I believe that still more data will emerge in the next few months as assorted litigation and pending ethics investigations and licensing board complaints move forward. I believe that a full discussion of the Hoffman report will not be possible until the full story, including affidavits filed in the litigation, and pending depositions, become public.
He expressed hope that PsySR would cover these emerging details "with the same alacrity your group gave to the initial report." [Rest of the letter snipped.]
*******************************************
From: Ian Hansen
Date: Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 6:17 PM
Subject: Re: Proposed retraction of "A Teachable Ethics Scandal"
To: "Koocher, Gerald"
Cc: [The editor and author]
Dear Dean Koocher,
Thank you for your prompt reply to my email earlier today.
I wonder whether the author and the editor would be inclined to be publicly or even privately forthright about whether they feel academic freedom has been compromised in this case, lest such a declaration result in them being subjected to a lawsuit charging them with "malice". Such lawsuits are expensive and cumbersome to fight off, even if the law eventually takes the side of the accused. When deep pockets are involved, even greater caution tends to be taken.
Speaking for myself, I am happy that more information will continue to come out, and gladly await the making public of affadavits and depositions as important additional historical information. Though I will of course keep my own counsel with regard to what positions I regard as being honest truth-seeking contributions to important bodies of knowledge and what positions I do not. I am not particularly inclined to respect claims, for instance, in other domains of controversy, that there was no moon landing, that Sandy Hook was staged, or that global warming is a myth. To the extent deep-pocketed litigants tried to force me to accept such claims as equally legitimate to claims with much more and better quality evidence behind them, I would have to prepare myself for victimization by litigation.
In general, though, it is not my understanding that discussion of history should be put on hold until all the information of history has come out. That would appear to be an impossible standard to uphold. A more possible but still unfair standard would be to demand that academic writers and publishers accept as valid various sources of historical knowledge statements and claims they have justified reason (and have been backed up by accepted peer review processes) not to regard as being authoritative, or whose potential eventual authority to regard as beyond the scope of their proposed academic enterprise. In such a judgment, they may be wrong, but there are excellent non-coercive traditions in free societies for allowing the truth to out under these conditions. Those who wish to convince others that their relatively under-regarded position is in fact authoritative need not move to litigation or threat thereof to make their case--indeed, such a move could potentially be seen as an advertisement of the epistemic weakness of their position.
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