The most prominent journals for astronomical history in Europe
and the US are, respectively, Lord Michael Hoskin's
Journal for the History of Astronomy
(see Sky&Telescope 2002 Feb)
and Dennis Rawlins' DIO (see New
York Times Science 2009/9/8).
Slime & Shunnishment:
As of 2012, Lord Hoskin and DR have not communicated in 30 years,
at His enraged,
explicit desire.
The breach began when:
[1] DR told Hoskin (1983/2/9) that
an article He'd published was seriously miscomputed,
and Coolheaded-Hoskin responded by threatening DR with lifetime
exile and legal action.
[2] Upon then learning that DR's criticism was
correct,
utterly-unregenerate Hoskin diverted attention from
His Own hilariously ironic editorial disaster by
vengefully spreading a private false-slander
that DR had insulted His Lordship — which,
in a cultist community like
history-of-astronomy, becomes the only permitted point
of discussion in connexion with His 1983-1999 suppression of a paper
(DIO 9.1 [1999]
‡1 [pp.30f]) already accepted by JHA referees.
(A magic-trick diversion this transparent would be
laughed-snickered off the stage of a magic-trick party for 5-years-olds.)
Comments:
[a] The alleged DR 1983/2/9 insult of Hoskin
never happened.
[Not that DR didn't later react
by satirically roasting the JHA plenty, once faced with
Hoskin's idea of integrity and His Face-saving determination to make His
no-dialog decree stick, while His JHA clique
attacked DR's character and elementary scholarly rights. As we put it
early-on (in an old-saying-I-just-invented):
“Archons who won't tolerate mild criticism always get their way.”]
[b] But, as we close in on 3 decades of non-communication,
all of this DR-disrespected-Me whining is just more distraction, since even if
DR had abused Confidence-Challenged Hoskin, that's insufficient justification
for attempted murder of the career of a scholar
(and later: attempted snuffing of
the journal DIO) whose obvious technical
superiority and fairness stokes
the lethal jealousy of an intellectual and ethical dwarf.
[3] The groveling history-of-astronomy community joined
in this vindictive demonstration of communal priorities
— trying to shunish
the correct & non-abusing scholar
instead of the enragedly-threatening & abusing Bungler.
[4] Concluding with a measure of cult-priorities:
For the history of science community,
DR's 1983 demonstration of JHApseudo-refereeing was instantly transformable
from an issue of communal wisdom (domination by a mathematical incompoop)
into an issue of etiquette (whether DR should've avoided criticizing Hoskin
and instead just gotten in line to kiss His brains). During the 30y shun,
Hoskin's goons have attacked DR and DIO
with some of the funniest botched math (below) and
mangled archonal slander in the history of
academic crime. All this, in apparent frustration at the inefficacy of
Hoskin's 1983/3/3 threats
and 1983/3/21 attempt to end DR's career in the field.
[Lord Hoskin to DR (1983/3/21):
“I think we shall both benefit if we agree to refrain from writing to
each other, both now and for the indefinite future.”]
His exile of DR has worked only on the rabbitariate of scholarly drones
(i.e., the lumpen-majority) that live in fear of archonal
fiscal and-or climbing severance,
while DR has instead defied the dictatorship of His Lordship
(not really a peer, by the way — except in His Own MiniMind)
by since filling the field's crying need for a technically competent journal
(boasting an elite board
composed of the best and most competent scholars in the field),
while occasionally pointing out
the awful truth behind a certain tin horn's pretense to that status. (See
DIO 1.2 [1991]
§B3 [p.99].)
[Via Owen Gingerich&co, the JHA clique
includes the AAS' Gingerich-co-founded
Historical Astronomy Division (HAD), thus our acronym
“JHAD” hereabouts.]
Out of embarrassment, the JHAD continues the pretense, and
(out of fear of scholars learning the truth)
continues slandering and
shunningDIO,
asymmetrically
countering accurate criticism with
inaccurate smears,
while fleeing debate with DR —
typical of unprincipled establishments' integrity and courage.
[NB: As each libellous
and-or scientific attack
on DIO founders evidentially,
Hoskin has never retracted.
Other popes occasionally show humility;
but, then, they have the self-confidence of those
who believe in what they've proclaimed.]
Therefore, DR is cataloging below
some of the pseudo-science and pseudo-scholarship
that have for decades kept enlivening the JHA's pages,
so that onlookers may conveniently (and on the basis of plenty of data)
gauge the actual relative reliability of the two journals.
[After the JHA clique's
2002 national false attack on DIObackfired, this unregenerate cult
could find no other effective means of fighting DIO's
exposures (their accuracy being frustratingly impregnable)
than avoidance and hit&run sniping. JHA-defending goonhood
has done its utmost to dishonestlyhound & smear DIO on
Wikipedia —
while censor-protecting M.Hoskin even
from the indisputable fact
that DIO's Board has better (and more eminent)
scientists than JHA's.
(Most of this action comes out of southern England.
And insiders know Whose debtor is doing the information-containment dirt.)
The integrity and the tactics are all too familiar.
The most amusing pretense (common to the pseudo-lowest Wikipedia goondum and
the politically-highest astro-establishment slick-mag)
is that DIO is Unreliable while JHA is not.
Centrists should have anticipated that such slanderous lying
was bound to lead to the present exposé.
(And one can safely bet that the only tactic the same
semi-numerate volk can counter it with will be:
to try censoring citation of it, too.
Classic Martingale gambling.)]
TheJHA inevitably runs some excellent papers
(which DIO regularly cites without appreciative reciprocation).
But what follows below follows from above:
a slapdash-refereed journal that places
arrogance, 3-decade grudges,
writing style, brain-kissing, banishments,
social primacy, shunnings,
prestige, etc above high scholarship, is bound to end up also
needlessly promoting a great deal of pseudo-scholarship that is
bungled and-or syc-up (we list over 2 score samples below),
even by scholars who are capable of quality work.
(Which applies for several of the below-listed victims of
inadequate-to-non-existent JHA refereeing.) If
the JHA has the ability
to spot similar slips in DIO, we will be glad
to post such a catalog here.
So far, despite several carping attempts, not a single finding 1st published
in the journal has been found to suffer from the kind
of slack scholarship, bungled math, and mythic refereeing documented below
in the JHA, whose flack-clique (now-knowingly) joke-promotes
it as the “premier” journal of the field.
[JHAD's final attempt at slandering and scientifically countering
DIO occurred in the 2002 Feb issue of
Sky&Telescope p.40. Given the resultant disaster for both
magazine and author,
it is understandable that while all pre-2002 attempts at attacking
DIO's accuracy were openly establishment-promoted,
all post-2002 shots have come from sources without ostensible connexion
to establishments.
The latest (2010-2011) criticisms
— and praise — of DIO's scientific analyses
are discussed elsewhere here.]
Fuller JHA-vs-DIO background is provided later,
below. But, since readers are likely
to prefer entertainment to dreary politics, we go right into the former.
Some of what the JHA (which such pop sources as Wikipedia
actually dream is a Reliable journal!) has put forth
as valid scholarship is just downright funny.
(To everyone but Hoskin&clonies.) So enjoy.
After all, there's no slapstick so rib-tickling as
a stuffed-shirt getting the stuffings smacked out of it.
1981: JHA review
(by N.Swerdlow) misunderstands purpose —
even the unambiguous TITLE — of the book being reviewed. DIO 1.1 [1991]
‡5 §A2 [p.30]. (This amused critique and that following were
authored for DIO by the Supervisor of
the Space Sciences Division of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.)
1981: Swerdlow misunderstands significance of
statistical results achieved when data do not permit desired precision
but do establish a lack of demonstrated inconsistency with theory. DIO 1.1 [1991]
‡5 §D5 [p.33].
1981: Debut of MacArthur-genius-to-be N.Swerdlow's
ineducability
regarding the potential accuracy of ancient solstices,
as he supposes equinoxes to be more accurate.
(A misunderstanding persisting
in the JHA over 2 decades later.)
All outdoor ancient astronomers' year-lengths (and usually calendars) were
rightly based upon solstices: Meton, Kallippos, Hipparchos, BM55555.
S.Solstice accuracy within a few hours was achieved by
Kallippos & Hipparchos: Bulletin Amer Astr Soc 17:583. DIO 1.1 [1991]
‡5 n.20 [p.45].
[Hipparchos' calendar alone
was evidently equinox-based, taking advantage of
an accidental proximity (in his era) of the Autumn Equinox to
the ancient Egyptian-calendar's Thoth 1.
Starting at a regnal-year Day-One (Phil 197 Thoth 1 =
−127/9/24 noon) just 2d before
his −127/9/26 noon Autumn Equinox observation:
DIO 1.1 [1991]
‡6 eq.28 [p.58].
But Hipparchos' year-length was empirically based on
comparison
of his own accurate −134 S.Solstice to
a day-epoch-truncation of Aristarchos'
−279 S.Solstice, and was apparently theoretically encouraged by its
neat fit to a vast, remarkable geometric scheme
which seems to be due to Aristarchos and can explain A's attraction
to his Great Year of 4868 (not 2434, as some have proposed) Kallippic years.]
1982: Erroneous
underlying math in analysis
of real lunar motion vs Almajest motion.
DR's correction agreed to by author who on that basis fundamentally recomputed
original article at JHA 15:134-135; 1984 June,
with result happily much more accordant, as the author gratefully noted. But Hoskin has
never
forgiven DR for the Longstreetian crime of being right.
(DIO 4.2 [1994]
‡9 n.5 [p.78].)
1984: Academic pol David Hughes, shortly before
(in his own journal) mangling a study of Halley-Comet apparitions
by confusedly-mixing epoch 1950.0 and epoch-of-date orbits
(DIO 1.1 [1991]
‡8 §§B-E [pp.78-84]), graced the JHA with
his discovery of the glad news that (contrary to hitherto-accepted history)
England had spotted the 1758 Halley return ahead of France. But of course
this collapsed when DR revealed that the claim was based
upon Hughes' confusedly-mixing Gregorian & Julian calendars. DIO 1.1 [1991]
‡8 §G [pp.85-87].
1987: James Evans
climb-earned
his current Assoc. Editorship of the JHA by publishing
a massive two-part 64pp alibi-fest (both sections run as Pb papers)
attempting to obscure the success of Ptolemy skeptics R.Newton & DR.
Among other demonstrations, the paper showed
how to acquire admiration for one's writing style, by publishing
without quotation-marks
a couple of passages from J.Dreyer's 1890 book.
1987: The Evans paper tries
to alibi Ptolemy's lack of low stars
by pointing to Tycho missing some dim low summer stars,
unaware of
the fact that in summer it doesn't get completely dark in Denmark. DIO 2.1 [1992]
‡4 §F2 [pp.43-44].
1987: An even more imaginative alibi
suggests that there might have been
a 6°-high pile of rocks south of the alleged observatory
of Ptolemy (who astronomers have known for centuries wasn't an observer).
The Magnitude-Split test shows
that the rocks were entirely in the JHA's head. DIO 8 [1998] p.2.
1987: Same Evans paper tries showing how dumb
Ptolemy-skeptics are, since they allegedly over-estimate
ancient observational accuracy. To make his point, Evans adduces his own
1981 observations of the eclipsed Moon vs the star λSgr
and Hipparchos' two discordant observations of Spica, all of which
displayed errors of ordmag 1°. But DR showed that ALL THREE were not
errors of observation but of wrong-signed parallax-correction: when this muff
is corrected, all 3 cases' errors drop from ordmag 1° to ordmag 1'.
DIO 1.3 [1991]
n.288 [p.173];
DIO 16 [2009]
(Journal for Hysterical Astronomy)
‡1 [pp.2-10].
1987: While trying to evade DR's unevadable absent-error waves
proof that Ptolemy stole the Ancient Star Catalog, the JHA
sloughed over a huge 63° phase-difference that gutted its argument,
just saying that the phase is “not exactly right”. DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡8 §C13 [p.107].
1987: Same paper's unplumbed opacity-formula
turns out to demand that Tycho observed 8th magnitude stars.
This farce occurred because the author neglected to compute
post-extinction magnitudes by his own formula. DIO 2.1 [1992]
‡4 §H7 [pp.47-49].
1987: Weirder yet, the paper claims that star ζCMa
would be visible from Bergen, though at 10th magnitude by the paper's
own formula. DIO 2.1 [1992]
‡4 n.65 [p.48];
DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡8 n.25 [p.104].
1987: The same paper's preferred atm opacity
produces 11 magnitudes of brightness-loss at the horizon.
Ptolemy says he observed 1st magnitude stars there.
[Planetary Hypotheses 1.2.6. See sardonic discussion at
DIO 3 [1993]
§L8 and n.93.]
Thus, the JHA must be credited with a spectacular discovery:
Ptolemy saw 12th magnitude stars.
1989: Fabricated positions of Venus are
called (by Noel Swerdlow) “required” positions.
No one is required to fake data. DIO 11.3 [2002]
‡6 n.20 [p.74].
1989: Eyepopping
allegation in Swerdlow's Ptolemy-alibifest MacArthur-Award paper
that since (near maximum) Venus' elongation changes only
1°/12 in 6d, “in no way could Ptolemy estimate the time” of
greatest elongation, an astoundingly irrelevant (and laughably
misunderstood) point
upon which JHA Board-member Swerdlow persists
in ignorance. Here, his delusion is used to try alibiing
the hilarity that Ptolemy self-contradictorily gives
(at Almajest 10.1&2) two vastly different dates
— 37 DAYS APART — and two different values
for THE VERY SAME CELESTIAL EVENT :
the 136AD greatest evening elongation of Venus.
DIO 11.3 [2002]
‡6 n.20 [p.74].
[How seriously the history-of-astronomy clique should be taken could not
possibly be more ironically gauged than by the spectacle that its awe of
brain-kissing expertise would lead it to recommend its grandest MacArthur
for a completely straight-faced
and (and incompetent
[not a word DIO uses lightly])
defense of by far THE most ineptly, blatantly, amusingly bungled fake
in the entire vast history of astronomy.
Swerdlow's face must still hurt from the strain of not guffawing out loud
at Ptolemy, the JHA, and the MacArthur committee.]
1989: The misunderstanding
essential to this MacArthur Award-winning paper's
claim that minuscule motion in 6d proves
Ptolemy couldn't determine the time of elongation is
depressingly parallel to the author's prior ironically-arrogant ignorance
of the method of equal altitudes:
DIO 1.1 [1991]
‡5 n.20 [p.45]. In both cases, one simply measures two equal values
of elongation at sufficient distance from maximum
for accuracy (but not so great as to cause trouble from
non-quadraticity) and take the two times' mean as the time of maximum.
(They teach this stuff in high school.
But not, apparently, at the institutions that
voted a MacArthur to this artfully careerist paper.)
1989: The foregoing incomprehensions lead to Swerdlow's claim:
“the selection of a particular date for true greatest elongation
would be arbitrary in any case.” I.e.,
the JHA, which makes up behind-the-back
fantastic smears at will, naturally
isn't bothered if a scientist just makes up data the same way. DIO 11.3 [2002]
‡6 n.20 [p.74].
1991: JHA discovers the Winter Equinox.
Paralleling an equally eminent Muffioso's discovery of the Autumnal Solstice.
Both discoveries compared in magnificence to
Winnie-the-Pooh's discovery of the East Pole of the Earth:
DIO 1.3 [1991]
‡10 (“Black Affidavit”) [p.177].
1991: New-arithmetic 128° − 65° = 65°.
(This is not a mere typo, as contingent math shows.) DIO 1.2 [1991]
§§G7&G9 [pp.121-122].
1991: Equating 67d2/3 with 67°2/3
(which is consistent with Velikovsky's 360d year:
Worlds in Collision p.330). DIO 1.2 [1991]
§G9 [p.122].
1991: JHA declares data
unfittable by orbits, though these data
obviously can be described by the usual elements.
At Curtis Wilson's behest, the JHA printed a sorta retraction,
but twice insisted on keeping from its readers the fact that DR was 1st
to solve these orbits. Standard JHA ethics and equity. DIO 6 [1996]
‡3 §H2 [p.42].
1992: JHA alleged
“further research”
into another scholar's curve fitted to the Ptolemy solar theory's errors
— without noticing that it is undone (primarily) by
an innocent sign-error (that created 180° phase discrepancy) — this,
while refusing to cite
[a] the correct fit elsewhere in the very DR 1982 paper
that was extensively attacked in the JHA in 1987
by this same reviewer,
or
[b] the correct fit in the Wlodarczyk paper immediately following
in the same 1987 JHA issue,
or
[c] the correct fit in Britton 1992 (Princeton). DIO 1.2 [1991]
nn.144&145 [p.129].
1992: Current JHA board-member Swerdlow
urged that consideration of a famous historical controversy be henceforth
expunged from the Journal for the HISTORY of Astronomy for being
too HISTORical. Definitely a non-pareil all-time First —
and proposed by the history of astronomy establishment's
idea of a MacArthur genius. DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡8 §C29-30 [pp.112-113].
1992: Same Swerdlow paper unaware that cosβ
weights are needed for measuring the great-circle size
of celestial longitude differentials.
DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡8 n.31 [p.106].
1992: Same JHA paper also claims that
0°.2 great-circle waves in the Ancient Star Catalog
would be undetectable. DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡8 n.31 [p.106].
1992: Same paper eyeballs fit to Peters longitude-error curve
(instead of using least-squares), with seriously false result. DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡8 n.31 [p.106].
1992: In so doing, the author forgets to remove
the large 11'-amplitude error-wave due to Ptolemy's known false obliquity,
which muddles the phase and amplitude
of the error-wave that actually needs explaining. DIO 2.3 [1992]
‡8 §C14 [p.107-108].
1992: Hoskin's rendition
of Hegel's notorious 1801 planet-distance scheme
fails to translate 4/3 power,
thus omitting the heart of the theory. DIO 1.2 [1991]
n.60 [p.110].
1995: Confusion of Hipparchos' 600y span of
eclipse calculations (from his era back to 747BC)
with a non-existent 600y cycle. DIO 6 [1996]
‡1 §K [pp.26-27].
2001: In a last-ditch attempt
to salvage Ptolemy's claim of observership of the Ancient Star Catalog,
JHA again extensively attacked DR's
1982 paper (published in a refereed science journal)
proving Hipparchos observed the Catalog through a statistical argument
dependent upon assuming a clear atmosphere.
The JHA effort was pre-doomed by several simple arguments
(all entirely independent of atmosphere-analysis):
[a] R.Newton's fractional-endings argument
(Crime of Claudius Ptolemy 1977 Johns Hopkins University).
[b] DR's 1976 absent-error-waves analysis in the 1st part of
the same 1982 paper whose 2nd part was under JHA attack.
[c] G.Graßhoff's
devastating 1986&1990 statistical study.
Highly expert analyses
by K.Pickering and D.Duke ended this chauvinist nonsense quickly. DIO 12 [2002].
2001: The same JHA paper had applied
modern skies' daylight-sky opacity to ancient night-time best-clarity skies.
TheJHA went
so far as to call DR's opacity-constant
“ludicrous” and “absurd”.
(Pickering's independent analyses countered this with ease.) DIO 12 [2002]
‡1.
(In 2005, the 2001 author rather switched over to Hipparchos' side.)
2001: The most obvious factor overlooked by
the JHA attack (and everyone else) was that
if ancient sky-opacity (not long-suspected plagiarism) had accounted for
the unique 6° gap between Ptolemy's horizon and his lowest stars,
then we would find a similar gap in Hipparchos' Commentary
(which the JHA author had neglected to consult)
— and the two catalogs' invisible antarctic circles would differ by
5° since Hipparchos' Rhodes is 5° north of Ptolemy's Alexandria.
Neither of these gaps exist. Hipparchos' antarctic circle is identical to
that of the “Ptolemy” catalog
at Almajest 7.5-8.1.
DIO 10 [2000]
n.177;
DIO 12 [2002]
‡1 p.4.
2001: As part of his argument for dense sky-opacity,
the paper's author argued (with the whole history of astronomy establishment)
that Ptolemy's arcus visionis data were not on the horizon,
despite Ptolemy's statement and diagram claiming they were.
DIO challenged this in correspondence, pointing out
that Ptolemy's opposite data, acronychal risings,
cannot even be defined other than on the horizon. These unambiguous data
proved the existence of a clear ancient atmosphere
(which thereby requires [from atm-opacity consistency]
that Ptolemy's arcus visionis data were on the horizon, too) —
a result with important modern climate implications. DIO 12 [2002]
§F11 (Pickering), Fig.4, & Table 3 [p.19] (Duke).
2002: Nonrealization
(echoing Swerdlow)
that ancients found latitude
(Almajest Book 1) from solstices, not equinoxes. DIO 16 [2009]
‡3 §F3 [p.28].
2002: Consistent
mis-computing
of Syracuse latitude by 200 stades. DIO 16 [2009]
‡3 n.3 [p.18].
2002: Confusing observation with calculation. DIO 16 [2009]
‡3 §E6 [p.27].
2002: And vice-versa.
DIO 16 [2009]
‡3 §F4 [p.29].
2002: Indiscriminately proposing simultaneously
two contradictory obliquities for klima-calculation. DIO 16 [2009]
‡3 §E7 [p.27].
2005: In drawing data from Hipparchos'
Commentary, confused
his Athens and Rhodos latitudes.
2005: Placing of stars leads to amusing
explosive failure.
2005: Sign-error
for star αAri corrupts date arrived at,
and contradicts article's own photo.
(Since this is the 1st star of a list, it shows that none of
the list's stars were checked by referees.)
2005: Confusion of
atmospheric extinction's effect on size of arctic and antarctic circles.
2005: Improper merging
of two statistically incompatible samples.
2007: Proposed explanation of
Khufu pyramid-shaft grades, without realizing
its lack of statistical significance,
or even that the claim was statistical at all. DIO 16 [2009]
‡3 n.24 [p.26].
2007: And it turns out that this paper's
scheme fits data better if its trig-argument is
inverted.
Michael Hoskin founded the Journal for the History of Astronomy
in 1970. His dedication to the enterprise, and to forging
necessary political alliances, ensured the inevitable and the intended:
the JHA became the establishment journal in
the field of astronomical history. With all the pros&cons thus implied.
The positives are considerable. Hoskin is admirably dutiful in
correspondence and all the formalities of running a journal.
The JHA is equally dutiful in reviewing all the books
(by Approved scholars, anyway) that appear in the field.
The journal's appearance and mechanics are
1st-class, and its mailings are
prompt. (Hoskin is far superior to DR in all these important respects.)
TheJHA fulfills an important rôle in the field,
and DIO is glad such a central clearing-house journal exists,
since we have no desire to be such — being more concerned with
creating progressive scientific-history inductions than
with political, social, or procedural matters.
Of course, as with most establishments, the JHA enterprise has
also become known for over-concern with power, a factor that, early on,
was evident to the wider community of scholars.
This affected selection and refereeing of papers submitted.
Papers upsetting to members of a largely window-dressing board
(chosen for academic-political connexions as much as anything) were
not treated equitably, even if the authors were world-class experts.
But papers by anyone related to, say, the Princetitute, suffered
no such treatment. To maintain this important imbalance,
Hoskin over-rode His Own referees' advice at will,
publishing a prestige-institution figure's paper against their
recommendations, and impeding publication of a personal non-favorite
even in the face of positive reports.
If Hoskin, Editor-for-Life of history-of-astronomy's
most deliberately†
prestigious journal, was expert in the mathematics of astronomy
(which is among the most highly mathematical of the sciences),
such interference might have a hope of occasional positive effect.
He isn't.
Hoskin carried this spirit to the heights in 1982-1983,
exceptionally delaying (for most of a year) publication of
a partly heretical DR paper (recommended by both of His Own referees
and advertised as forthcoming in Isis: 1983 March) and then
attempting to censor
the heretical section (only) out of it.
[For both parts in full, plus a history of the affair, see:
DIO 9.1 [1999]
‡3 [pp.30-42].]
Meanwhile, He rushed publication (in DR's place) of
a later-received paper
(which His referees had told Him was incredible —
but the author was from a prestigious university).
DR then revealed essential mis-computation in the
very paper
Hoskin had replaced DR's paper with. Hoskin's typically mature
and equitable reaction was to threaten a libel action,
banish DR from the JHA, & cut correspondence.
He soon thereafter learned that the later paper's
forthright author X agreed with DR; and on that basis, X fundmamentally
re-computed his paper: see JHA 1984 June.
But the fact that DR's advice proved accurate and perceptive did not improve
the esteamed Editor-for-Life's wisdom half a whit. Which telegraphs just
how high
accuracy, competence, and truth rank at the JHA.
Hoskin is a textbook case of pol as superscholar-wannabe,
who — while making welcome (and well-written) contributions
to, e.g., Herschel family biographies —
screws up elementary material again
and again
and again.
Worse, Hoskin and prime JHA side-kook,
religious fundamentalist Owen Gingerich,
have been desiring a shunning of DR for 30y.
Shunnings are an all-too-common suicidal offense
by academe against itself.
but this case is somewhat special in that
neither of these archons has the talent even to gauge
the quality of the research being shunned.
(Nor to choose a brain-double to do it for them.)
What is a shunning? Some items:
Not a single JHA paper has credited DIO
with a single scholarly achievement throughout our two decades of publication.
DIO has not responded in kind, going out of its way
to praise occasional mental and behavioral
(even mechanical) glimmerings and achievements
at the political center (numerous examples
traceable by following citational trail starting at
DIO 16
[2009] p.2. n.2), while encouraging
open-forum intellectual freedom.
JHA's and DIO's publishers haven't communicated
in nearly 3 decades, despite our requests (idem) to end such
a tantrum-initiated and circularly fertility-poisoning academic outrage.
Such contrasts (in ethics and scholarship)
appear to interest no one at the American Astronomical Society
(unless invertedly),
whose Gingerich-kissing Hysterical Astronomy Division
has covered the semi-numerate shunners and their miss-men with
honors, blatant
fawning,
and nationwide promotion,
while protecting HAD members for consecutive years
(e.g., when HAD's newsletter surveys publications in the field)
from awareness of DIO's very existence.
[Though invited as a speaker by the AAS' Planetary Sciences Division
in 1990 (Charlottesville meeting:
DIO 1.1 [1991]
‡7 [pp.68-74]), DR has never been officially invited
as an HAD speaker, though he is one of the better-known
(see back cover of any recent
DIO)
and more productive scholars in
astronomy-related history, as well as the publisher (for 20y)
of the astronomical-history journal which is the US leader and
easily the most technically competent on the planet.
(Check out the quality of DIO's
refereeing and judging boards.)
Given the HAD's quality and integrity, this shunning is
obviously
not mentioned here because DIO feels a sense of deprivation.
Hardly. The deprivation is elsewhere (see, e.g.,
DIO 16 [2009]
‡1 n.7 [p.4]), damaging the whole field's reputation
in academe and (rather more importantly)
its ability to learn and progress. Not that anyone at the Amer Astr Soc cares,
so long as the scandal stays out of the newspapers,
and JHADists remain on committees
that control funding.]
Gingerich's friends at Sky&Telescope
even ran nationally a wildly mis-informed and essentially
plagiarized slanderous attack
on DIO in 2002 Feb, alleging support
by documents it has never been able to produce, and puffing
the bumbling, cowering JHA as the
“premier” journal in the field.
[It is premier in the sense noted above, which is
at best irrelevant to the controversy the smear-article was discussing.
The reader can judge whether JHA is premier in scholarship.]
Such libels and kiss-ups are an essential part of how a shunning works.
Of course, a shunning is
always
in actuality a running. In this case: the running-away archons
are intellectually-outgunned pols who know it would be suicide to engage
rationally and calmly with a self-created enemy that turned out to be
slightly more formidable than the esteamed Hoskin had the sense, expertise,
or emotional equilibrium to realize, when His
1983 tantrums fatally committed His Exalted SELF
(and thus the field's whole rabbitariate)
to ascientifically-personal banish-tactics —
tactics which entail fleeing DIO with the same courage
that has too long typified the history-of-astronomy
herd's horror at a rebel journal's
not joining it in brainkiss-feeding helplessly-power-addicted
academic moguls' delusions of impunity-infallibility.
Preliminary Addendum on Establishment Lowness
DespiteJHAD goons' repeated and
ever-JHA-rewarded assaults against
DIO, not a single theory 1st published in DIO
has been found in error during our two decades of publication.
(Compare this solid, remarkable record
to the foregoing JHA MassMessO'Muffery.)
[Again, don't miss
the core of the political entertainment here:
it's the hitman&miss-unreliable journal (run by a mathematical nit)
that the American Astronomical Society's HAD kisses up to — while
shunning the competent one that's backed by genuine scientific immortals,
whose only sin is that they are utterly non-political. I.e., honest.]
Since nothing is perfect — not even a world-class-refereed journal
— obviously we owe something to luck.
(But it is probably not entirely luck that
DR's two longago scholarly errors occurred prior to
DIO, which is blessed with the most scientifically able
referees in the field.)
The point here is not perfection but
relative reliability-averages.
Considering the persistent efforts by centrist miss-men
(like Hoskin's appropriately devious
beneficiary, John-Wall)
to portray DR or DIO as kook or Unreliable, it ought to
(but likely won't) enlighten one or two esteemed archons that:
each would-be DIO-assassin's stab has failed to establish
the DIO error he so nakedly hoped-for.
To get some idea of the balance & character of defenders of
those institutions whose fumblings have been exposed by DIO,
check out the vandalistic,
sometimes
outright dishonest
histories of harassment and threat on Wikipedia,
at the histories of the bios of DR,
Carl Sagan, Aristarchos, etc. These wildly
unprincipled incursions are largely by a party
we've dubbed “W.C.Wall”,
in honor of where his academic research merits publication.
Wall continues to do an admirably accurate imitation of
a well-rewarded pawn of a (purely-hypothetical)
desperately vindictive Coward-for-Life,
Whose repeated public attempts to effect long-decreed shunning
of a hate-object (by publishing pseudo-refereed dumb attacks on him)
have backfired so reliably that He (unable to meet said object
in face-to-face debate or any other form of fair encounter)
has progressively been reduced to ever less noble means of revenge.
Right after
John-Wall's 2007 bungled
attack on DR in Ancient Egypt, Hoskin elevated him
(as He has also swiftly elevated others
right after attacks on DR) — by exceptionally publishing
this academic-zero in the customarily
institution-connexion-obsessed JHA.
DR wrote to Ancient Egypt 2007/4/7 and got a reply
(dated 2007/5/5) from AE's Editor saying he'd been away
until now, and saying he's relaying the DR letter to Wall
(who has never replied). Barely a week after John-Wall
received this, W.C.Wall decided to test
out how an anonymous-IP# worked with Wikipedia,
using the London-area IP#86.145.11.103, just with a little dabble: hahaha what ever.
Dastard of Misguise:
Wall then waited a few months in order to evade an otherwise
too-obvious-even-for-him giveaway cause-effect temporal connexion.
During this time he tried to establish
(using a torrent of London-area IP#s) —
on, e.g., the Galileo Wikipedia article
(2007/8/17 & 11/7), and later that of Aristarchos —
a (previously non-existent!)
persona as a geocentrist Catholic
— to lay the groundwork for
a bizarre, truly sinister plan to cast upon Christians
the blame for his upcoming attacks on fellow-atheist DR. After he had been convinced
that his misguise was too marvelously clever to be seen through,
Wall began using the same IP# (and many others:
all London-area) to attack DR and to (with an amateur's real or faked
ignorance of great scientists' status
and principle) attack DIO's most eminent board-members
Kowal & Standish.
He went on to threaten anyone who objected, e.g., “It is not wise to get any where near Dennis”
(2008/3/6). And (to scare off a 16y-old Wiki administrator
who was trying to protect the DR Wiki bio from vandalism): “It is not wise to get near Rawlins” (2008/3/10).
These W.C.Wall terror-attacks
ARE CLASSIC SHUN-SPEAK.
Gosh, Who has decreed DR's exile from hist.astron for the last 3 decades?
What hist.astron Archon
has directly threatened DR? —
and (less than a decade ago) told another scholar that most folks write
respectfully to Him because they're afraid of being black-balled otherwise.
Next question: where did these threats come from? Southern England,
where reside both the DR-hating JHA
and JHA-beneficiary John-Wall.
All this is, of course, purely coincidental.
The Old Bad-Cop-Worse-Cop Routine:
The Wiki-bio of DR had been fairly and multiply administered until 2008/3/10,
when, upon goon-Wall's request, a Wikipedia Administrator with
screen name “Vsmith”
henceforth and permanently assumed sole, exclusive supervision —
and, instead of reacting honorably to threatening
vandal Wall, either caved to or cooperated with him: Vsmith immediately,
laboriously deleted from the DR bio virtually
all citations to his journal DIO on the grounds
that it was not a Reliable source. (One hopes that it is not the norm
on Wikipedia for Administrators to perform administrator-threatening vandals'
dirty work — and even to return
to ensure the dirt's permanence.)
Vsmith ignored the fact that the great majority of these citations were
a mere efficiency: most of them referred to bunches of sources
that are deemed Reliable by Wikipedia,
such as the New York Times, Washington Post, etc.
Vsmith is a hilariously sloppy,
mathematically unsophisticated,
CSICOPesque establishment-plant,
who — in the absence of
valid factual or scholarly reasons for suppressing material upsetting
to his fave institutions — simply uses
threats and extortion
to enforce his viewpoint, e.g.,
holding articles hostage to enforce rationally
indefensible censorships of accurate but establishment-embarrassing
information that Wikipedia readers ought to have access to.
(Such Heydrichesque tactics
suggest that the perps lack not only
proper qualifications for Wiki editing [especially technical material] —
but also have even less of a clue about
whatDIO is made of.)
It ought to enlighten those who trust pseudo-populist Wikipedia that
it could have fallen so under the thumb of establishment fixers & goons
that it would for years classify
a politicallyunReliable journal
as academically unReliable when:
[1] DIO's boards and contributors
(as Vsmith has been informed)
include world leaders in several fields.
[2] DIO's contributions to knowledge are
internationally recognized: DIO has
co-published
with the University of Cambridge; and DIO's merit in
its most famous controversies (Egyptology,
Ptolemy, Cook, Peary, Byrd, Amundsen) has been published
by the New York Times on multiple occasions
in both the Science section
(which has created a link to DIO) and on the front page.
[3] Those who censor the DR bio haven't even claimed (in 3y)
to have found a scholarly error
anywhere in the numerous accurate DIO-citations
eliminated by its corrupt Administrator Vsmith on 2008/3/10 & 7/26.
Teacher of rox-for-jox etc, to high-school kids, Vsmith
(“VersusMyth”: get it?) is a flagrant tool of the CSI [CSICOP]
crowd that loaths DR for his
“sTARBABY”
(a detailed exposé
of CSICOP's fumblings and coverups in its notorious neo-astrology disaster).
That Wikipedia would appoint a snippy, sloppy dictator as Administrator
(despite pre-elevation misgivings and later repeated complaints from victims),
and would permit such a scientific mediocrity to be
sole administrator of
mathematical astronomer DR's WPbio for years on end, reveals how far
from success Wikipedia's impossible Reliability-dream has become mired.
As is widely known, Wikipedia can be useful as a reservoir of citations
of potentially valuable sources. But this very positive is damaged
by WP's attempt to attain Reliability-status
(an obviously chimeral goal for an enterprise
largely run by anonymous amateurs), due to cultists' passion to censor
— too often involving the elimination of sources —
ever-justified by the excuse of the ever-remote Reliability-chimera. Wouldn't it be more in keeping with academic ideals, for cults'
dissent-resenting flame-keepers instead just to post logical counters
to whatever they regard as unReliable?
[The recommendation implicit in the foregoing:
when considering deletions, err on the side of tolerance —
even if you disagree with what you are tempted to kill.
Put more trust in readers' own intelligence to judge reliability.
Most of them are ALREADY too intelligent to believe that information's
appearance on Wikipedia has anything to do with reliability —
so: what's the point of continuing the RS-sham, besides granting
heresy-fearing cultists a scythe to censor with?]
Results:
[a] Allowing only “Reliable” citations automatically
converts Wikipedia into an establishment organ,
since all the sample forums Wikipedia lists as “Reliable”
are establishment.
[b] Reliability keeps remaining elusive, while vandals use
the unReliable-Source gambit as a ready excuse to censor anything
their cults wish to hide.
Upshot:
The Wiki ideal of a people's encyclopedia has instead evolved into just
another establishment captive forum.
The Achilles-Heel of the Wikipedia Scheme —
as Now Conducted:
The weakness of a people's encyclopedia is self-evident: rich unprincipled
establishments (pardon redundances) can lure and-or hire far more soldiers
(than most individuals) whose job is to
[a] Suppress (“edit”)
facts embarrassing to their gooroos and-or funders.
[b] Counter
unwelcome truths by lies:
an endless (establishment-typical-asymmetric)
threat of deep-pockets-funded false smears and-or
threats of elimination of pages or bios.
The upshot is that WP is an odd perversity at present:
its main labor borne by unpaid idealists,
but its dominance determined (as are US elections) by
which side has the most money.
Achilles Had Two Heels, Too —
How Reliably Gauge Reliabiliity?
The other main current Wikipedia weakness
is its establishment-beloved rule
requiring that citations can only in exceptional cases be
to anything but “Reliable”
(translation: mainstream) sources.
(A co-weakness in WP practice, which is a just-as-indiscriminately over-used
alibi-for-censorship: “COI”,
conflict-of-interest.)
WP-Reliability-Rule's Lurking Ironic Contradiction:
Has Wikipedia's rulership not pre-contemplated where
its banishment of non-“Reliable” sources must lead?
Though everyone recognizes that Wikipedia is useful for chasing sources,
no serious scholar regards Wikipedia itself as reliable.
(Evidently for good cause.) So:
MUST ALL THE CURRENT THOUSANDS OF WIKIPEDIA INTERNAL
CROSS-REFERENCES BE BANNED HENCEFORTH?
On 1983/6/6, …Gingerich [JHA's Number Two ]
urged [DR] to accede to the sudden late attempt
of the JHA Editor-for-Life, Lord Hoskin,
to excise the sole, brief pro-R.Newton section of a paper long previously
accepted (even advertised in the 1982 March Isis) —
a section which included, e.g., the little-known information that Ptolemy's
solar “observations” agreed 50 times better with
his indoor tables than with the outdoor sky. [He] explicitly recommended
I tolerate Lord H's censorship
(typical of that which has prevented JHA readers
from knowing the truth of the Ptolemy situation) because publication
in the eminent JHA would enhance
my “prestige” in the field.
For the record: the dirty business surrounding this affair …
is what led directly to the inception of DIO.
I'm sure establishmentarians everywhere
will be grateful to OG & Lord H for that achievement.
Original Version Uploaded 2010/6/14.
Occasionally augmented and-or re-edited through 2011/8/30.