Given his background with Norman Golb, one could conclude that an intelligent person like Lawrence Schiffman must surely have known who was behind the e-mails, before going to the police. Cargill obviously knew before he went to the police. Cargill's friendship with Schiffman makes it extremely likely that he reported his findings to Schiffman in advance of both going to the police. And you can take it for granted that Cargill's friends, Gibson and West, also knew in advance of the police.
This boils down to one thing. These were academics bent on suppressing Norman Golb and his ideas. Raphael was their opportunity. They knew who it was. But they didn't make the soundings that they could have done to the Golb family. I consider their behaviour utterly disgusting.
I have known Prof. Schiffman since we were college roommates.
ReplyDeleteProf. Schiffman did NOT know (or believe at first) that it was Raphael Golb.
Prof. Norman Golb holds views that are not shared by the overwhelming majority of scholars. He is not taken seriously, and much as he would like it to be otherwise, he is not a topic of conversation among scholars. The overwhelming majority if scholars regard these issues as settled. His views have been often stated and no one cares enough to try and suppress them.
Everyone acknowledges that Prof. Golb holds such views (he has held then since the 1950s), respects his right to argue them in academic circles as often and as persuasively as he chooses; they are politely disregarded. Prog. Golb threatens no one. All serious scholarly articles acknowledge that he holds minority views. No one is interested in suppressing them, much as the views of creationalists are acknowledges and disregarded due to the weight of overwhelming contrary scientific evidence.
I am reminded of Winston Churchill's marginal note to himself in a speed to Parliament: "Argument weak; shout like hell."
It was Dr. Cargill who discovered the secret identities of Raphael Golb. He told Prof Schiffman but, as I said, Schiffman could not believe it.
It was the police who did the forensic work to determine definitievely who it was.
NYU initiated a formal inquiry as a result of the impersonations in the form of emails which masqueraded as having been written by Prof. Schiffman and supposedly contained false "admissions" and confessions of plagarism.
NYU felt it had no choice but to initiate a formal inquiry.
Had the allegation been proven correct, they would have caused Prof. Schiffman to lose his tenure, reputation, and livelihood. The writter clearly wanted to harm Prof. Schiffman and to suppress Prof. Schiffman's well-regarded research.
The only way to make the charges go away was for the police to determine that Professor Schiffman was impersonated and never sent the damning emails (nor did he ever plagarize Prof. Golb's work or anyone else's.
Mr. Hudson is simply wrong on the facts, as will be evident once the trial commences.
It is worth mentioning that the trial, which is apparently what bothers Mr. Hudson could have been entirely avoided. Had Mr. Golb chosen to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, and acknowledged his illegal and immoral actions, and agreed to stay off the Internet, he was offered probation and to have the other charges dropped. Instead, he chose to fight the many felony and misdemeanor counts in court.
That was Mr. Golb's decision.
Isn't that strange. Even less would agree with me. So you don't know what it is like to go against the grain of existing scholarship. I couldn't care less what the 'overwhelming majority of scholars' believe. Clearly something is terribly wrong with existing scholarship. These issues are far from being settled. If Norman Golb's views are respected by scholars, then why isn't he invited to speak at their conferences? The answer is that they don't respect him, because they don't allow him to speak.
ReplyDeleteSo 'all serious scholarly articles acknowledge that he holds minority views'. Does that make him wrong? In fact, does that make me wrong too? To compare Norman Golb's views to those of a creationist, shows a lack both of understanding and respect.
The question I raised was, when did Schiffman know who was involved with writing the e-mails? I repeat, given Schiffmans involvement with Cargill, and Cargill's involvement with Gibson and West, I just cannot believe that Schiffman wasn't pretty savvy of who was behind them. This quartet were obviously in collusion. They had every opportunity to speak to Raphael and Norman Golb. Robert Cargill is a mate of Schiffman's. They certainly met together at SBL, New Orleans, in November 2009.
It wasn't NYU who went to the police, it was Lawrence Schiffman.
Talking about shouting loudly, I'll quote myself: "methinks that Robert Cargill doth protest too loudly everywhere on the internet, on both his and Schiffman's behalf. Cargill floods the internet with all sorts of irrelevancies, anything to smother the fact of his betrayal of Norman Golb and his son."
You say it was Cargill who "discovered the secret identities of Raphael Golb". Actually it is more than probable that Jeffrey Gibson knew that "secret" before Cargill. And the methods, they used didn't require a genius. All the police were left to do was enter Raphael Golb's premises, never mind about "forensic work". Their work was a 'no brainer'.