From where did Schaefer derive his thicket of falsehoods regarding DIO publisher D.Rawlins having “abused” M.Hoskin over alleged JHA “rejection” of a Rawlins paper?
O.Gingerich, HASTRO 2000/4/22 and DIO 9.1 [1999] p.41:
Hoskin was prepared to accept the paper in question . . . [but] …. Rawlins refused to allow the sentence [“that Ptolemy has indeed been shown to have been a liar” — which (due to purposeful Gingerich truncation) isn't a sentence] to be changed, so the paper never proceeded to press. … abuse … continued to arrive in the mail from Rawlins, so [Hoskin] simply stopped opening it.
B.Schaefer, Sky&Tel 2002 Feb p.40:
The manuscript was ultimately rejected for publication after Rawlins refused to remove the claim [versus below] that Ptolemy was a liar, and thereafter Rawlins . . . . started sending abusive letters to Hoskin, who soon stopped opening them.
(This incident reminds me of Peter Sellers' immortal contretemps in Only Two Can Play, when he fakes a newspaper review of a play he missed actually seeing — only to learn the next day that the theatre had burned down just before the performance.)
Obviously, Sky&Tel has
done well in choosing
its defender of the Great Plagiarist, Claudius Indoor Ptolemy, who preferred
to adopt Hipparchos' positions for stars rather than check them himself.
Brad Schaefer [since (thus?)
world-promoted
as a judicious historical Expert and Discoverer
by the American Astronomical Society and its Historical Astronomy Division]
simply repeated the Hoskin-Gingerich JHA fantasy without bothering
to check the actual Rawlins-Hoskin pre-cutoff correspondence,
which appears in detail at
DIO 1.2 [1991]
§§B2-B3 [pp.97-100], and reveals
[a] whose paper triggered Hoskin's rage,
[b] the actual sentence in question,
[c] who started
“abusing” whom.
Read it: it's weird stuff. If Hoskin believes
DIO's account has unfairly omitted anything, then JHA is
free to publish it. (Or ask DIO to. Which we promptly will.)
Note: DR's actual
statement (on Ptolemy & lying)
is not quite what OG-BS indicate. See honest Gingerich's slei-slyght
cheating
here, exposed in thorough (and especially) contextual detail at
DIO 9.1 [1999]
‡3 §F7 [pp.41-42] — and note §F8 re double-standards!
[DIO 1.2 [1991]
(§B2 [p.99]): the JHA-banned sentence's “main aim
was to tell the hitherto protected JHA readership that
there was a live scholarly controversy over Ptolemy's integrity.
JHA's aim was to suppress that truth long enough
to make it obsolete. Without DIO,
this neatly circular plan would certainly have succeeded.
Which tells us worlds about the honesty & worth of
[the history-of-astronomy] community.”]
Addenda:
Note that both Gingerich and Gingerich-Schaefer
imply that DR harrassed Lord Hoskin
with letters for months or years after this incident.
Just another kook-level fantasy
(born of rage-poisoned imagination), which the JHA of course
cannot
document any more than its other fabrications.
[Apoplectic
— ultimately demented
— Hoskin's behavior was hardly that of BS' image of
the weary-but-tolerant recipient of a long series of cuss-out letters.
The whole blowup involved merely 2 DR letters, one not even opened,
and took barely a month (effectively less than 3 weeks: 3/3-21),
MH→DR 1983/3/3, DR→MH 3/14, MH→DR 3/21, DR→MH 4/8
(returned unopened:
DIO 1.2 [1991]
n.17 [p.100]), because as soon as Hoskin was shocked by resistance to
suppression & dictatorship, He killed correspondence, 1983/3/21.
No MH-DR letters occurred in either direction after 1983/4/8.]
Questions:
[a] Is the AAS indicating by its silence that it wishes to feed
Lord Hoskin's (understandable) desire for immunity from
criticism?
[b] Does the AAS or its HAD not care whether slanderous dements,
nuts, and-or deceivers have received the AAS-HAD's highest honor?
If it doesn't (so long as a public fuss can be
prevented
from breaking out), then
the American Astronomical Society is telling us a great deal about itself.