Echo Chamber Incites Online Mob to Attack Math Profs
It&#x27;s an interesting episode.   I just left a comment there on the article, but it hasn&#x27;t made it through the spam filter yet.  Or perhaps he&#x27;s turned off comments already?  I&#x27;ll repost here so it&#x27;s not lost completely.<p>---<p>Andrew --<p>1) Your sentiment that &quot;It should be possible to have a legitimate difference of opinion regarding the value of that paper, without making someone into the bad guy&quot; is wonderful, and mostly lacking elsewhere.  Thanks for this.  Your response to D Kane that the &quot;attacks don’t retroactively justify all of Cuddy’s earlier actions, but they do cast new light to me on the consequences of my own actions&quot; is equally enheartening.<p>2) A refrain in your comments is that &quot;Wilkinson suggested the journal publish a rebuttal, the journal editor instead decided to remove the paper.&quot;   From what I can tell, the evidence that she made no suggestion of removal is almost exclusively Wilkinson&#x27;s self-description.  Even if this is the email that Wilkinson intended to write, perhaps the wording didn&#x27;t make it clear that she was not suggesting removal?    Is it fair to wonder why Wilkinson has not offered that email if it&#x27;s as exonerating as she describes?<p>3) Did you happen to notice that you are explicitly mentioned in the newly released email from Lee Wilkinson as a suggested author of a rebuttal to accompany the article: &quot;And if you do decide to go with the article plus commentaries, I would suggest that you consult with people like Donald Rubin at Harvard or John Hartigan at Yale (emeritus) or Steven Sigler at Chicago or Andrew Gelman at Columbia, all of whom have far more experience with the statistical and mathematical issues underlying this hypothesis than Hill and Tabachnik[ov].&quot;