAST
SINCE 1988. BUT HAVING HEARD THAT I SUPPOSEDLY LOST ‘EVERYTHING’ SOME
YEARS AGO IN STORAGE, SHE APPARENTLY ASSUMED THIS INCLUDED THE FLOPPY
DISK OF MY MANUSCRIPT, WHICH MAY HAVE PREVENTED ME FROM PROVING ANY
CLAIMS OF PLAGIARISM AGAINST HER.
BUT MY COMPUTER DISKS WERE NOT LOST, INCLUDING THREE DISKS OF
TRANSCRIPTS, NOTES AND DRAFTS OF “THE FUNDAMENTALS OF REASONING,” WHICH
I HAD HOPED TO PUBLISH WITHIN THE NEXT SEVERAL YEARS. WENDY, HOWEVER,
HAS PUBLISHED IT FOR ME, EXCEPT UNDER HER NAME AND TITLE, “THE
REASONABLE WOMAN.’
MCELROY HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE WRITING OF THIS MATERIAL OR THE
DEVELOPMENT OF THE IDEAS CONTAINED THEREIN. . WHAT SHE DID DO WAS TO
TRANSCRIBE IT FROM AUDIO TAPES, TRANSCRIPTS, AND NOTES THAT I HAD
GIVEN TO HER. THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A FAVOR ON HER PART. INSTEAD, SHE
FLAGRANTLY AND MALICIOUSLY PLAGIARIZED IT.
THE FOLLOWING IS BUT A SMALL SAMPLE. I COULD EASILY PROVIDE MANY DOZENS
OF ADDITIONAL PAGES THAT CONTAIN THE SAME KIND OF UNBELIEVABLE
PLAGIARISM.
I SINCERELY HOPE THAT THOSE WHO READ THIS DREARY PROCESSION OF
MATERIAL.WILL NOT ALLOW MCELROY TO GET AWAY WITH THIS KIND OF THING, BUT
WILL EXPRESS THEIR SHOCK AND DISAPPROVAL OPENLY AND DIRECTLY.
TO BE FRANK, I AM SO DEVASTATED BY THIS, ESPECIALLY COMING FROM A WOMAN
WHOM I LONG CONSIDERED A FRIEND, THAT I NEED MORAL SUPPORT FROM THOSE
PEOPLE OUT THERE (AND ESPECIALLY FELLOW WRITERS) WHO CAN UNDERSTAND WHAT
THIS ORDEAL HAS PUT ME THROUGH.
MCELROY HAS EFFECTIVELY PRECLUDED ME FROM PUBLISHING MY OWN MATERIAL
UNDER MY OWN NAME, FROM FEAR THAT IT WILL LOOK LIKE I HAVE STOLEN FROM
HER. SHE HAS, IN A SINGLE STROKE, DESTROYED SEVEN YEARS OF MY
INTELLECTUAL LABOR, AND RENDERED USELESS A BOOK MANUSCRIPT OF OVER 200
PAGES..
I TYPED THIS VERY QUICKLY, SO IT MAY CONTAIN TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. I
WOULD APPRECIATE HAVING THESE POINTED OUT TO ME, SO I CAN INCLUDE THE
CORRECTIONS FOR A LATER, EXPANDED VERSION.
GEORGE H. SMITH.
MAY 19, 1998
.
Smith, Chapter 8, p.4, line 3:“Subjectivists are made, not born.”
McElroy, p. 295:“Subjectivists are made, not born.”
Smith, Chapter 8, page19, lines 10-20: “But the most important and most
comprehensive variety of skepticism is what I call epistemological
skepticism: that is, skepticism with regard to the possibility of human
knowledge….But all skeptics share the common premise that reality lies
beyond the scope of human reason.”
McElroy, p289: “Philosophically, the most common sort of skepticism is
epistemological skepticism, that is, a skepticism that denies the
possibility of human knowledge. Epistemological skeptics share the
common belief that reality lies beyond the scope of human perception and
reason.”
Smith, Chapter 7, p. 4, lines 51-3: “Consider this fact: for this being,
there would be no distinction between what it believes to be true and
what actually is true.”
McElroy, p. 293: “Consider this fact alone: For an omniscient being
there is no distinction between what it believes is true and what
actually is true.”
Smith: Chapter 7., p.4, , lines 41-54: “Ask yourself: If there were an
infallible being, how would its reasoning processes differ from ours.
What would reasoning mean to a being who was incapable of reaching a
wrong conclusion? It might have to go through some sort of process of
thinking, but would it be a human process?
McElroy, p. 293:“Ask yourself a question: If you were an infallible,
omniscient being, how would your reasoning process differ from what
they are now? If you knew everything immediately and simultaneously,
what would thinking out a problem entail? You might go through a series
of mental processes, but how closely would they resemble the human
process of reasoning?”
Smith, Ch.7, p. 5, lines 12-24:“After all, there would be nothing it did
not already know, nothing for its mind to discover. Such a creature
would not even think in any manner that makes sense to human beings. To
human beings, thinking means moving from ignorance toward knowledge. It
is goal directed. But an omniscient being would not require human
thought at all. It would be pure knowledge.”
McElroy, p. 293: “Since there is nothing it did not already know, there
would be nothing for its mind to discover, and no need to compare its
beliefs against reality to ascertain their validity. For this one fact
alone, it is clear that an omniscient being would not “think” in any
manner remotely resembling human thought, which is a process of mentally
moving from ignorance toward knowledge. An omniscient being would
already be entirely knowledgeable.”
Smith, p. 5, lines 26-32:“The point being made here is that all of our
standards of knowledge, and most of the words we use to deal with
knowledge – terms like “truth,” “falsehood,” “probability,” “evidence” –
exist in the context of fallible, non-omniscient human beings.”
McElroy, p. 293:“The crucial point is: all the standards of knowledge
that human beings apply to themselves are firmly based on the assumption
that we are fallible human beings. The very words we use to describe our
standards of knowledge exist in this context of fallibility. The words
“certainty,” “truth,” “falsehood,” “probability,” and “possibility” make
no sense whatsoever except when referring to fallible human beings.”
Smith, p.5, line 44-p. 6, line 5:“Otherwise stated: the word
“certainty” itself makes sense only in the context of fallible beings.
If you were infallible or omniscient, then thinking would be irrelevant
or impossible. First of all, there would be no need for the discussion
in which your certainty is being questioned. Why would you engage in
discussion [sic] of truth, when everything is known and everything known
is true. Second, if you were infallible, the terms “evidence,”
“certainty,” and “true” or “false” would not even make sense.
McElroy, p. 293:“In other words, if people were infallible, then the
concepts of truth and falsehood, and all the shades of intellectual
likelihood in between, would not exist. Truth – a term which is meant to
distinguish a belief or statement as being “not false” – would have no
significance. Every belief of an infallible being would be automatically
true. The concepts of possibility, probability, and certainty, would
never have evolved because there would be no need of cognitive
yardsticks against which to measure the likelihood of our “knowledge” as
being true.”
Smith, page 9, line 42- page 19, line 3:“There is an interesting and
very useful technique to use with people who attack the possibility of
certainty. Whenever anyone says to you, “You can’t be certain about
that,” you should ask him, “precisely what have we not got?” After all,
the person is using the word certainty and saying that you don’t have
it, so he obviously knows what it is. Ask him to define what he means by
certainty. Ask him to describe the criteria or standards by which
certainty in this instance would be recognized. Ask him, what does
certainty require?”
McElroy, p. 294:“There is an interesting technique you can use with
anyone who attacks the possibility of your knowing anything. When
someone tells you, “You can’t be certain about that,” ask her what she
means by the word “certainty.” (You might even ask if she is “certain”
that “certainty” doesn’t exist.” Ask her to define the standards by
which certainty could be established.”
Smith, Chapter 8, p.5, line 37- page 6, line 2 “The word “skepticism” is
used in a variety of ways and some are not objectionable. For example,
we sometimes use the word “skeptical” to refer to mental attitude of
cautiousness. A skeptic in this case is one who refuses to believe a
proposition until sufficient evidence is presented in its favor…The
desirability of skepticism depends on the context in which it is
applied..”
McElroy, p. 289: “The word “skepticism is used in many ways and some
are not objectionable. For example, it can refer to an attitude of
intellectual cautiousness. That is, a skeptic may be simply someone who
refuses to believe anything without sufficient evidence. The
desirability of skepticism depends on how the word is being used.”
Smith, Chapter 10, page 3, lines 12-22 (under sub-heading, THE
FALSIFICATION OF THEORIES): “There was a British philosopher named Karl
Popper, who developed a very useful theory regarding scientific
discovery. Popper disputed the common notion that scientists form
hypothesis [sic] and then go out and try to verify the hypothesis. He
claimed that what scientists do, and what they should be doing, is
trying not to verify hypothesis [sic], but to falsify them.”
McElroy, 211, (under sub-heading, THE FALSIFICATION PRINCIPLE):“The most
useful principle I have found is called falsification, so named by the
philosopher Karl Popper Popper developed an intriguing approach by which
to evaluate scientific claims. He disputed the notion that scientists
should form a hypothesis…and then, go out and try to verify it. He
claimed that scientists should go out and try to falsify a hypothesis
rather than to verify it.”
Smith, Chapter 10, page 3, lines24- :”Popper observed that you could
never conclusively verify a scientific theory, no matter how many cases
you observe, because there was this problem of affirming the consequent.
In other words, scientists were trapped in the invalid form of: If P,
then Q: Q, therefore P. To translate this into common terms, scientists
were arguing:
“If my theory is correct, swans are black.
Here is a black swan.
Therefore, my theory is correct.”
McElroy, p. 211: He observed that you could never conclusively verify a
scientific theory, no matter how many confirming cases you observe. To
speak in terms of logic, you would be running up against a fallacy known
as affirming the consequent. In other words, you would be trapped in an
invalid form of syllogism that would run as follows: If P, then Q; Q,
therefore, P. To translate this into common English, you would be
arguing along the lines of:
If my theory is correct, then all swans are black.
Here is a black swan.
Therefore my theory is correct.”
Smith (cont., lines 42-46): “This is the fallacy of affirming the
consequent. And no matter how many black swans (Qs) you observe, you
cannot derive the truth of the theory ( P) from that process.”
McElroy, p. 211: “This is the fallacy of affirming the consequent. And
no matter how many black swans (Qs) you observe, you cannot derive the
truth of the theory “swans are black birds” (P) from that process,
because there might be a swan out of view that is not black.”
Smith, (cont., p. 3, line 48-page 4, line 1): “But!, Popper pointed out,
you can disprove a theory by observing one single white swan. Therefore
a theory which cannot be verified, can be disproven. All it takes is one
counterinstance, one counter factual condition and the theory is proven
false.”
McElroy, p. 211: “But! Popper pointed out, you can disprove the theory
by observing one single white swan. Therefore, a theory that cannot be
conclusively verified can be absolutely disproven. All it takes to
falsify a theory, such as “Swans are black birds,” is the presence of
one swan that is not black.”
Smith (cont., p. 4, lines 3-9 ) “Popper concluded that scientific
investigation was a process of what he called conjecture and refutation.
In other words, scientists were confronted with a problem, and they
offered a conjecture of what they thought the solution might be., Then
they searched for ways of falsifying that possible solution.”
McElroy, p. 211: “Popper concluded that scientific investigation is a
process of conjecture and refutation. When scientists are confronted
with a question, they offer a conjecture – that is, an opinion without
sufficient evidence for proof – about what they think the solution might
be. Then they searched for ways to refute or falsify the very solution
they have suggested.”
Smith (cont., lines 11-17): “As theories held up over long periods of
time – as they resisted strenuous attempts to falsify them – they became
refined and assumed to be true.”:
McElroy, p. 212: “Of course, as a theory resists falsification over
years and years of being tested, it becomes more likely to be a correct
theory….”
Smith, page 4, lines 25-29: “My point here is that one very important
tool in the discovery of truth and knowledge is this process of
falsification.”
McElroy, p.212, “Falsification is a powerful tool in evaluating facts
and theories.”
Smith, page 4, lines 37-41: “Too often, people look only to confirming
cases. They only look for those things that will support what they want
to be true.”
McElroy p. 212: “People commonly look only for confirming cases….and
take notice only of the evidence supporting what they believe to be
true. Or what they want to be true.”
Smith (cont., lines 41-47): “But as you can see, disconfirming cases can
be a powerful intellectual tool, because they can tell you right away if
there is something wrong with your theory.”
McElroy, p. 212: “Yet seeking out such disconfirming cases can be a
powerful intellectual tool because they tell you right away if there is
something wrong with a theory.”
Smith (page 4, lines 55-p. 5, line 4): “Another avenue of ignoring, or
shutting out, disconfirming cases, is by presenting arguments which, in
principle cannot be refuted.”
McElroy, p. 212: “Another way of shutting out disconfirming cases is by
presenting arguments which, by their very nature, cannot be refuted.”
Smith (cont., lines 4-22): “For example, there is an old joke in
philosophy about a man who runs to the doctor and says “doctor, doctor
I’m dead.” The doctor looks at him and says, “no, you are not.” The man
replies, “yes, I am; I am dead.” The doctor thinks of how to convince
the man that he isn’t dead. Finally he says to the guy, “would you agree
with me that dead men don’t bleed?” The guy agreed. The doctor pricks
the man’s [sic] and he bleeds. “Aha,” the doctor proclaims, “see, dead
men don’t bleed and you bleed; therefore you are alive.” The man
reflects on this and replies, “I was obviously wrong. Dead men do bleed
afterall [sic].””
McElroy, p. 212: “There’s an old joke in philosophy about a man who says
to his doctor, “Doctor, doctor, I’m dead.” The doctor replies, “No you
are not.” The man persists. “Yes, I am; I am dead.” The doctor argues
with the fellow, “Would you agree with me that dead men don’t bleed?”
The man agrees. The doctor then pricks his patient’s finger and he
bleeds. “Aha,” the doctor proclaims, “See, dead men don’t bleed and here
is blood, therefore, you are alive.” The man reflects on this and
concludes, “I was obviously wrong. Dead men do bleed.”
Smith (cont., lines 24-32): “The moral of this joke is that, too often,
when people do not want to have a theory refuted, they construct their
arguments in such a way that the arguments cannot be falsified. The
construct a theory in such a way that there is nothing that will
disconfirm it.”
McElroy, p. 212: “The moral is: when people do not want to have a theory
refuted, they often construct their arguments in such a manner as to
make them unfalsifiable. They construct arguments in such a way that no
amount of evidence will disconfirm them.”
Smith, under the heading THEORY AS A RISK TAKING VENTURE: Chapter 10, p.
5, lines 35-54: “To put this a different way – advancing a theory is an
intellectual risk. If you are attempting to reach out into the real
world and prove, then you are making yourself vulnerable. Because
whenever there is a possibility of verification, there is a possibility
of falsification.”
McElroy, p. 213 (under the heading THEORY IS A RISKY BUSINESS), p. 213:
“To advance a theory is to take a risk that the real-world evidence
might prove you wrong…. [W]herever there is the possibility of
verification, there is also the possibility of falsification.”
Smith, page 6, lines 1-9: “When you say, “If my theory is correct, all
swans are black,” you are running the risk of seeing a non-black swan,
and losing your theory. Only by an intellectual slight [sic]-of-hand,
such as labelling [sic] an[sic] non-black swan to be a goose, can you
avoid this risk.”
McElroy, p. 213: “For example, when you way, “If my theory is correct,
all swans are black,” and wander down to the local pond to check the
evidence, you risk seeing a white swan and disproving your theory. Only
by an intellectual sleight of hand, can you eschew the risk.”
Smith (cont., lines 11-15): “A person who claims to want his theory
verified, but doesn’t want to take the corresponding risk of possibly
falsifying it, is not being intellectually honest.”
McElroy, p. 213: “A person who claims to respect evidence, but doesn’t
want to take the risk of being proven wrong, is not being intellectually
honest.”
Smith, p. 6, lines 34-p. 7, line 2): “Let me give you two examples of
theories, which place themselves beyond the possibility of
falsification. When Karl Popper was going to school in Vienna, he
noticed two very popular movements, or schools of thought, which were
both claiming to be scientific: Freudianism and Marxism. Popper was very
interested in the scientific method, but whenever he would get into an
argument with either a Freudian or a Marxism [sic], he encountered
insurmountable obstacles. Namely, they were immune to refutation. Note:
this is quite different from saying that they could not be refuted
because they were correct. Instead, the theories were constructed in
such a manner as to eliminate any possibility of disconfirming cases.”
McElroy, p. 214: “When he was a student in Vienna, Karl Popper took
special note of a school of thought that was popular in his day:
Freudianism. In analyzing Freudian theory, Popper encountered a strange
and insurmountable obstacle. Namely, it seemed immune to refutation. It
was not that Freudian theory could not be refuted because it was
correct, but that the system of theory was constructed in such a manner
as to eliminate the very possibility of disconfirming cases.”
Smith, page 7, lines 4-22: “For example, in discussing the
psychological condition which Freud called the oedipal (elektra)
complex, the Freudian would claim it was “universal” – that is, everyone
had this complex. Popper would point out that a lot of people have no
memory, no feeling, no indication whatever of this desire. Such evidence
would seem to be disconfirming. To put it in logical terms, Popper was
saying to the Freudian:
“If you correct [sic], then all men have an oedipal complex:
But there are men without such a complex.
Therefore you are not correct.”
McElroy, page 214: “Consider the Freudian psychological phenomenon
called the Oedipal (Electra) complex – the sexual attachment that every
child is alleged to fee4l toward a parent of the opposite sex. Freud
claimed this phenomenon was “universal.” It was a stage of development
that everyone went through. Popper would point out that a great many
well-adjusted people, who had happy and happy and apparently unrepressed
childhoods, have no memory, no feeling, no indication whatsoever of
every having had such a desire. Surely such recurring evidence seems to
disconfirm the claim that the Oedipal complex is universal.
“To put Popper’s objection in more logical terms:
If Freudian theory is correct, all people have experienced an Oedipal
complex.
But many people claim not to have had such an experience.
Therefore, the theory is not correct.”
Smith, (cont., lines 24-40): “But the Freudians, faced with
disconfirming cases of their theory, simply defined those cases out of
existence. They said, “men you don’t manifest any sign whatsoever of an
oedipal complex are merely repressing it.” In other words, Freudians
simply produced another, companion theory to define out of existence any
counter evidence. No matter how Popper argued with them, they [sic] was
always another theory – or an unstated aspect of the original theory –
which made is impossible for them to be refuted.”
McElroy, p. 214: “Yet when the Freudians were confronted with cases that
falsified their theory, they simply defined those cases out of
existence, rather as the white swan was redefined as a duck. They said:
“People who don’t manifest any sign whatsoever of an Oedipal complex are
merely repressing it.” In other words, Freudians produced a companion
theory to define out of existence any counterevidence. …The position was
so constructed as to preclude falsification.”
Smith, Chapter 10, p. 10, line39-40. “To rephrase this point: whenever
someone attempts to prove something, he must assume the risk of his
claim being disproven.”
McElroy, p. 216: To rephrase this point, whenever you attempt to prove
something, you must assume the risk of your claim being disproven.”
Smith, p. 15, line 54: “Theories should be dealt with on a theoretical
level.”
McElroy, p. 216: “Theories must be dealt with on a theoretical level.”
I AM TOO WEARY AND TOO SICK OF HEART TO TYPE ANY MORE OF THIS, WHICH
CONSTITUTES (AS A CONSERVATIVE GUESS) AT LEAST 75 PAGES OF MCELROY’S
BOOK.
GEORGE H. SMITH
Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 12:30:51 -0700
Reply-To: vam...@sj.bigger.net
Subject: More plagiarism
MORE PLAGIARISM BY WENDY MCELROY
by George H. Smith
This bit of plagiarism was copied from a different source than what I
covered in my last transmission. McElroy here lifted from a PUBLIC
DOCUMENT, namely, my standard handout for participants in my
“Fundamentals of Reasoning” class (written in 1974) and distributed to
hundreds of people.
My original is in lower case, with McElroy’s version below in upper
case.
GEORGE H. SMITH
May 19, 1997
Smith, p. 3: “Life is a series of decisions, and where there is
a decision there is
MCELROY, P. 91: “LIFE IS A SERIES OF DECISIONS, AND WHERE THERE ARE
ACTIONS, THERE IS
always the . possibility of error.
Most of our activities are done
ALWAYS THE POSSIBILITY OF FALLING FLAT ON YOUR FACE. . .. MOST OF OUR
ACTIVITIES ARE DONE
habitually, without conscious thought. When we set a new
goal, however,
HABITUALLY – THAT IS WITHOUT CONSCIOUS THOUGHT. WHEN YOU SET A NEW GOAL,
HOWEVER,
we must redirect our habits, and the possibility of
failure looms ever
YOU MUST FREQUENTLY REDIRECT YOUR HABITS, AND THE POSSIBILITY OF
FAILURE LOOMS EVER
present
CLOSER.
.
It is this fear of failure – the fear of taking risks – that
condemns many people to a
IT IS PRECISELY THIS FEAR OF FAILURE
THAT CONDEMNS MANY PEOPLE TO A
life of dreary routine devoid of significant risks, but also devoid
of significant
LIFE OF DREARY ROUTINE DEVOID OF SIGNIFICANT RISKS, BUT ALSO DEVOID
OF SIGNIFICANT
challenges. and rewards
CHALLENGES AND REWARDS.
Smith, p. 3: “A risk in any activity (a) that is not done
habitually, and therefore MCELROY, P. 92: “A RISK IS ANY ACTIVITY THAT:
(A) IS NOT DONE HABITUALLY,
must be done consciously and deliberately; (b) that will, directly or
indirectly, put you
(B) WILL PUT YOU CLOSER TO
closer to something you want; © that entails the possibility of
failure and
SOME GOAL YOU HAVE ESTABLISHED, © ENTAILS THE POSSIBILITY OF FAILURE,
AND, (D)
thereby creates a resistance to doing
it. To qualify as your risk
FREQUENTLY REQUIRES YOU TO OVERCOME EMOTIONAL RESISTANCE TO TAKING
ACTION.
for the day, two conditions must be met. (1) The risk must result from a
conscious
TWO OTHER CONDITIONS MUST BE MET: (1) THE RISK MUST RESULT FROM
A CONSCIOUS
decision to take an action, and the action must be perceived as a risk
at the time.
DECISION TO TAKE AN ACTION, AND THE ACTION MUST BE PERCEIVED AS A RISK
AT THE TIME.
You must think to yourself, in effect: “I am about to take a risk.” Your
success or failure
YOU MUST THINK TO YOURSELF, IN EFFECT: “I AM ABOUT TO TAKE A RISK.”
THEN, DO IT.
is irrelevant – the important thing is to try. But remember: there are
no “risks in
THERE ARE NO “RISKS IN
retrospect.” You cannot reflect on your day and
select an action as a risk
RETROSPECT.”YOU CANNOT REFLECT AT THE END OF YOUR DAY AND SELECT AN
ACTION AS A RISK
unless you viewed it as one before you took it. (b) The risk must be
recorded in writing.
UNLESS YOU VIEWED IT AS ONE BEFORE YOU TOOK IT. (B) THE RISK MUST BE
RECORDED IN WRITING.
This is another function for your journal. A brief note each day stating
what you did and YOU MUST MAKE A BRIEF NOTE EACH DAY STATING – AT BARE
MINIMUM
how you did it is sufficient, although you may elaborate more if you
wish.
WHAT THE RISK WAS AND HOW YOU DID WITH IT.
Smith, p. 1: A good method for maintaining your
journal is as follows:
MCELROY, P. 148: HERE IS A GOOD STRATEGY FOR MAINTAINING YOUR
INTELLECTUAL DIARY.
(1) Acquire a loose-leaf binder and the necessary paper. At a set time
each week --
(1) GET A LOOSE-LEAF BINDER AND STACK OF PUNCHED PAPER. EVERY WEEK AT
SOME SET TIME –
(for example, just before or after class) date seven sheets
of paper corresponding
PERHAPS SUNDAY NIGHT OR MONDAY MORNING – DATE SEVEN SHEETS OF PAPER TO
CORRESPOND
to the days of the following week.
WITH THE NEXT SEVEN DAYS.
Smith (p. 2): When you fail to write in your journal, be sure
to note the reason on
MCELROY (P. 149): IF YOU FAIL TO KEEP YOUR DAILY APPOINTMENT WITH THE
DIARY, MAKE SURE TO
the appropriate page. This may consist of nothing more than, “I forget”
or, “I was too
JOT DOWN THE REASON WHY. THAT PAGE OF THE DIARY MAY READ: I FORGOT, OR
“I LOST THE
tired today.”
NOTEBOOK.
Smith (p.3) “Avoid nebulous, ill-defined goals. For example,
to say
MCELROY (P. 89): “BREAK YOUR GOALS DOWN INTO BITE-SIZED PARTS. CONSIDER
THE STATEMENT:
“I would like to become an intellectual within the next year says next
to nothing.
“I WANT TO BECOME AN INTELLECTUAL. THIS IS A LAUDABLE GOAL, BUT NOT A
VERY USEFUL ONE.
Break down what you mean by “intellectual.” You may end up with
something like
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE AN INTELLECTUAL? … FOR EXAMPLE, YOU MIGHT WRITE
DOWN:…
this:….“I would like to be able to speak more succinctly” ; or, “I would
like to keep my
“I WANT TO STOP MY MIND FROM WANDERING; IN ARGUMENTS, I WANT
TO SPEAK MORE TO
mind from wandering so much.” Even these can be broken down further
for dealing the
POINT, RATHER THAN RAMBLING. EVEN THESE MORE SPECIFIC GOALS
CAN BE FURTHER
with them on a daily basis.
BROKEN DOWN INTO MORE MANAGEABLE UNITS.
Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 21:06:16 -0700
Reply-To: vam...@sj.bigger.net
Subject: Reply to McElroy
Reply To Wendy McElroy, Plagiarist
By George H. Smith
This is a response to McElroy’s rather bizarre defense of her
plagiarism.
The key issue is this: Is McElroy’s book essentially the same as “The
Fundamentals of Reasoning” book, or is it not. I say it is. I say that
at least fifty percent of that book is mine. To support this claim, I
quoted extensively from a 1988 draft, which was transcribed by McElroy
from my Fundamentals of Reasoning classes. I did not say I wrote all of
McElroy’s book, just a substantial portion of it.
And what does McElroy say? Is her book the same as the FOR book, or
isn’t it. Her answer is yes, when it suits her purpose, and no, when
that suits her purpose. There was a co-authored book, she says, in 1989,
when the contract was signed. And let’s assume, for the sake of
argument, that this was a fifty-fifty split. Okay, what was my
contribution? And what was hers? Whatever her answer, I wrote at least
fifty percent. So, if she wishes to identify her book with the FOR
manuscript, and if she admits that we split it fifty-fifty, then that
means that fifty percent of her current book was plagiarized from me.
Yet this is precisely my argument. I claim that she plagiarized at least
fifty percent of her material from my early draft, principally on
philosophical issues.
But, on the other hand, that doesn’t appear to be her argument. All
this is quite irrelevant, she says, because she wrote the book from
scratch starting in 1994, having discarded and erased all previous
drafts. So it is 100 percent original, all hers from beginning to end.
Yet, this pristine version is virtually identical -- same arguments,
phraseology, examples, sub-headings, and even jokes -- to the early 1988
version, which she claims was nowhere at hand when she started the
pristine version.
I rest my case entirely on this absurd claim. When McElroy wrote this
defense, she had no idea of the extensive parallel quotations that I
would be presenting; she knew only of the second set of quotations,
shorter by far, taken from my Fundamental Reasoning handout (and written
in 1974, one year before we even met). Thus she figured she could
explain away a few problem paragraphs with her final line: “If some
passages from the manuscript George references parallel passages within
THE REASONABLE WOMAN, it is because both came from the same hand. Mine.”
This might fly if only a few verbatim passages were involved. But it is
totally absurd when used to explain the many dozens of parallel passages
I quoted in my first transmission about her plagiarism. Go back over
those nine pages of often identical lines, and judge for yourself the
likelihood that her new version just happens to resemble the old,
because they “both came from the same hand.”
Has McElroy taken leave of even her common sense?
George H. Smith
Date: Sun, 24 May 1998 17:19:07 -0700
Reply-To: vam...@sj.bigger.net
THE LIGHTER SIDE OF PLAGIARISM
George H. Smith
I wish to thank the many people who have emailed me and expressed their
outrage at the overt and massive plagiarism of Wendy McElroy in THE
REASONABLE WOMAN. Many of you have asked whether I contacted Wendy
before going public. The answer is yes: I emailed her two days earlier
with some of the evidence, told her I had a good deal more, and offered
to settle this between the two of us. She refused, though I cannot
imagine why.
Now that the dust is beginning to settle on this controversy, and now
that my anger is beginning to subside (thanks largely to the moral
support I have received), I thought some of you out there might be
interested in the lighter side of plagiarism.
A problem arises when a person copies from someone else’s material,
namely, that the plagiarist may not understand what the original writer
was getting at and so may misconstrue his meaning. There are two notable
examples of this in the eight pages of parallel quotations that I
distributed earlier.
The first appears on page 5, beginning with the sentence “But!” (This
is italicized in both my original and in Wendy’s copy.)
Smith: “But!, Popper pointed out, you can disprove a theory by
observing one single white swan. Therefore a theory which cannot be
verified, can be disproven. All it takes is one counterinstance, one
counter factual condition and the theory is proven false.”
McElroy, p. 211: “But! Popper pointed out, you can disprove the theory
by observing one single white swan. Therefore, a theory that cannot be
conclusively verified can be absolutely disproven. All it takes to
falsify a theory, such as “Swans are black birds,” is the presence of
one swan that is not black.”
.
Consider the thrice-accentuated “But!” in this passage – the first
emphasis consisting of a single-word sentence, the second of placing the
word in italics, and the third of using an exclamation point. The
context of this passage scarcely justifies this kind of rhetorical
device, to say the least. It would be more suited to a pamphlet written
by an evangelical preacher, e.g., “Believe as you like. But! You will
suffer the agonies of hell for all eternity.”
I never intended for this “But!” to appear as part of a published
manuscript. For one thing it reeks of cheap theatrics ( which may
explain why Wendy included it in her book). This passage is a verbatim
transcript from one of my Fundamentals of Reasoning classes, where I was
speaking off the cuff, without any notes in front of me. . When looking
through the transcript, however, I realized that this was in fact a
misinterpretation of Karl Popper, so I inserted the “But!” to remind
myself that this passage needed to be reworked at a later time.
Professional writers will know what I mean. All of us have flags that we
insert in early manuscripts as an alert not to leave the passage as is.
That was my purpose in inserting an italicized “But!” in the comment
about Popper. (Incidentally, when I knew her, Wendy had never read even
a page of Popper or anything else on the philosophy of science.) Popper
did not in fact claim that one counterexample could always disprove a
theory. He was fully aware that theories can and often do incorporate
apparent counterexamples by resorting to ad hoc explanations, and that a
theory long-established is never likely to be discarded on this basis
(nor should it be, according to Popper).
At the time I read this passage in the transcript, I had not figured out
a way to do justice to Popper’s approach, so I tagged it for later
revision. I needed to bring in the notion of a “crucial experiment,” but
hadn’t yet figured out a way to explain this in a non-technical way.
(Indeed, I considered cutting out the section on Popper altogether,
owing to the complexities involved.)
All this, of course, went right by Wendy while she was busy lifting my
material. She included the “But!” as if were meant to be part of the
finished manuscript!
A similar example occurs on pp. 7-8, where I inserted a note to myself
in the rough draft of my FOR transcripts.:
Smith: “Note: this is quite different from saying that they could not
be refuted because they were correct. Instead, the theories were
constructed in such a manner as to eliminate any possibility of
disconfirming cases.”
Again, I inserted this note in the discussion of Popper, because I felt
that something else needed to be explained in more detail, when I
undertook a rewrite. In my loose and informal account of Popper, I had
not mentioned that he viewed his falsification test as a “line of
demarcation” between science and philosophy (or, to use his word,
“metaphysics”). . The main problem was that I do not really agree with
Popper on this issue, though I found his approach useful as a kind of
informal test. I therefore felt I should explain my disagreement in more
detail. Some propositions cannot be falsified because they are
self-evidently true (such as the laws of logic), but I don’t regard
these as “unscientific.” Moreover, Popper’s falsification principle
suffers from the same flaw as all such quasi-positivistic criteria,
viz., the principle itself cannot pass its own test. Hence I inserted a
note to remind myself that I needed to take these (and other) issues
into account later on.
True to form, however, Wendy forged ahead in her plagiarism, oblivious
to the significance of my “Note.” Thus she wrote:
McElroy, p. 214: “It was not that Freudian theory could not be refuted
because it was correct, but that the system of theory was constructed in
such a manner as to eliminate the very possibility of disconfirming
cases.”
Exactly what does it mean to say: “It was not that Freudian theory could
not be refuted because it was correct….etc..”? This passage borders on
gibberish; certainly Popper never said anything like this. Rather, Wendy
simply removed the word “Note,” and, instead of realizing that there was
a problem with Popper’s approach -- one that I needed to flesh out at
a later time -- she blended my remark into her text with no
understanding of its meaning.
This is not only plagiarism, this is incompetent plagiarism.
All of you future plagiarists out there take heed! If you are going to
steal someone’s material, try at least to understand the meaning of what
you are about to steal. Otherwise you will, like Wendy McElroy, only
succeed in making a fool of yourself.
Brad Rodriguez
As a response to George H. Smith's email accusations of plagiarism, I
wish
to circulate the following statement.
GEORGE SMITH FALSE ACCUSATIONS...PLEASE FORWARD AS WIDELY AS POSSIBLE
First, I would ask every reader of this email to proceed to
<http://www.zetetics.com/reason/contract.gif> to access the contract
between
Smith and McElroy covering the *co-authored* work that George H. Smith
claims is his sole property. Note that, by its terms and by my efforts,
I
supplied to him a finished manuscript on reasoning for his review, which
manuscript now is under question as the source of plagiarism for The
Reasonable Woman. I have a full 50% ownership claim and right to the
work
that he is using to support the accusation of plagiarism. This means
that --
according to my lawyer, Prometheus' lawyer, and my moral conscience -- I
have the right to quote the book in its entirety, should I wish to do
so. As
it is, The Reasonable Woman was written independently and it 'parallels'
the
earlier book only in snippets that arose largely from memory as I sat
before
my PC. I wrote The Reasonable Woman from scratch, clearing my hard disk
of
all previous material. If it uses wordage or concepts from the
previously
co-authored work, it is not only my right to do so, it is accidental...I
wanted The Reasonable Woman to be an entirely separate work. However, I
am
the author both of the manuscript used as evidence of plagiarism and the
manuscript accused of plagiarism. I have been accused of plagiarizing
myself.
The following provides some history which might be useful....
On November 29, 1989, four years after our separation and in the
presence
of a mutual friend, both George and I signed a contract concerning the
book
he is claiming as his sole authorship. The opening statement reads:
"George
H. Smith and Wendy McElroy, having co-authored a book on reasoning
(hereinafter the "book"), which they now wish to market and publish, do
declare the following to be their understanding of the agreement:"
The agreement documented our 50/50 contribution to the co-authored book
that
arose as a result of the ten years we lived and worked together as a
team.
George has claimed I never contributed to the book's evolution or
execution
except as a typist/transcriber. Just as I was a full co-owner of our
enterprise Lysander's Books, a co-signatory on the lease for the office
of
Forum for Philosophical Studies, I was also his intellectual partner in
developing material on reasoning that he constantly interwove throughout
the
classes and that I converted into the co-authored book, written in an
"I"
format to make it less clumsy and more personal. The 'co-authorship'
contract is an undeniable expression of that full partnership.
Our book was reviewed and rejected in 1991 by Prometheus Books. [The
same
man at the same press reviewed and accepted my book The Reasonable Woman
in
1997.] After our relationship became untenable, I returned to George all
material except for redundant copies, which I discarded. I also wiped
the
material from my hard disk. In late 1994, my agent Simon Green urged me
to
write a book on reasoning for women. I began from scratch to write up
preliminary chapters containing contributions original to me, my
personal
experiences, any contributions not original to George (e.g. material
that
had been gleaned from other sources such as Brand Blanshard -- being
careful
to provide citations), and anything specifically related to women and
reasoning. After two rewrites, the book was rejected, and shelved. In
1997,
I took another pass at it and the manuscript was accepted on the
condition I
do a rewrite. If some passages from the manuscript George references
parallel passages within The Reasonable Woman it is because both came
from
the same hand. Mine.
Wendy
Brad Rodriguez
There is a curious omission in Tim Starr's posting. When Smith's
response to McElroy was posted earlier to the randian-feminism mail
list, it included the following addendum, in which Smith explicitly
acknowledges knowing the existence of, and being a party to, the
co-authorship contract. By his own admission, Smith knowingly made a
false statement that McElroy was merely a typist when he knew she was a
co-author. Was the following text deleted by Starr or Smith?
A posting on the issue of similar language will be made shortly.
----- begin quoted material -----
Addendum: A Letter to Prometheus Books
I hope you have seen Wendy’s reply to me, and the contract that she
posted on her web page. That contract was the missing link in my case
against her, since I lost my copy years ago and had no way of proving
that we ever signed one. I had hoped that this public controversy might
scare her bad enough to go public with it, and it did.
We now have the following elements::
(1) An extensive manuscript on the Fundamentals of Reasoning which is
beyond any doubt an early draft for THE REASONABLE WOMAN.
(2) A contract between Wendy and I to co-author an unnamed book on
reasoning.
(3) Wendy’s admission. that we contributed 50-50 to the book. (This is
not actually true; the manuscript as written up to that point was all
mine. We never got far enough on the project for Wendy to add her
contributions, e.g., some material on women and statistics. But, for the
sake of argument, I will settle for her admission of 50-50. By the way,
what do you think of her false claim that the book was submitted to
Prometheus in 1991? You know it was not.)
When you are convinced that the manuscript is what I represent it to be,
then, given Wendy’s posted admissions, there can be no reasonable doubt
that I am the co-author (and, according to the contract, the first
author) of THE REASONABLE. WOMAN.
George H. Smith
----- end quoted material -----
Brad Rodriguez
I am now beginning to answer Smith's three or four substantive charges
against me. I do so publicly because he cut off any possibility of a
private resolution to this matter almost literally at our first
exchange. [See below for a copy of our communications in full, unedited
save for deleting the "interlinear parallel quotations" which were
posted by Tim Starr.] I HATE publicizing private email, but I have been
left with no alternative but to appear guilty of refusing to discuss
the matter in private. This exchange will be posted shortly on a
website that addresses all charges (rather than ad hominem attacks)
against me. I wanted to post everything I had to say on the subject at
one stroke -- including a legal analysis by an extremely fine attorney
-- and then get back to work. Unfortunately, such an analysis takes
more than a day. Even getting all the material to him is time consuming
over a Memorial Day Weekend. So...I will answer the substantive
accusations piecemeal.
The altered document sent to you earlier was part of the posting on
whether or not I was a typist rather than a full co-author of The
Fundamentals of Reasoning...an entirely distinct book from The
Reasonable Woman. Smith denied I co-authored it. Then he admitted he
had purposefully lied. Then, apparently, that admission was deleted
from further postings of the same document. One by one I will be
answering the charges, with the 'similar language post' being the next
to last. The legal analysis will trail.
This particular posting refutes the statement on
alt.politics.libertarian, talk.politics.libertarian, [and, I presume,
in private emails] that he has tried to resolve this matter privately
and I have refused to do so. The following four emails constitute,
respectively: his first contact with me on the subject; my response
asking for the material he's talking about; his refusal to produce the
most preliminary step at a resolution [the material under discussion]
accompanied by a stated commitment "we will duke it out in public";
and, a follow-up message from his that evidences his allegedly
heartbroken state. I ask for the material to be provided to me through
one of the attorneys he mentioned because I am not such a fool as to
continue unguarded discussion with someone whose first contact
threatens legal action. I asked to continue through attorneys. Ask
yourself whether Smith's emails come from a grief-stricken party who
wishes to resolve matters, or from an ex-lover who thinks -- and,
perhaps, incredibly! with the passage of time, with a very messy
break-up, and other factors I wish not to mention -- an ex-lover who
has come to truly believe I have stolen from him.
Wendy McElroy
*******************************************************************************
EMAIL #1: SMITH'S FIRST CONTACT, WHICH CAME OUT OF THE BLUE. AS IT
CONTAINED
A LEGAL THREAT, I DID NOT ATTEMPT TO ANSWER HIS CHARGES ON AN INFORMAL
LEVEL.
X-From_: vam...@sj.bigger.net Sun May 17 18:01:42 1998
Return-Path: vam...@sj.bigger.net
Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 15:30:13 -0700
From: Laura Kroutil <vam...@sj.bigger.net>
Reply-To: vam...@sj.bigger.net
Organization: Residence
To: m...@zetetics.com
Subject: W. McElroy, Plagiarist
Wendy,
You had better read this letter, and read it carefully. You are in
extremely serious trouble, legally and professionally. Your professional
career is in your hands, and it reeks of death. I am accusing of
extensive and deliberate plagiarism.
Both you and I know that most of “your” Reasonable Woman book is sheer
unadulterated plagiarism. And though I half expected you to pull this
stunt some day, I thought that you would at least be clever enough to
cover your tracks better. I suspect that, upon hearing that I had lost
“everything” in storage some years ago, you figured I no longer had
access to my original notes, drafts, etc., from those years that I
taught Fundamentals of Reasoning – and therefore would be unable to
prove any charges against you. Wrong. I HAVE IT ALL. Every handwritten
note and outline, every typed segment of lectures on canary-colored
paper (many of them with dates), every printed handout, and all those
verbatim transcripts that you made some years ago of the tapes from
dozens of classes – a volume of material that fills nearly two file
boxes.
This is why I was able to give several FOR classes for Sharon Presley
about two years ago – and, by the way, I do have tapes of those classes,
which sound strangely like a prevision of “your” book. Maybe you can sue
me for my psychic ability to foretell what you would write in the
future, word for word, even before you knew what it would be. Or, let me
guess – you wrote all this some time ago, and I stole it from you. Or –
I know, you actually wrote this in 1972, I wrested it from you
psychically in 1973, and then began using it in 1974, one year before we
actually met. Yeah, that’s the ticket..
You seem to have forgotten that I customarily opened a session from
extensive notes, often reading for the first forty minutes or so. Hence
what you recalled as my extemporaneous discussions might leave you in
the clear, because you have the tapes, not me. But I have THE ORIGINAL
MANUSCRIPTS from which I read, which then ended up on the tapes, then in
the transcripts you made, and finally in “your” book. Even O.J. would
have been convicted with this kind of blood-trail. .
Before reading further, you may wish to scan the second transmission
coming shortly after this, which quotes line by line from “your” book
and the handout I wrote for the first class in 1974, one year before I
even met you. This took me less than an hour to cull. I have sketched
around ten additional pages of the same kind of miserable stuff, and I
can produce all the original documents to back it up. If this becomes a
legal battle – as it very well may – I presently estimate that I can
specifically nail you on at least HALF of “your” book. And I don’t mean
your version of my ideas (that covers an additional one quarter, with
the remaining quarter being the only thing you actually contributed. ) I
mean, in many cases, identical word for word, line for line, paragraph
for paragraph. What you see here is only the small tip of a very big
iceberg. This is not only plagiarism, this is stupid plagiarism.
Couldn’t you have at least taken the time to paraphrase a bit, rather
that just changing a word here and there? And what of the hundreds of
people that took that course over many years? Did you figure that they
wouldn’t recognize my material, even though some of them still have the
original handouts themselves?
I was amused by your comment when you suggested that the “intellectual
therapy” chapters were based on your recollections from attending five
sessions. You did indeed attend a number of sessions – mainly because we
lived together, and you had nowhere else to go -- but your account is
based entirely on the verbatim transcripts of my classes. You failed to
note – gee, I wonder why --that you have dozens of tapes from several
years of classes, and that you typed them up word for word a long time
ago – often three or four versions of the same class. You have literally
hundreds of pages of verbatim transcripts, AND YOU SENT COPIES TO ME,
dummy. These constitute the core of your entire book – often with
identical sub-headings, for example (one of many) all that stuff on
types of error, the entire text of which is nearly verbatim in “your
book” and the psychology of reasoning (exactly the same as one of the
sessions, as is most of the text.) But – and here is one among many of
your screw-ups -- I have, not only the printouts, but the ORIGINAL
FLOPPIES WITH LABELS IN YOUR (GREEN) HANDWRITING, WITH YOUR LETTERS AND
NOTES TO ME INCLUDED.
You quote me extensively, as I interacted with the participants, but
always as the “facilitator” and as “she.” So, after screwing me, you
proceed to castrate me. (Freud would have been very proud.) Of course,
if you had been honest, and prefaced the quotes with “George Smith,”
people would have wondered why on earth you were quoting me so
extensively without permission. And, of course, you add your own touches
of pure fabrication from time to time – things that never happened
except in your imagination. What’s that business about charging only a
modest fee? I was charging $120 per person by the time they ended,
hardly a modest fee for the early 1980s. Those classes were pure
business, as you well know, and I made my living off of them for seven
years, even opening up a suite of offices on Sunset Blvd. under the
name, “Forum for Philosophical Studies,” during which I gave those
classes twice a week for nearly two years. You attended no classes
during those two years, yet the material I revised for them specifically
somehow found its way into your book..
Morever 5 single-spaced typed pages on the Types of Error were not
written until after we separated in 1985, when I held classes in my
place on Franklin Ave. I wrote that stuff immediately after one of the
classes in 1986. You had no direct knowledge of that class. Instead, you
simply took my notes and inserted them in “your” book under the same
heading and in the same words -- and I mean verbatim. That’s some memory
you’ve got.
If you feel you are in the right, then send that box of tapes to
Prometheus, and let them listen to everything first hand – unless, that
is, those tapes have mysteriously disappeared. And if you claim never to
have had those tapes, then how in the hell did you transcribe those
hundreds of pages that are in my possession? From memory???? When
leaving the scene of the crime, you left behind footprints so large
Godzilla could stand in them and still leave room for your ego.
I can no longer publish my own material, because it would look as if I
have stolen from you. THIS IS SEVEN YEARS OF MY LABOR ABSOLUTELY RUINED
BY YOU. And you knew very well that I was planning to publish this as a
book. I do not want to sue Prometheus for damages, even though this may
be my only recourse. They were innocent victims in all this. You played
them for fools, violating your contract extensively and explicitly, in
which you guarantee that the material you gave them is original. You
knew exactly what you were doing. This was all clearly premeditated and
deliberate. (That must have provided a nice chuckle for you, but what
are you going to say now ?–that you somehow inadvertently copied huge
chunks of your book from someone else, but are very sorry and promise
never to do it again?)
If I have to sue Prometheus (two attorneys have told me they are fully
liable for what they publish, even without knowledge of the plagiarism)
they will doubtless turn and sue you for fraud, breach of contract etc.
(hence the clause in your contract where you swear to originality). If
this happens, you may be looking at one big fucking lawsuit, in which
case you will be “slam-dunked” (as one of those lawyers put it, after
looking at just a fraction of my evidence.) Publishers do not
appreciate being defrauded like this. I will happily provide them with
everything I have when they take you to court. These are no incidental
slips, as when a writer may inadvertently quote someone else from a
repressed memory. This is page after dreary of page of outright,
clear-cut plagiarism.
I doubt if any book in recent decades has contained such an
astonishingly large amount of word-for-word duplication of someone
else’s work – easily 75 pages nearly verbatim, with dozens more
consisting of nothing more than superficial rewrites, which are put in
the same order, with the same structure, sub-headings, phraseology,
arguments, and illustrations. It simply boggles the mind.
I will admit, however, that those clever quotes sprinkled throughout the
book are entirely yours, and you deserve full credit for the hours you
spent thumbing through some quotation dictionary. Cute touch, and so
typical – like taping a pretty little bow on a package of stolen
merchandise, before delivering it to the unsuspecting publisher. . .
If you want to avoid this messy situation, you can buy my rights to
the material outright for a lump-sum payment of $10,000 (U.S. dollars),
which I must receive no later than Tuesay, May 26, 1998. That’s not
much for stealing seven years of someone’s professional labor, so you
are getting off cheap. Enclose a release with the check, and I will sign
it and return it to you immediately.. That let’s you off the hook
legally as far as I am concerned, and I will not take legal action
against Prometheus or you.
You have two days to e-mail me your reply, which I must receive no later
than 9 a.m.(PDT), Tuesday, May 19, 1998. I will take a non-response as
a refusal, and immediately set the gears in motion. I will begin by
Faxing a copy of this letter to Prometheus, along with an expanded
version of the parallel quotations, and with copies of the original
documents. And that’s just the beginning.
If you agree to the settlement, I must receive a certified check for
$10,000 no later than (to repeat) Tuesday, May 26, 1998, or all bets are
off.
If you have any doubts about this, then show the brief list of
quotations to your Hubby, or some other friend, and watch their faces
drop in horror. Talk about the bloom falling from the rose. Welcome to
the real world with real consequences, where people can turn even
against a cute little Shirley Temple, and see her other face.
It’s entirely up to you. You have until this Tuesday morning, 9 a.m., to
get back to me by e-mail.. If not, Prometheus will have copies of
everything within the next hour, and I suspect you will receive an
“urgent” phone call shortly thereafter.
I am dead-serious about this. Don’t imagine for an instant that I am
simply blowing off steam. I put up with your other antics for years
without fighting back, but that was personal. This is professional, and
you know very well how I strongly I feel about this kind of thing.
Consult your self-interest, and do what you think is best. I prefer the
settlement, even though I stand to lose a great deal of money in the
long run. I don’t relish a long and ugly legal battle, but I am fully
prepared to take it on. And, believe me, you will lose, and lose big
time. Just the little bit of material I am sending is more than enough
to prove the legal case of plagiarism, but I’m talking about dozens of
additional pages. And it seems to me that the least you can do is to let
Prometheus off the legal hook on which you have so unceremoniously
impaled them.
You can start writing letters to all your friends, telling about some
horrible thing I’m doing to you, etc., etc., etc. It won’t make any
difference. The documents are there to back up everything I say in cold,
hard print.. This is not a my-word against your-word dispute. This is
about hundreds of pages of documents written by me, and plagiarized by
you wholesale. Period.
You have less than two days to think it over. After that, there will be
no turning back, for either of us.
George
The interlinear parallel quotations will be sent in second transmission,
within the next 20 minutes.
********************************************************************************
EMAIL #2: MY RESPONSE WITH REQUEST FOR MATERIAL IN ORDER TO PURSUE
FURTHER
DISCUSSION:
[18 May 98, 6:34 pm EDT]
George:
The temptation to refute in substance and detail each accusation you
level
is great, but you have threatened a lawsuit and this means that personal
correspondence between the two of us has become inappropriate. Have your
attorney contact me with the details of the purported plagiarism, along
with
the evidence thereof, and I will respond appropriately thereto. In
particular, please have him/her provide the 1974 document from which you
quote along with supporting documentation.
W.
********************************************************************************
EMAIL #3: GEORGE'S RESPONSE TO MY REQUEST FOR THE PRELIMINARY STAGE OF
SEEING THE MATERIAL UNDER DISCUSSION:
X-From_: vam...@sj.bigger.net Mon May 18 20:18:27 1998
Return-Path: vam...@sj.bigger.net
Date: Mon, 18 May 1998 17:46:51 -0700
From: Laura Kroutil <vam...@sj.bigger.net>
Reply-To: vam...@sj.bigger.net
Organization: Residence
To: m...@zetetics.com
Subject: W. McElroy, plagiarist
Wendy.
Your primary legal hassles will come from Prometheus, not from me. They
will have everything tomorrow morning, including a copy of my FOR
handout, and some additional examples. I will cooperate with them fully
when they nail your ass.
You and I, on the other hand, will duke it out in public. I am sending
copies to everyone you can possibibly imagine, and will be writing
articles for every libertarian, freethought, humanist, and feminist
publication that will listen. This is a scandal of biblical proportions.
You will indeed be remembered by future historians, but not in the
manner you had hoped. Henceforce you will be listed in the index as
"McElroy,W.; cf;, "plagiarist, bad."
Be advised that, among many other things, I have a floppy sent by you
to me, with ten prelimary chapters of my F.O.R. book, which you arranged
from notes. These are still in the first person "I" (meaning "me") AND
GUESS WHAT'S ON THE LABEL, IN YOUR ROUNDED HANDRWITING? "F.O.R. BOOK."
I've only gone through the first chapter with care, and you wouldn't
believe the direct parallels. Jesus, this is just too good to be true.
Don't give up your day job.
George
[PLEASE NOTE: Smith later informed my editor at Prometheus, Steven
Mitchell,
that he cannot read the alleged 5" floppy disk from which he claims to
be
reading "the first chapter." Moreover, I have no "legal hassles" with or
from Prometheus.]
*******************************************************************************
EMAIL #4: SMITH'S FINAL MESSAGE. NO RESPONSE FROM ME.
X-From_: vam...@sj.bigger.net Tue May 19 16:39:28 1998
Return-Path: vam...@sj.bigger.net
Date: Tue, 19 May 1998 14:07:34 -0700
From: Laura Kroutil <vam...@sj.bigger.net>
Reply-To: vam...@sj.bigger.net
Organization: Residence
To: m...@zetetics.com
Subject: Curiosity
Wendy,
So how's your day been so far? Mine's been great!!!
George
Tim Starr
In article <356A91...@zetetics.com>,
Brad Rodriguez <b...@zetetics.com> wrote:
>There is a curious omission in Tim Starr's posting. When Smith's
>response to McElroy was posted earlier to the randian-feminism mail
>list, it included the following addendum, in which Smith explicitly
>acknowledges knowing the existence of, and being a party to, the
>co-authorship contract. By his own admission, Smith knowingly made a
>false statement that McElroy was merely a typist when he knew she was a
I must have accidentally left it out. Sorry.
However, I've never seen George's alleged admission that his statement that
McElroy was merely a transcriber was false. Legally speaking, the contract
may have it that McElroy was a co-author of the book, but that doesn't mean
that she actually wrote half the material.
--
"If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police,
the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the
government--and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws."
--Edward Abbey (1927-1989), _Abbey's Road,_ p.39_(Plume, 1979)
Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! Think Universally, Act Selfishly
Assistant Editor: Freedom Network News, the newsletter of The International
Society for Individual Liberty (ISIL), http://www.isil.org/
Personal home page: http://www.creative.net/~star/timstarr.htm
Liberty is the Best Policy - tims...@netcom.com
Brad Rodriguez
Tim Starr wrote:
> However, I've never seen George's alleged admission that his statement that
> McElroy was merely a transcriber was false. Legally speaking, the contract
> may have it that McElroy was a co-author of the book, but that doesn't mean
> that she actually wrote half the material.
He may not have sent it to you, although the text I quoted did appear on
the randian-feminism mail list.
And I have never heard of a 'transcriber' being given a half financial
interest in a book, and a full co-author credit on the cover, as are
spelled out by the contract Smith has signed.
- Brad Rodriguez
Tim Starr
In article <356AFE...@zetetics.com>,
Brad Rodriguez <b...@zetetics.com> wrote:
[Which is apparently just an alias for Wendy McElroy]
>I am now beginning to answer Smith's three or four substantive charges
>against me. I do so publicly because he cut off any possibility of a
>private resolution to this matter almost literally at our first
>exchange.
Lie. He made you a good-faith offer for a private resolution, which you
rejected.
>[See below for a copy of our communications in full, unedited
>save for deleting the "interlinear parallel quotations" which were
>posted by Tim Starr.] I HATE publicizing private email, but I have been
>left with no alternative but to appear guilty of refusing to discuss
>the matter in private.
Huh?
>This exchange will be posted shortly on a
>website that addresses all charges (rather than ad hominem attacks)
>against me. I wanted to post everything I had to say on the subject at
>one stroke -- including a legal analysis by an extremely fine attorney
>-- and then get back to work. Unfortunately, such an analysis takes
>more than a day. Even getting all the material to him is time consuming
>over a Memorial Day Weekend. So...I will answer the substantive
>accusations piecemeal. =
You had a week before Memorial Day Weekend to prepare yourself.
>The altered document sent to you earlier...
What are you talking about?
>was part of the posting on
>whether or not I was a typist rather than a full co-author of The
>Fundamentals of Reasoning...an entirely distinct book from The
>Reasonable Woman.
Except for all the parts of TRW that were lifted almost verbatim from the
material which was supposed to go into the FOR book.
>Smith denied I co-authored it.
Quite right.
>Then he admitted he had purposefully lied.
He did no such thing. He admitted that there was a contract for a book to
be co-authored by the two of you, but that the deal was never consummated.
>Then, apparently, that admission was deleted from further posting of the
>same document.
Oh, how convenient! That way, you get to make up anything you like & claim
it was "deleted" by George when he posted to others besides you. You don't
even bother to quote the alleged "admission," giving yourself room to make
it up as you go long later.
>One by one I will be answering the charges, with the 'similar language post'
>being the next to last.
That should be the first part, unless your purpose is to bore readers into
skipping the best evidence.
>The legal analysis will trail.
>
>This particular posting refutes the statement on
>alt.politics.libertarian, talk.politics.libertarian, [and, I presume,
>in private emails] that he has tried to resolve this matter privately
>and I have refused to do so.
You did refuse to accept his offer, or to make any counter-offer of your own.
>The following four emails constitute,
>respectively: his first contact with me on the subject; my response
>asking for the material he's talking about...
That is, a request for the evidence against you, so you could figure out how
much you could get away with.
>his refusal to produce the most preliminary step at a resolution...
Lie. He made "the most preliminary step at a resolution" in his offer to you,
which you failed to accept. You didn't even make a counter-offer, you just
asked him to turn over all his evidence against you so you could see how much
he could prove.
>accompanied by a stated commitment "we will duke it out in public";
>and, a follow-up message from his that evidences his allegedly
>heartbroken state.
At being betrayed professionally, yes. Anything more than that is just
wishful thinking on your part.
>I ask for the material to be provided to me through
>one of the attorneys he mentioned because I am not such a fool as to
>continue unguarded discussion with someone whose first contact
>threatens legal action.
He never threatened legal action, he merely pointed out that plagiarism puts
one in a rather difficult legal position. He specifically disavowed any
intent to pursue legal action, & told me as much personally before he ever
sent you any e-mail about it. I wasn't the only one, either.
>I asked to continue through attorneys.
No, you asked for him to turn over all his evidence to you so that you could
figure out how strong his case was against you. You didn't make any counter-
offer or request to negotiate. He might have refused any such counter-offer
or request for negotiation, but you didn't even make an effort in good faith.
>Ask yourself whether Smith's emails come from a grief-stricken party who
>wishes to resolve matters, or from an ex-lover who thinks -- and,
>perhaps, incredibly! with the passage of time, with a very messy
>break-up, and other factors I wish not to mention -- an ex-lover who
>has come to truly believe I have stolen from him.
More wishful thinking.
Tim Starr
In article <356B1B...@zetetics.com>,
Brad Rodriguez <b...@zetetics.com> wrote:
[Which is apparently just an alias for Wendy McElroy]
>Tim Starr wrote:
>> However, I've never seen George's alleged admission that his statement that
>> McElroy was merely a transcriber was false. Legally speaking, the contract
>> may have it that McElroy was a co-author of the book, but that doesn't mean
>> that she actually wrote half the material.
>
>He may not have sent it to you, although the text I quoted did appear on
>the randian-feminism mail list.
Then you should have no trouble posting it.
>And I have never heard of a 'transcriber' being given a half financial
>interest in a book, and a full co-author credit on the cover, as are
>spelled out by the contract Smith has signed.
The book described in the contact had yet to be written, & was never accepted
by any publisher. The plan was for half of it to consist of material based
on Smith's lecture notes, half of it of original material to be written by
McElroy. Some of Smith's material was only on tape. That's the part that
was transcribed by McElroy.
If the deal described in the contract had ever been consummated, then McElroy
would've been more than a mere transcriber. Since it wasn't, transcription is
a nice euphemism for what McElroy did.
Dan Clore
"Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author's
phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces
it with the right idea."
-- Isidore Ducasse (Comte de Lautréamont)
"Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author's
phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces
it with the right idea."
-- Guy Debord
--
---------------------------------------------------
Dan Clore
The Website of Lord Weÿrdgliffe:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/index.html
Welcome to the Waughters....
The Dan Clore Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/necpage.htm
Because the true mysteries cannot be profaned....
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!"
Brad Rodriguez
To reduce the proliferation of threads, allow me to make a single reply
to both of Tim Starr's postings. (The two postings touch upon the same
issues.)
Tim Starr wrote:
> In article <356AFE...@zetetics.com>,
> Brad Rodriguez <b...@zetetics.com> wrote:
> [Which is apparently just an alias for Wendy McElroy]
No more than you are an alias for George Smith. I did post two lengthy
messages from Wendy McElroy at her request, and I apologize to this
newsgroup for failing to note the fact in those messages, and causing
confusion. The 'curious omission' post, and my reply to your reply,
were mine. I shall be more careful in the future.
> Lie. He made you a good-faith offer for a private resolution, which you
> rejected.
I have seen the email in question...and if anyone in this newsgroup
missed that posting, Wendy has posted it at
http://www.zetetics.com/reason/libel.htm. An immediate demand for cash
"or else" is not a good faith offer. Read Smith's email and judge for
yourself.
> >The altered document sent to you earlier...
> What are you talking about?
This was the 'curious omission' posting. For those who missed it, it
too has been posted at the URL given above.
> He did no such thing. He admitted that there was a contract for a book to
> be co-authored by the two of you, but that the deal was never consummated.
All I can say is, read the contract
(http://www.zetetics.com/contract.gif). It says Smith & McElroy "having
co-authored a book on reasoning (hereinafter the 'book') which they now
wish to market and publish", and describes the terms of the marketing.
The book was already written at that point.
> You don't
> even bother to quote the alleged "admission," giving yourself room to make
> it up as you go long later.
It (the addendum) was quoted in full on this newsgroup. It had been
previously posted by Sharon Presley to the randian-feminism list,
moderated by Thomas Gramstead, I believe. Ask either of them for a copy
of the posting.
> >One by one I will be answering the charges, with the 'similar language post'
> >being the next to last.
Wendy has now posted this response on the web site
http://www.zetetics.com/reason/libel.htm.
Regarding the issue of private resolution, let me summarize my response
to you briefly rather than reply point by point:
1. In my opinion, a demand for cash "or else" is not an offer, it is an
ultimatum.
2. One does not make a counter-offer to one who has no claim.
3. When facing accusations, it is not unreasonable to ask to see
evidence. (Prometheus has also asked repeatedly to see this evidence.)
4. Whatever Smith told you personally, his email messages contain an
implicit threat of legal action.
At the risk of being repetitive, I ask that everyone read the email
exchange between Smith & McElroy (URL given above), and judge for
themselves.
Brad Rodriguez
Brad Rodriguez
[At the request of Wendy McElroy, I am posting to this newsgroup her
defense against charges of 'similar language'. - Brad R.]
Because of legal implications and Smith's threats (see main web page for
email correspondence), I will not comment in a public forum beyond this
posting, nor will I respond to personal inquiries -- though I thank
everyone
sincerely for their notes of support. My attorney will be writing a
statement on the absolute legal validity of my authorship claim to The
Reasonable Woman: A Guide to Intellectual Survival, showing that
plagiarism
accusations are libelous. He is also preparing a legal analysis of the
false
and libelous claim that I was merely a typist on the co-authored book
(The
Fundamentals of Reasoning). A copy of the co-authorship agreement will
be
attached thereto (currently available at
http://www.zetetics.com/reason/contract.gif). The contract has been
acknowledged publicly as valid by George H. Smith (see
http://www.zetetics.com/reason/libel.htm).
A refutation of the accusations of immorality (plagiarism) that are
based on
the 'similarity of language' issue follows. I have delayed responding in
order to attach the above-mentioned legal analysis, but it is time to
speak.
The legal analysis will be posted at
http://www.zetetics.com/reason/libel.htm. Meanwhile, I ask people to
read
The Reasonable Woman to understand what a personal book it is and how
meticulously I credit my sources. Please note my very prominent
acknowledgement of Smith in two places, including the first page of the
book
'The Acknowledgements'.
*A Refutation of charges of immorality based on the 'similar language'
issue.*
The following analysis is based on the only information I have received
from
George H. Smith on the 'similar language' issue: three emails of
accusation
received respectively on May 17, May 19, and May 20. (As only one was
sent
directly to me -- the other two being forwarded -- I do not know when
other
people received the messages.) The Reasonable Woman [TRW] is 305 pages
long.
The email claim of plagiarism rests upon passages quoted from 17 pages,
with
at least one quotation being no more than five words in length and many
of
them including ellipses meant to heighten parallels. There are 116
sentences under question.
85 sentences come from private unpublished material -- the "hundreds and
hundreds of pages of documents" (see the aforementioned web page) --
that
Smith seems unwilling to produce for examination. This leaves 31
sentences
in a 305 page book for which any evidence of impropriety has been
provided.
Ordinarily, I would not respond to unsupported accusations from an
ex-lover,
but I feel obliged to answer the reasonable questions of people who are
confused by this personal dispute that Smith is conducting in the public
realm. (For evidence of his unwillingness to resolve this matter
privately,
please see an email exchange posted at
http://www.zetetics.com/reason/libel.htm.)
The accusations fall into three broad categories...
1. 85 sentences absolutely unsupported by repeatedly requested evidence;
2. 21 sentences from what Smith calls "a 1974 course handout"; and,
3. 10 sentences from Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies.
#1. 85 sentences that are absolutely unsupported by requested evidence;
(Many of the paralleled sentences have virtually no connection to each
other
besides similarity of ideas, but I will answer this aspect of the
situation
in point #3.)
I will assume for the moment that the unproduced material a) exists and
b)
is the co-authored manuscript in question ("Fundamentals of Reasoning").
I
explain the similar language issue in three ways.
a. For those who have a copy of TRW, lease refer to pages 147-150
in
TRW where I describe the Intellectual Diary that was *required* to be
kept
by everyone who attended the 8-week long classes, which George and I
developed and refined together over our ten years of co-habitation --
classes from which both of us have continued to use material in our
independent work since our separation in 1985. For those without a copy
of
TRW, let me summarize what the intellectual diary was: a key aspect of
the
classes was for each member to keep a personal record of the
intellectual
processes and ideas sparked by the course, which attempted something
akin to
intellectual therapy. Diary entries consumed at least fifteen minutes
every
day and it was the sole product and property of the member who wrote it,
just as an ordinary diary would be. Each class began with members
reporting
on their diaries and publicly explaining why they had missed making an
entry, if such was the case. Missing a day literally meant paying a fee,
which was the penalty. (This process is described in Chapter 8 of TRW.)
As mentioned in TRW, I attended five eight-week courses, which
means
I maintained the required diary for about ten months in all, although
the
timing was not consecutive and I quite often missed a day or two. Since
the
purpose in attending was to assist in producing the course by providing
feedback and ideas, my diary focused on the content in the classes that
I
wanted to explore (e.g. asking 'what is a better analogy to illustrate
this
point in a future class'?) and other thoughts provoked. When I wiped my
hard
drive clean of the co-authored Fundamentals of Reasoning and returned
all
co-authored material to Smith (please see
http://www.zetetics.com/reason/libel.htm for history of this event), I
did
not send my private diaries which were and are my personal property. I
used
them as source material in writing sections of both the Fundamentals of
Reasoning and TRW, and I felt perfectly free to quote myself in both.
For example, the sentences on Freudianism and Popper account for
41
of the 85 quoted sentences. On page 40 of TRW, I explain how I was once
a
committed Freudian who discarded that system of thought solely because
of
Popper's influence. Indeed, Popper's arguments caused me to abandon a
keen
interest in psychology itself and to become, instead, a cynic on the
subject. Those sections are directly gleaned from my diary.
b. Smith and I lived and worked together intimately for ten
years,
constantly discussing both the classes and other intellectual
partnerships,
such as the audio tapes we co-authored for Knowledge Products (as
credited
on those tapes' boxes). We went over each other's material constantly,
providing feedback and editing. Under the circumstances, it would be
amazing
if there were not occasional and marked similarities in how we each
present
material from that period in our lives.
c. During those years, we read many of the same books, and much
of
the similar language comes directly from secondary sources. For example,
when Smith points out a similarity between his words "Write it down" (in
Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies) and my words "Put it in writing"
in
TRW, he neglects to mention that I footnote Alan Lakein's book "How to
Get
Control of Your Time and Your Life" which has a section called Put It In
Writing. When Smith points out that both he and I use the words
"Precisely
what do we not have?", he neglects to point out that this exact phrase
comes
from "Thinking Straight" by Antony Flew, whom I recommend in
accompanying
text in TRW. Much of the wording and ideas used throughout the class, in
its
handouts, and in the co-authored manuscript were directly derived from
the
language and ideas of thinkers such as Brand Blanshard, Mortimer Adler,
and
especially Henry Hazlitt. The intellectual therapy techniques derive
directly from Nathaniel Branden and Albert Ellis. TRW carefully and
extensively acknowledges all these contributions.
#2. 21 sentences from what George calls "a 1974 Course Handout"
It is Prometheus' attorney's opinion that, as a legal matter, this
5-page
1974 hand-out -- the only evidence Smith has produced of plagiarism to
my
publisher (and not to me) -- was knowingly placed into the public domain
by
him by virtue of being widely distributed without a copyright notice or
registration. As a moral matter, I know Smith wanted the material to be
used
as widely as possible to promote the course: that is why he handed it
out
over freely for years and years. Since he had given permission for the
man-in-the-street to use the handout, I do not see where a moral problem
exists. Especially since I prominently acknowledge him in TRW.
Nevertheless, just as I assume for the sake of argument that the
unproduced manuscript exists, let me forget for the moment the public
domain
matter. I have not seen the document in question, but Smith and I
definitely
did have hand-outs, some predating our relationship, some co-authored. I
was
responsible for typing, re-typing and proofing this material for all the
classes we held. Smith also incorporated much of the hand-out language
verbatim into classes, which I heard repeatedly. Moreover, I edited the
co-authored manuscript, as noted in the co-authorship contract
(http://www.zetetics.com/contract.gif), so I went over these lines again
and
again with care. Smith quotes 13 of the 21 sentences that are extremely
close to his wording: the remainder are similar ideas (we discussed and
developed together) expressed in different terms. I may have
inadvertently
used 13 similar sentences that were recorded in my intellectual diary or
indelibly imprinted in my mind.
#3. 10 sentences from Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies [AAR&OH]
I have not read this book. If it is, as I understand, largely drawn from
essays previously published, I may well have read sections of AAR&OH.
Indeed, some of the essays may have been written during the ten-year
cohabitation. From the extremely brief passages quoted, it seems clear
to me
that Smith has drawn upon the co-created material and, perhaps, upon the
co-authored manuscript itself -- both of which predate AAR&OH. Indeed,
he
continues to use the co-authored ideas from Fundamentals of Reasoning by
giving classes without acknowledging my contribution or paying me a part
of
the tuition fee. It is his legal right to do so and I have never raised
an
objection.
Moreover, the snippets he offers from AAR&OH represent standard
psychotherapy advice that is expressed in dozens of self-help books,
often
in an *extremely* similar manner. How many ways can you say, 'write it
down'?
For those interested in whether or not Smith pursued a private
resolution of
this matter, as he claims, please proceed to
http://www.zetetics.com/reason/libel.htm for copies of our entire
communication on this matter.
For those interested in the 'altered document' -- An Open Letter to
Prometheus in which Smith publicly admitted to having purposefully lied
about my being only a typist on a book I co-authored, a document which
was
altered in later postings to omit this clearly libelous admission, it
too
can be found at the aforementioned web page.
For those interested in the legal analysis, it is yet to be completed
and
posted. Please be patient. I am posting before I had intended because
too
many people consider silence to an admission of guilt.
Wendy McElroy
Vlntryst
As one who is familiar with the dispute between these parties
this post is offered in the interests of "equal representation."
Rather than take up Ms. McElroy's defense at this time, I'll let
her speak clearly for herself. I propose Mr. Starr do the same
regarding the claims of Mr. Smith. Original source is always
superior to second or third hand accounts.
_______________________________________________
Wendy
=============================================================================
"Simplify, simplify..." Henry David Thoreau
"Simplify..." me
Visit my home page at http://www.zetetics.com/mac/
==============================================================================
Vlntryst
Shouldn't that header read Smith v. McElroy?
Who instigated litigation here anyway?
Tim Starr
In article <199805281448...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
Vlntryst <vlnt...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>Shouldn't that header read Smith v. McElroy?
>Who instigated litigation here anyway?
Nobody has, so far. Hopefully, nobody will.
Vlntryst
Tim Starr wrote:
In article <199805281448...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
Vlntryst wrote:
>>
>>Shouldn't that header read Smith v. McElroy?
>>Who instigated litigation here anyway?
>
>Nobody has, so far. Hopefully, nobody will.
Yes, given the background in libertarianism which both
are known to possess, it'd be pretty near blasphemy. ;-)
Tim Starr
In article <356C1D...@zetetics.com>,
Brad Rodriguez <b...@zetetics.com> wrote:
>To reduce the proliferation of threads, allow me to make a single reply
>to both of Tim Starr's postings. (The two postings touch upon the same
>issues.)
>
>Tim Starr wrote:
>> Brad Rodriguez <b...@zetetics.com> wrote:
>> [Which is apparently just an alias for Wendy McElroy]
>
>messages from Wendy McElroy at her request, and I apologize to this
>newsgroup for failing to note the fact in those messages, and causing
>confusion. The 'curious omission' post, and my reply to your reply,
>were mine. I shall be more careful in the future.
My mistake, I'm sorry for any contribution I may have made to the confusion.
>>Lie. He made you a good-faith offer for a private resolution, which you
>>rejected.
>
>I have seen the email in question...and if anyone in this newsgroup
>missed that posting, Wendy has posted it at
>http://www.zetetics.com/reason/libel.htm. An immediate demand for cash
>"or else" is not a good faith offer.
It most certainly is a good faith offer. Nor was there any overt threat of
anything more than having McElroy's plagiarism made public.
>>>The altered document sent to you earlier...
>>
>>What are you talking about?
>
>This was the 'curious omission' posting. For those who missed it, it
>too has been posted at the URL given above.
What document is supposed to have been altered?
Oh, I see: I seem to have left out George's "Addendum: A Letter to Prometheus
Books" in my posting to alt.politics.libertarian & talk.politics.libertarian,
& this is presented as part of some sort of deliberate conspiracy to cover
up a claim by George that McElroy didn't actually co-author the book
specified in their contract - a claim which he allegedly admitted to be a
lie. In fact, that omission was entirely my own mistake, & George never
admitted that he lied. There's no cover-up, because there's nothing to
cover-up.
The basis for the claim that George allegedly admitted he lied about the true
extent of McElroy's authorship of the book specified in their contract is
apparently the following passage from his "Addendum: A Letter to Prometheus
Books":
"(3) Wendy's admission. that we contributed 50-50 to the book. (This is not
actually true; the manuscript as written up to that point was all mine. We
never got far enough on the project for Wendy to add her contributions, e.g.,
some material on women and statistics. But, for the sake of argument, I will
settle for her admission of 50-50."
- http://www.zetetics.com/reason/altered.htm
However, there's nothing even resembling an admission of a lie in the above.
Only an idiot would take "...for the sake of argument, I will settle..." in
the above to be synonymous with "OK, I admit that I lied..."
What kind of idiots does McElroy take us for?
>>He did no such thing. He admitted that there was a contract for a book to
>>be co-authored by the two of you, but that the deal was never consummated.
>
>All I can say is, read the contract
>(http://www.zetetics.com/contract.gif). It says Smith & McElroy "having
>co-authored a book on reasoning (hereinafter the 'book') which they now
>wish to market and publish", and describes the terms of the marketing.
>The book was already written at that point.
1) Just because it says something in a contract, doesn't make it true.
2) If the book was already written at that point, & McElroy admits that she
derived the material for THE REASONABLE WOMAN from the book she had previously
contracted to co-author with Smith, then she owes him the share of the
royalties from THE REASONABLE WOMAN specified in the contract. George hasn't
gotten his share of any advance that may have been paid to McElroy by
Prometheus, nor has he gotten any notification that he would get any. McElroy
should ask her "expert copyright lawyer" about this.
3) Smith's charges of plagiarism aren't based upon any denial of McElroy's
co-authorship of the book they contracted to co-author, it's based upon the
claim that she's passing off his work as her own. Lifting passages from a
co-authored work in which you were one of the co-authors, then passing it
off as if it were solely your own work, is plagiarism.
>>You don't even bother to quote the alleged "admission," giving yourself
>>room to make it up as you go long later.
>
>It (the addendum) was quoted in full on this newsgroup. It had been
>previously posted by Sharon Presley to the randian-feminism list,
>moderated by Thomas Gramstead, I believe. Ask either of them for a copy
>of the posting.
I already had a copy of it, as it turns out, I just couldn't recognize it as
an alleged "admission of a lie," since it contains no such thing.
>>>One by one I will be answering the charges, with the 'similar language post'
>>>being the next to last.
>
>Wendy has now posted this response on the web site
>http://www.zetetics.com/reason/libel.htm.
>
>Regarding the issue of private resolution, let me summarize my response
>to you briefly rather than reply point by point:
>1. In my opinion, a demand for cash "or else" is not an offer, it is an
>ultimatum.
This sort of semantic weaseling is why God invented dictionaries:
"offer [conjugations snipped]
"1. to present for acceptance or rejection; to tender; to proffer.
[illustrative quote snipped]
"2. to present to notice, to put forward for consideration; to
suggest; to propose; as, several things OFFER themselves for our
consideration."
- Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary, Unabridged,
The World Publishing Company, (c) 1959, p. 1242
[remaining definitions 3 & 4 omitted as irrelevant]"
"ultimatum [conjugations snipped]
any final proposal or statement of conditions; especially, in
diplomatic negotiations, the final terms of the one party, the
rejection of which by the other often involved an immediate rupture
of diplomatic relations and a declaration of war."
- ibid, p. 1982
Clearly, an "ultimatum" is a KIND of "offer," distinguished from all other
offers by its finality. Thus, by your own statement, you imply that Smith
most certainly DID make McElroy an "offer," one you disparage by calling it
an "ultimatum," as if it were somehow objectionable to make a final offer.
The dictionary entries for the two words even contain one of the same
synonyms, "proposal."
>2. One does not make a counter-offer to one who has no claim.
McElroy knew Smith had a claim, as he has been amply proving to anyone who
bothers to check the evidence.
>3. When facing accusations, it is not unreasonable to ask to see
>evidence. (Prometheus has also asked repeatedly to see this evidence.)
McElroy already knew the truth, & the evidence has been sent to & received
by Prometheus.
>4. Whatever Smith told you personally, his email messages contain an
>implicit threat of legal action.
Which implication was unintentional (I & others tried to talk George into
getting a lawyer repeatedly, which he has refused), & expressly disavowed
by Smith.
Vincent Cook
Wendy McElroy, posting by way of Brad Rodriguez, wrote:
>Because of legal implications and Smith's threats (see main web page for
>email correspondence), I will not comment in a public forum beyond this
>posting, nor will I respond to personal inquiries -- though I thank
>everyone sincerely for their notes of support. My attorney will be writing a
>statement on the absolute legal validity of my authorship claim to The
>Reasonable Woman: A Guide to Intellectual Survival, showing that
>plagiarism accusations are libelous. He is also preparing a legal analysis
>of the false and libelous claim that I was merely a typist on the
>co-authored book (The Fundamentals of Reasoning). A copy of the
>co-authorship agreement will be attached thereto (currently
>available at http://www.zetetics.com/reason/contract.gif). The
>contract has been acknowledged publicly as valid by George H. Smith
>(see >http://www.zetetics.com/reason/libel.htm).
There is a serious misapprehension here, as Smith has not denied the
fact that McElroy was a co-author of the 1988 manuscript. The
problem is that, at least according to Smith, much of _The Reasonable
Woman_ was derived from the co-authored 1988 manuscript with only
minor changes.
According to my dictionary, a plagiarist is someone who passes off
someone else's writing as their own. According to the contract
McElroy refers to (http://www.zetetics.com/reason/contract.gif),
Smith not only retains his right of attribution as an author of the
1988 work, he also is entitled to be listed as the first author.
The dispute then is not about whether or not McElroy is a co-author
(both Smith and McElroy stipulate that she is), but rather whether
Smith's rights as a co-author under this contract are being
respected. If McElroy passes off a book that is supposed to be
marketed as "by Smith and McElroy" as being McElroy's alone, clearly
McElroy would be unfairly taking credit for Smith's contribution and
thus conforming to the dictionary meaning of the word "plagiarist."
McElroy's case will stand or fall on her claim that she didn't base
the 1998 book on the 1988 manuscript, but rather had wiped her hard
disk in 1994 and started from scratch. 1988 manuscript that Smith
indicated he has on a set of disks should be decisive in determining
whether the book is really a derivative work or not. It is a bit
premature to proclaim that Smith is engaging in libel; we'll have to
wait and see what is in the 1988 manuscript.
--
Vincent Cook
Epicurus & Epicurean Philosophy Page - http://www.creative.net/~epicurus/
E-mail - epicurus at creative.net
PGP Key - http://pgp5.ai.mit.edu/pks-commands.html KeyID=470AB691
Vlntryst
On May 30, 1998, Tim Starr wrote:
> It most certainly is a good faith offer. Nor was there any overt threat of
> anything more than having McElroy's plagiarism made public.
What're you using for a defininition of plagiarism?
> Addendum: A Letter to Prometheus Books:
> "(3) Wendy's admission. that we contributed 50-50 to the book. (This is not
> actually true; the manuscript as written up to that point was all mine. We
> never got far enough on the project for Wendy to add her contributions, e.g.,
> some material on women and statistics. But, for the sake of argument, I will
> settle for her admission of 50-50."
> - http://www.zetetics.com/reason/altered.htm
> 1) Just because it says something in a contract, doesn't make it true.
Is there dispute as to the authenticity of said contract?
Contracts being fundamental to libertarian theory, *if*
George's unwilling to repudiate the contract he leaves
himself a naked claim against Wendy, IMHO.
> 2) If the book was already written at that point, & McElroy admits that she
> derived the material for THE REASONABLE WOMAN from the book she had
previously
> contracted to co-author with Smith, then she owes him the share of the
> royalties from THE REASONABLE WOMAN specified in the contract.
Even an exact counterpart of another's work does
not constitute plagiarism if such counterpart was
arrived at independently. - O'Rourke v. RKO
>George hasn't
> gotten his share of any advance that may have been paid to McElroy by
> Prometheus, nor has he gotten any notification that he would get any.
McElroy
> should ask her "expert copyright lawyer" about this.
George also can't produce any contract in which Wendy
freely awards to him any % authorship of her book. He
also admits some material of Wendy's was not included
in "the book" thereby relinquishing what claim he might've
had to that material. Material which, BTW, happens to be
the primary subject matter of her book, not a small detail.
> 3) Smith's charges of plagiarism aren't based upon any denial of McElroy's
> co-authorship of the book they contracted to co-author, it's based upon the
> claim that she's passing off his work as her own. Lifting passages from a
> co-authored work in which you were one of the co-authors, then passing it
> off as if it were solely your own work, is plagiarism.
Would what she "lifted" be considered
"a substantial portion thereof?" - ibid.
Say... more than the 50% she is entitled to?
If not, George's cause may well be DOA.
> Which implication was unintentional (I & others tried to talk George into
> getting a lawyer repeatedly, which he has refused), & expressly disavowed
> by Smith.
Irrespective of contribution it would seem George
conceded to Wendy 50% rights to the "authorship"
of "the book." What she does with her "50%" should
be her business, same applies for George.
IMHO, litigation would only add philosophical insult
to any perceived injury via its tacit endorsement of
coercive statist institutions for dispute resolution.
I'd suggest they first consider entering into mediation
w/ libertarian(s) known and respected by both parties.
"The dram of eale doth all the noble substance
of a doubt to his own scandal."
-- Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, Scene 4
Tim Starr
In article <199805291544...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
If this be blasphemy, make the most of it:
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Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 13:48:56 -0400
From: "N. Stephan Kinsella" <NSKin...@compuserve.com>
Subject: Defamation and Libel of Wendy McElroy
Sender: "N. Stephan Kinsella" <NSKin...@compuserve.com>
To: "Smith George H. c/o Laura Kroutil" <vam...@sj.bigger.net>
Cc: "bigger.net" <ab...@bigger.net>, Starr Tim <tims...@netcom.com>,
Presley Sharon RIT <r...@well.com>
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Status: RO
FROM: N. Stephan Kinsella
TO: George H. Smith
June 1, 1998
WITHOUT PREJUDICE
VIA FEDEX VIA FEDEX
Mr. George H. Smith c/o Sharon Presley
c/o Ms. Laura Kroutil Resources for Independent
Thinking
555 41st Avenue 484 Lake Park Avenue, #24
San Francisco, California 94121 Oakland, California
94610-2730
*VIA EMAIL* c/o Ms. Laura Kroutil
<vam...@sj.bigger.net>
Re: Defamation and Libel of Wendy McElroy
Dear Mr. Smith:
We represent Ms. Wendy McElroy, whom you know. You have recently
transmitted via the Internet several email messages to Ms. McElroy and to
various third parties. In these email messages, you have leveled serious
accusations against Ms. McElroy. Copies of various of these email messages
are attached hereto.
Earlier this year, Ms. McElroy's book, *The Reasonable Woman: A
Guide to Intellectual Survival* (Prometheus Books, 1998) ("TRW"), was
published. Part of TRW was based on ideas Ms. McElroy had developed in a
previous collaboration with you, which collaboration itself had resulted in
a 1989 unpublished manuscript, "Fundamentals of Reasoning" ("FOR"),
co-authored by you and Ms. McElroy. On May 17, 1998, you sent an email
message to Ms. McElroy from the email account of Ms. Laura Kroutil,
<vam...@sj.bigger.net>. You transmitted a second email message to Ms.
McElroy on May 18, 1998, and a third on May 19, 1998 (copies of these three
email messages are attached). In these email messages, you accused Ms.
McElroy of "plagiarism," on the asserted grounds that portions of TRW were
copied from "your" FOR manuscript.
In your May 17, 1998 email message, you accused Ms. McElroy "of
extensive and deliberate plagiarism." You also falsely stated that Ms.
McElroy was not a co-author of FOR, and was instead a mere typist or
transcriber, and based your charges of plagiarism on this false claim. In
addition, you explicitly threatened to take various actions, including
faxing a copy of your email message alleging plagiarism to Ms. McElroy's
publisher, Prometheus Books ("Prometheus"), and instituting a lawsuit
against Ms. McElroy and/or Prometheus, unless Ms. McElroy sent you a
certified check for US$10,000 no later than May 26, 1998.
Beginning on May 19, 1998, and continuing virtually until the
present, you transmitted, or caused to be transmitted, email messages
containing similar allegations and accusations to a large number of third
parties. For example, on May 19, 1998, you faxed and emailed to various
third parties, including Prometheus, a message entitled "On the Plagiarism
of Wendy McElroy," in which you again accused Ms. McElroy of plagiarism
(copies of exemplary email messages attached hereto). All of your
transmitted or posted email messages regarding this matter, of which we are
aware, have been transmitted by you, directly or indirectly, from the same
email account <vamp97@ sj.bigger.net>.
Some of these email messages were posted by you, or caused to be
posted by you with your permission, to various listservs and newsgroups,
such as the randian-feminism list and the newsgroups
alt.politics.libertarian and talk.politics.libertarian. For example, Ms.
Sharon Presley, of Resources for Independent Thinking, posted on the
randian-feminism list email messages transmitted to her by you; and Tim
Starr posted on his anarchism listserv email messages transmitted to him by
you. Therefore, it is clear that you published and disseminated your
accusations of plagiarism and other statements to a large number of third
parties.
Your actions and allegations in this regard are completely
outrageous, inexcusable, and wholly groundless, for the following reasons.
You and Ms. McElroy worked and lived together for an approximately ten-year
period, from 1975 to 1985. During this period, you and Ms. McElroy were
intellectual partners in developing material on "reasoning" that were
presented in several eight-week courses, entitled "Fundamentals of
Reasoning." The courses were given in Los Angeles from approximately 1975
to 1987, and Ms. McElroy participated with you in developing the courses
and related course materials from 1975 to 1984.
You and Ms. McElroy were thus co-authors of various course-related
materials, which were developed for these classes. You two then converted
materials and ideas developed by both of you related to the courses, into a
co-authored manuscript on "reasoning," to-wit, the FOR manuscript. FOR is
therefore a joint work which you and Ms. McElroy co-authored.
Incontrovertible proof of this conclusion is shown by the "Contract on
Reasoning Book/Untitled" executed by both you and Ms. McElroy on November
29, 1989 (the "1989 Contract"; attached hereto; also available at
<http://www.zetetics.com/reason/contract.gif>). This contract, executed
four years after your separation, explicitly provides that you and Ms.
McElroy had "co-authored a book on reasoning." Despite your false
assertions to the contrary, therefore, Ms. McElroy was a full co-author of
FOR, and not a "mere typist" or transcriber.
As explicitly acknowledged in TRW's text, TRW was based, in part,
on ideas developed by Ms. McElroy in collaboration with you, which ideas
were also the subject of FOR. (For example, in the "Acknowledgments"
section on page 9 of TRW, Ms. McElroy explicitly states: "The philosopher
George Smith created the intellectual therapy groups discussed in TRW and,
over the ten years of our close association, we discussed many of the ideas
expanded upon within." And on page 142 of TRW, Ms. McElroy states: "The
next two chapters are devoted to examining a unique intellectual therapy
group created by the philosopher George Smith, in which I was fortunate
enough to participate.") Thus, selected portions of TRW of course may bear
a similarity to some ideas expressed in FOR (it is difficult to verify this
since you have refused to produce the original FOR manuscript, which Ms.
McElroy no longer has in her possession). Indeed, because of the copyright
doctrine of merger of ideas and expression, it is only natural that the
expression of ideas in TRW similar to those in FOR would find similar
expression (as Ms. McElroy has noted, how many ways are there to say "Put
it in Writing" (TRW, p. 93)?); and neither you nor Ms. McElroy has a right
to ideas per se.
Nevertheless, Ms. McElroy *did not* copy any portion of FOR in the
preparation of TRW and, indeed, had disposed of all of her copies of FOR
before beginning writing TRW in 1994. Any similarity in wording is easily
explicable, given Ms. McElroy's co-authorship of FOR and her intimate
familiarity with the course material, having participated in the course
five times to help improve and develop the course material, and having
drawn in TRW from some of the same primary sources as used in preparing
material for FOR and for the associated courses (e.g. *Thinking As A
Science*, by Henry Hazlitt) (this is explained in detail by Ms. McElroy
at <http://www.zetetics.com/ reason/similar.htm>). Ms. McElroy did not
plagiarize your work--i.e., she did not publish "your" writings as if they
were her own. The simple fact of the matter is that Ms. McElroy authored a
new work, TRW, based in limited part on previous ideas co-developed by you
and her and which were also the subject of her very own co-authored work,
FOR. Therefore, your accusations of plagiarism are completely groundless
and libelous.
Moreover, even if Ms. McElroy *had* copied portions of FOR in
writing TRW, your claims would be equally groundless and libelous. As
noted, the 1989 Contract provides unassailable proof that Ms. McElroy was a
co-author of FOR. She was thus also a co-owner of the copyright thereto,
and is therefore entitled to use this material in any way she sees fit,
without your permission or approval. Similarly, you yourself have used
these co-authored materials without Ms. McElroy's permission (or
objection). For example, some of these materials were apparently used by
you in your book *Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies* (Prometheus,
1991), and continue to be used in courses conducted by you and held under
the auspices of Resources for Independent Thinking in Oakland, California.
Just as it is your right to use your own co-authored material as you see
fit, so with Ms. McElroy.
Furthermore, if the co-authored, joint work FOR drew on or
incorporated some previous work solely authored by you (such as your 1974
handout), then, since the entire, joint manuscript FOR was co-authored and
co-owned by you and Ms. McElroy, it would be irrelevant if portions of TRW
express ideas similar to those found in your previous work, since you and
Ms. McElroy were co-authors and joint co-owners of everything in FOR,
including particular portions drawing on either of your previous works.
Similarly, if some of your subsequent works express ideas similar to those
in FOR because you drew on FOR in creating the subsequent work, it would of
course be irrelevant that these subsequent works express ideas similar to
those expressed in portions of TRW.
Therefore, even assuming *arguendo* that Ms. McElroy had directly
incorporated portions of FOR into TRW, she was entitled to do this; she was
entitled to create a new, derivative work, using her own co-authored work
FOR. Thus, even if you are able to provide a manuscript entitled
"Fundamentals of Reasoning" and to somehow prove that this is the same 1989
FOR manuscript co-authored by you and Ms. McElroy (which proof will be
difficult as you apparently claim only to have a disk copy of FOR which can
easily be altered and thus difficult to verify), and even if you can locate
similar passages therebetween, your claims are still completely groundless
and libelous, as this would show only that an author created a new work
drawing on her own previous work. There can simply be no doubt that, under
applicable principles of copyright law, Ms. McElroy was a co-author of FOR
and that she is therefore the sole author of any new, derivative work
authored by her incorporating portions of her previously co-authored work.
Any claims that Ms. McElroy is not the sole author of TRW or that she was
not a co-author of FOR are completely false.
As you know, Ms. McElroy is a respected and prolific full-time
author and independent scholar. Her works include the aforementioned TRW,
as well as: *XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography* (St. Martin's Press,
1995); *Sexual Correctness* (McFarland, 1996); *19th Century Individualist
Feminists: the Forgotten Roots of American Feminism* (McFarland,
forthcoming); and *Freedom, Feminism and the State* (editor) (1st ed.,
Cato, 1983; 2nd ed., Holmes & Meier, 1991; 3rd ed., Independent Institute,
forthcoming). Ms. McElroy has also written on women's and other issues for
*National Review*, *Free Inquiry*, *Penthouse*, *Liberty*, *Reason*, and
other fora, and was a 1997 nominee for the Mencken Award. (Information on
these and other writings appears at her web site at
<http://www.zetetics.com/mac>.) She has also worked as a scholar for a
number of think tanks, including the Cato Institute. Through her dozens of
articles and books published over more than sixteen years, Ms. McElroy has
developed a valuable and well-deserved reputation as a serious,
provocative, and thoughtful writer. Like other writers and scholars,
therefore, Ms. McElroy's career and livelihood rest on her most precious
assets: her scholarly and writing abilities and her reputation for
integrity and honesty.
In view of the foregoing, it is clear that your statements in email
messages published to third parties in which you falsely accuse Ms. McElroy
of plagiarism are injurious to Ms. McElroy's reputation, and are thus
defamatory. In particular, since these statements were in written form,
they are libelous; and any oral statements by you to third parties accusing
Ms. McElroy of plagiarism are slanderous.
Moreover, in addition to your libelous accusations of plagiarism,
your various email messages published to third parties contain further
libelous accusations. For example, you accused Ms. McElroy of "stealing
seven years of [Smith's] professional labor"; and of intentionally
deceiving Prometheus and violating a contract with Prometheus. You also
denied Ms. McElroy's co-authorship of FOR, instead falsely relegating her
to the status of a mere typist; and thereby impugned her honesty,
integrity, and professional abilities.
In addition, because your statements directly impugn Ms. McElroy's
honesty and integrity, and detrimentally affect her professional
reputation, they are libelous *per se*. In a lawsuit for libel *per se*,
no actual damages need be proven by the plaintiff; instead, damages are
presumed.
Additionally, because you have taken these libelous actions *with
malice* (as a review of your email messages transmitted May 17, 1998 *et
seq.* clearly indicate), punitive damages may be available over and above
any actual or presumed damages. Given the foregoing context and the fact
that your emails drip with vitriol, insult, sarcasm, profanity, and
cruelty, the malicious nature of your email messages, and your intention to
inflict emotional distress, are apparent to any reader.
Your deliberate and malicious acts of libel are therefore
inexcusable, impermissible, and intolerable, and have very serious
consequences. Please also note that your actions may have consequences
beyond mere liability for defamation. For example, your initial email
messages threatening to damage her reputation unless you received $10,000
from Ms. McElroy may involve state and/or federal criminal and/or civil
liability for blackmail and extortion, as this is an attempt to obtain
property by means of a threat to inflict injury to another's reputation.
If you doubt this, by all means please feel welcome to show a copy of your
initial email messages to Ms. McElroy to your local district attorney and
solicit his opinion.
In addition to your own liability in this regard, your actions may
have unwittingly caused liability to be imposed on others. For example,
your use of Ms. Kroutil's email account in taking the foregoing actions may
implicate her with responsibility for some or all of the above-referenced
liabilities. At the very least, your actions may cause Ms. Kroutil's ISP,
@bigger.net, to cancel her email account, as they are in direct violation
of the terms of @bigger.net's "Acceptable Usage Policy" (see
<http://www.bigger.net/policy.html>). In particular, Section VI of the
Acceptable Usage Policy provides that the subscriber agrees to comply with
all applicable laws. Section VI.C specifically provides that the
subscriber agrees not to transmit any material that is libelous or
threatening. Section VIII.E also prohibits continued harassment of other
individuals after being asked to stop doing so by those individuals and by
@bigger.net. We hereby demand that you stop harassing Ms. McElroy,
pursuant to this Section VIII.E, and hereby request @bigger.net via copy
hereto, to also ask you to stop doing so, and to copy me on this request or
otherwise confirm that such request has been or will be made.
Note also that Section VI.E of the Acceptable Usage Policy provides
that the subscriber will indemnify @bigger.net for expenses, such as
liabilities and attorneys' fees, incurred by @bigger.net as a result of the
actions of a subscriber in violation of the Acceptable Usage Policies.
Thus, if @bigger.net were to become liable or a party to a lawsuit related
to your above-described libelous and other actions, either you and/or Ms.
Kroutil could be liable for various of @bigger.net's costs, expenses, and
attorneys' fees. (@bigger.net is hereby notified, however, that Ms.
McElroy is *not* hereby threatening to institute litigation against
@bigger.net for any past actions of Mr. Smith and/or Ms. Kroutil.)
In addition, please note that under defamation law, not only is
publication of certain false, reputation-harming statements to third
parties considered to be defamatory, but each new act of re-publication is
also a new act of defamation and thus gives rise to a new and separate
cause of action. Thus, for example, Mr. Tim Starr, Ms. Sharon Presley, and
others, in re-publishing your libelous comments, may also be implicated
with liability for defamation and libel. We request that Mr. Starr and Ms.
Presley, copied hereto, give careful consideration to this matter before
participating in any further re-publication of your defamatory and libelous
statements. (Mr. Starr, Ms. Presley, Ms. Kroutil, and other third parties
are hereby notified, however, that Ms. McElroy is *not* hereby threatening
to institute litigation against any such third parties for any past actions
of Mr. Smith.)
In sum, you transmitted email messages to Ms. McElroy in which you
knowingly and falsely accused her of plagiarism and of not being a
co-author of FOR, despite your explicit acknowledgment of her co-authorship
thereof in the 1989 Contract. You also threatened to damage Ms. McElroy's
reputation unless you received a cash payment. You then repeatedly libeled
Ms. McElroy, by publishing to a large number of third parties similar
accusations, in a deliberate and malicious attempt to harm Ms. McElroy's
professional reputation, and you continue to do so.
Accordingly, we demand that you immediately cease transmitting any
further email messages or making any other communication, in writing or
orally, to any third party alleging or even suggesting that Ms. McElroy has
plagiarized FOR or any work of yours. We further demand that you
immediately cease transmitting any further email messages or making any
other communication to any third party alleging or even suggesting that Ms.
McElroy did not co-author FOR, or that she has lied, breached contracts,
stolen others' work, or engaged in any other unlawful or unethical activity
that would adversely affect her career as a writer and professional
reputation related thereto. In short, we demand that you immediately cease
engaging in any acts defaming Ms. McElroy and injuring her professional
reputation.
We further demand that you immediately cease and desist from
directly contacting Ms. McElroy in any form whatsoever, and that you also
immediately cease threatening, extorting, blackmailing, or harassing Ms.
McElroy. If you desire to communicate with Ms. McElroy, any such
communication should be directed to and conducted through me.
Please note that it is Ms. McElroy's intention to defend her
reputation and to defend herself against any continuing threats or
harassment, and to avail herself of all rights and remedies available under
state and/or federal law. If there is any further action by you whatsoever
in contravention of our demands set forth above, we will assume that you
intend to continue violating Ms. McElroy's rights, and we will advise our
client that it will be necessary to institute litigation to preserve her
rights.
Very truly yours,
/s
N. Stephan Kinsella
for DUANE, MORRIS & HECKSCHER LLP
NSK:amh
Encl. as stated (with hard copy only)
cc: Ms. Laura Kroutil (via FEDEX; and text via email
<vam...@sj.bigger.net>)
Steven L. Mitchel, Prometheus Books (via FEDEX)
@bigger.net (via FEDEX; and text via email <ab...@bigger.net>)
Ms. Sharon Presley, Resources for Independent Thinking (via FEDEX)
Mr. Tim Starr (via FEDEX)
N. Stephan Kinsella
Duane, Morris & Heckscher LLP
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Houston, TX 77002
713-225-1633 (work)
713-225-1627 (fax)
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nskin...@duanemorris.com
From NSKin...@compuserve.com Tue Jun 2 10:55:49 1998
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Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 13:53:58 -0400
From: "N. Stephan Kinsella" <NSKin...@compuserve.com>
Subject: Starr: Libel of Wendy McElroy by George H. Smith
Sender: "N. Stephan Kinsella" <NSKin...@compuserve.com>
To: Starr Tim <tims...@netcom.com>
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FROM: N. Stephan Kinsella
TO: Mr. Tim Starr
June 2, 1998
VIA FEDEX
Mr. Tim Starr
Freedom Network News
836-B Southampton Road. #299
Benicia, California 94510
*VIA EMAIL* <tims...@netcom.com>
Re: Defamation and Libel of Wendy McElroy by George H. Smith
Dear Mr. Starr:
I have attached a copy of a self-explanatory letter to George
Smith, in which we have demanded that Mr. Smith cease and desist from his
libelous attacks on our client, Ms. Wendy McElroy. As explained in the
attached letter, under defamation law, not only is initial publication of
libelous statements considered to be defamatory, but each new act of
re-publication by a third party is also a new act of defamation and libel.
We would request, therefore, that you give careful consideration to this
matter, and do not participate in any further re-publication of any
subsequent libelous statements by George Smith. Please be assured,
however, that Ms. McElroy does not intend to institute litigation against
you for any prior email postings by you repeating or otherwise
re-publishing Mr. Smith's libelous accusations.
We appreciate your cooperation in this regard.
Very truly yours,
/s
N. Stephan Kinsella
for DUANE, MORRIS & HECKSCHER LLP
NSK:amh
Encl. as stated (with hard copy only)
N. Stephan Kinsella
Duane, Morris & Heckscher LLP
600 Travis, Suite 6500
Houston, TX 77002
713-225-1633 (work)
713-225-1627 (fax)
nskin...@compuserve.com or
nskin...@duanemorris.com
Tim Starr
In article <199806031643...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
Vlntryst <vlnt...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>On May 30, 1998, Tim Starr wrote:
>
>> It most certainly is a good faith offer. Nor was there any overt threat of
>> anything more than having McElroy's plagiarism made public.
>
>What're you using for a defininition of plagiarism?
Sorry, I can't comment on this any further, I've been threatened with a
lawsuit for libel/defamation by McElroy if I so much as repeat any of Smith's
accusations of plagiarism against her. So much for her belief in freedom of
speech.
Tell that to McElroy:
Vlntryst
Tim Starr wrote:
>Vlntryst wrote:
>>
>>Tim Starr wrote:
>>In article <199805281448...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
>>Vlntryst wrote:
>>>>
>>>>Shouldn't that header read Smith v. McElroy?
>>>>Who instigated litigation here anyway?
>>>
>>>Nobody has, so far. Hopefully, nobody will.
>>
>>Yes, given the background in libertarianism which both
>>are known to possess, it'd be pretty near blasphemy. ;-)
>
>If this be blasphemy, make the most of it:
Sounds like she told you to put up or shut up.
You can still say whatever you like, just might
have to pay for it if it's libelous, that's all.
Remember who drew first blood?
Such a shame. ;-)
Tim Starr
In article <199806050017...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
>>>
>>>Tim Starr wrote:
>>>In article <199805281448...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
>>>Vlntryst wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>Shouldn't that header read Smith v. McElroy?
>>>>>Who instigated litigation here anyway?
>>>>
>>>>Nobody has, so far. Hopefully, nobody will.
>>>
>>>Yes, given the background in libertarianism which both
>>>are known to possess, it'd be pretty near blasphemy. ;-)
>>
>>If this be blasphemy, make the most of it:
>
No, she just had her lawyer tell us to shut up.
>You can still say whatever you like, just might
>have to pay for it if it's libelous, that's all.
Even if it's not, I might have to pay for it if she presses charges.
>Remember who drew first blood?
The one who committed the first offense, of course, which wasn't me.
>Such a shame. ;-)
Such compassion, for a victim of State aggression, from a self-professed
"anarchist".
Vlntryst
Tim Starr wrote:
>Vlntryst wrote:
>>
>>Tim Starr wrote:
>>
>>>Vlntryst wrote:
>>>>
>>>>Tim Starr wrote:
>>>>In article ><199805281448...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
>>>>Vlntryst wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Shouldn't that header read Smith v. McElroy?
>>>>>>Who instigated litigation here anyway?
>>>>>
>>>>>Nobody has, so far. Hopefully, nobody will.
>>>>
>>>>Yes, given the background in libertarianism which both
>>>>are known to possess, it'd be pretty near blasphemy. ;-)
>>>
>>>If this be blasphemy, make the most of it:
>
>>Sounds like she told you to put up or shut up.
>No, she just had her lawyer tell us to shut up.
>>>(I & others tried to talk George into getting a
>>>lawyer repeatedly, which he has refused)
Make whatever counter claim you like. If you want
to say something on the net I think you know how.
You made some pretty serious accusations and
without doubt impugned Ms. McElroy's reputation
and integrity. Perhaps public apologies are in order.
>>You can still say whatever you like, just might
>>have to pay for it if it's libelous, that's all.
>
>Even if it's not, I might have to pay for it if she presses charges.
Presses charges? You do something naughty Tim?
It's a civil action, property rights thang, you know. Duh!
Do you believe she is being unfair dealing with you Tim?
>>Remember who drew first blood?
>The one who committed the first offense, of course, which wasn't me.
No, you just knowingly and eagerly aided, that's all.
But, she's not pursuing you is she? She's willing to
drop the whole thing if you discontinue disseminating
false information regarding her person, ain't that right?
Or, you can up the ante if you like, and call.
I suggest you fold.
>>Such a shame. ;-)
>Such compassion, for a victim of State aggression, from a self-professed
>"anarchist".
You expect compassion? I tried to warn you!
I declined to take Ms. McElroy's defense and
wrote, "I propose Mr. Starr do the same
regarding Mr. Smith's claims." You ignored me!
And what state aggression we talking about,
the same kind you recommended to George?
Maybe she's only bluffing like ya'll were. ;-)
It's called constructive notice. Victim indeed!
>>>(I & others tried to talk George into getting a
>>>lawyer repeatedly, which he has refused)
You suggest a weapon to someone, it gets turned
on you, then you want to complain it's blasphemy?
Who's really the hypocrite here Tim? ROFLMAO!
You have occasional flashes of brilliance,
unfortunately, this wasn't one of 'em. ;-)
Authoritative arrogance's your victimizer.
Tim Starr
In article <199806082309...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
Vlntryst <vlnt...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>Tim Starr wrote:
>
>>Vlntryst wrote:
>>>
>>>Tim Starr wrote:
>>>
>>>>Vlntryst wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>Tim Starr wrote:
>>>>>In article ><199805281448...@ladder01.news.aol.com>,
>>>>>Vlntryst wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Shouldn't that header read Smith v. McElroy?
>>>>>>>Who instigated litigation here anyway?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Nobody has, so far. Hopefully, nobody will.
>>>>>
>>>>>Yes, given the background in libertarianism which both
>>>>>are known to possess, it'd be pretty near blasphemy. ;-)
>>>>
>>>>If this be blasphemy, make the most of it:
>>
>>>Sounds like she told you to put up or shut up.
>
>>No, she just had her lawyer tell us to shut up.
>
>>>>(I & others tried to talk George into getting a
>>>>lawyer repeatedly, which he has refused)
>
>Make whatever counter claim you like. If you want
>to say something on the net I think you know how.
>You made some pretty serious accusations and
>without doubt impugned Ms. McElroy's reputation
>and integrity. Perhaps public apologies are in order.
Anytime she wants to apologize to me, George, & the others whom she
threatened with the armed might of the State, I'm sure we'll be happy to
accept her apology.
>>>You can still say whatever you like, just might
>>>have to pay for it if it's libelous, that's all.
>>
>>Even if it's not, I might have to pay for it if she presses charges.
>
>Presses charges? You do something naughty Tim?
Nope.
>It's a civil action, property rights thang, you know. Duh!
Threatening a libel suit in order to silence true claims isn't legitimate
way to defend one's property rights.
>Do you believe she is being unfair dealing with you Tim?
Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. She threatened me with a lawsuit because I
forwarded charges I believe to be perfectly true. She hasn't come up with
anything close to convincing me that they aren't true. Truth is an absolute
defense against libel. Unfortunately, the burden of proof seems to be on
the accused to prove claims true, rather than on the plaintiff to prove
them false.
>>>Remember who drew first blood?
>
>>The one who committed the first offense, of course, which wasn't me.
>
>No, you just knowingly and eagerly aided, that's all.
I didn't assist in any offense, I merely helped spread the truth.
>But, she's not pursuing you is she? She's willing to
>drop the whole thing if you discontinue disseminating
>false information regarding her person, ain't that right?
No, she's threatening to sue me for disseminating TRUE information about her.
She merely claims it's false so she can threaten me with the armed might of
the State. This, from a woman who says she wouldn't even vote if it meant
that Hitler would win an election.
>Or, you can up the ante if you like, and call.
>I suggest you fold.
I suggest you fuck off, hypocrite.
>>>Such a shame. ;-)
>
>>Such compassion, for a victim of State aggression, from a self-professed
>>"anarchist".
>
>You expect compassion?
Not from hypocrites like you, no.
>I tried to warn you!
You tried to silence me, that is.
>I declined to take Ms. McElroy's defense and
>wrote, "I propose Mr. Starr do the same
>regarding Mr. Smith's claims." You ignored me!
You sided with her by trying to get me to shut up.
>And what state aggression we talking about...
Thretening someone with a lawsuit to censor truth.
>the same kind you recommended to George?
I reccomended that he consult a lawyer to determine his position & help him
plan his strategy. I never reccomended that he sue.
>Maybe she's only bluffing like ya'll were. ;-)
>It's called constructive notice. Victim indeed!
Oh, how nice. So, the fact that Hitler said he was gonna eliminate the Jews
means that they had fair warning, & weren't really victims after all.
>>>>(I & others tried to talk George into getting a
>>>>lawyer repeatedly, which he has refused)
>
>You suggest a weapon to someone...
I suggested a shield, not a weapon. I suggested that George secure his
legal position, not that he start a lawsuit.
>it gets turned on you, then you want to complain it's blasphemy?
Someone who claims that it would be wrong to vote even if it meant that
Hitler would win the election is a hypocrite if she goes running to the
State for help when she wants to cover up the evidence of her offenses. I
call it hypocrisy, not "blasphemy."
>Who's really the hypocrite here Tim? ROFLMAO!
That'd McElroy & any of her other defenders.
>You have occasional flashes of brilliance,
Which is more than can be said for you.
Vlntryst
Let me know when you're served with process, eh?
Until you are, you've got nothing to be smug and self-
righteous about. Difference between you two is, she
can sustain her cause, should she choose, you can't.
Apodictic, no? Strategically, it's an enviable vantage.
Own up to the mistake, or substantiate the claims.
Those are the only honourable options yet available.
You're in 'check', what's *your* bold next move?
>>>>You can still say whatever you like, just might
>>>>have to pay for it if it's libelous, that's all.
>>>
>>>Even if it's not, I might have to pay for it if she presses charges.
>>
>>Presses charges? You do something naughty Tim?
>Nope.
>>It's a civil action, property rights thang, you know. Duh!
>Threatening a libel suit in order to silence true claims isn't legitimate
>way to defend one's property rights.
Why'd you suggest lawyers to George then Tim?
What's your "legitimate" basis for a "truth" claim?
>>Do you believe she is being unfair dealing with you Tim?
>Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. She threatened me with a lawsuit because I
>forwarded charges I believe to be perfectly true. She hasn't come up with
>anything close to convincing me that they aren't true. Truth is an absolute
>defense against libel. Unfortunately, the burden of proof seems to be on
>the accused to prove claims true, rather than on the plaintiff to prove
>them false.
You also backed them with your personal integrity
when attacking someone you assumed to be Wendy.
You pronounced what was or wasn't fact repeatedly.
She demanded that you cease and desist from making
scandalous accusations regarding her professional
integrity *unless* you're willing to back them up.Truth's
an absolute defense against libel *when* it's backed
with evidence. Proving non-existence's an intellectually
untenable position. You made *positive* assertions, to
which Ms. McElroy responded, ball's now back in your
court, it's just too smokin' for you to handle, hot shot.
Expand your idea of defense and you're still free to blab.
>>>>Remember who drew first blood?
>>
>>>The one who committed the first offense, of course, which wasn't me.
>>
>>No, you just knowingly and eagerly aided, that's all.
>I didn't assist in any offense, I merely helped spread the truth.
If it's true, prove it. I'd love to examine anything you'd
consider pertinent. If you had no intention of backing
the claim with evidence you should have at least been
bright enough to better protect your identity. No empathy.
>>But, she's not pursuing you is she? She's willing to
>>drop the whole thing if you discontinue disseminating
>>false information regarding her person, ain't that right?
>No, she's threatening to sue me for disseminating TRUE information about her.
>She merely claims it's false so she can threaten me with the armed might of
>the State. This, from a woman who says she wouldn't even vote if it meant
>that Hitler would win an election.
What you posted amounts to little more than contemptible
and vindictive opines. "Absolute" proof's conspicuously scant.
>>Or, you can up the ante if you like, and call.
>>I suggest you fold.
[Stellar example of Starr's internet debate tactics deleted]
>>>>Such a shame. ;-)
>>
>>>Such compassion, for a victim of State aggression, from a self-professed
>>>"anarchist".
>>
>>You expect compassion?
>Not from hypocrites like you, no.
>>I tried to warn you!
>You tried to silence me, that is.
It's more consideration then you were due.
>>I declined to take Ms. McElroy's defense and
>>wrote, "I propose Mr. Starr do the same
>>regarding Mr. Smith's claims." You ignored me!
>You sided with her by trying to get me to shut up.
Don't flatter yourself such a prominent player in
the little drama of life, huh? Simple advice, period.
My position is based on the evidence I've seen to
date, you got something you want to add, feel free.
>>And what state aggression we talking about...
>Thretening someone with a lawsuit to censor truth.
Present your evidence, your "truth." Anonymously
if need be, but put up. Otherwise, you'll rightly be
discounted as a mere spiteful fraud. George also.
[hint!] Psuedonyms run deep in libertarian heritage.
Peruse the Index to Benjamin Tucker's Liberty at The
Memory Hole. ;-) If you've a persuasive case only
verifiable facts and reasoned argument are needed.
>>the same kind you recommended to George?
>I reccomended that he consult a lawyer to determine his position & help him
>plan his strategy. I never reccomended that he sue.
Let me know when you're served with process.
>>Maybe she's only bluffing like ya'll were. ;-)
>>It's called constructive notice. Victim indeed!
>Oh, how nice. So, the fact that Hitler said he was gonna eliminate the Jews
>means that they had fair warning, & weren't really victims after all.
Who's Hitler here, George? Wendy? Get real.
The Jews were neutrals not partisans for the most.
You're not persecuted, you're a witting partisan.
>>>>>(I & others tried to talk George into getting a
>>>>>lawyer repeatedly, which he has refused)
>>
>>You suggest a weapon to someone...
>I suggested a shield, not a weapon. I suggested that George secure his
>legal position, not that he start a lawsuit.
Which is what Wendy has done. Decisively, IMO.
Know how a "legal position" is *secured*? Duh!
George made an "offer" and Wendy "countered."
IMHO, George's offer was ill-bred and ill-advised.
Maybe that explains the ill-favored consequences.
Ms. McElroy's lawyer pointed out the extortion
implications, no "real" crime there? George might
solicit other legal and ethical opinions on this question.
Wendy has by far the more compelling case, IMHO.
You're at her whim, your only salvation's that which
you so insolently denigrated. What bitter irony, eh?
>>it gets turned on you, then you want to complain it's blasphemy?
>Someone who claims that it would be wrong to vote even if it meant that
>Hitler would win the election is a hypocrite if she goes running to the
>State for help when she wants to cover up the evidence of her offenses. I
>call it hypocrisy, not "blasphemy."
Thus far, there appears no evidence to "cover up."
Ms. McElroy has been relatively forthright in her
defense, what's she hiding from anyone anyway?
Her book's in print, critique to your hearts content.
What more evidence would you require of *her* to
prove plagiarism, huh? George's burden clearly.
>>Who's really the hypocrite here Tim? ROFLMAO!
>That'd McElroy & any of her other defenders.
Guilt by association, eh? How imaginative!
Unlike yourself, I've no favorite to cheer for.
If you've evidence I'm other than neutral in
this conflict present it. You're blowing smoke.
>>You have occasional flashes of brilliance,
>Which is more than can be said for you.
Fortune has it, your opinion's want for credibility. ;-)
Woe's the lot of vulgar whimpering malcontents.