Lots of folks have been e-mailing me about my friend from the Great White North, who published a peer-reviewed article in which she criticizes (rather dismissively) views she attributes to the philosopher Alan Soble in an unpublished paper she found on the Internet (at http://forums.catholic.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=9934&d=1300009573)--a paper which includes no author name and, in fact, criticizes the views of Alan Soble. Needless to say, the paper was not written by Alan Soble (as should have been obvious). Prof. Jenkins acknowledged the error and apologized, though her apology whitewashes how careless her scholarly practices were (more on that in a moment), and, in characteristic narcissistic fashion, quickly moves on to a discussion of her own "feelings." Unsurprisingly, Prof. Soble was not at all happy about this misattribution and Prof. Jenkins is now quite busy feeling sorry for herself on Twitter.
To get a sense of how almost inexplicably careless this was, note that the second paragraph of the unpublished article she found on the Internet says:
Beginning with sexual desire seems to be the best place to start, simply because intuitively most of us believe that any relationship that is sexual is inherently romantic in some way or another. In this way I agree with Bushnell, who argues that ‘sexual desire is not merely an incidental feature of romantic love… but an essential feature’ which allows us to distinguish romantic love from other types of love[1]. Soble seems to be unconvinced, but in turn I am unconvinced of Soble’s objections.
[1] Soble, page 394
That might have been a giveaway that Soble was not the author. But it gets worse.
As mentioned above, Soble is one of those who includes dyadic exclusivity as a necessary feature in a conceptual analysis of romantic love. He spells out his views on this matter even more thoroughly in Soble (unpublished manuscript), where he says:
"I believe that exclusivity has to be an essential part of romantic love. Intuitively, I cannot conceive of romantic love that is anything but exclusive. It seems patently obvious that romantic love requires exclusivity – two people who are exclusive and belong only to each other....My main reason for thinking that exclusivity is a necessary feature of romantic love is that it just makes sense. "(2)
This is not very dialectically compelling; it reads as more of an internal status report than an argument. But evidently, for Soble at least, the intuitiveness of monogamy is a big deal.
But now look at the full context of the passage from the unpublished article on the Internet from which she is quoting:
I believe Soble is correct in saying that Caraway is wrong to say that exclusivity is an important but not-necessary feature of romantic love[2]. Leaving aside Caraway’s inconsistency in saying exclusivity is important but not-necessary; I believe that exclusivity has to be an essential part of romantic love. Intuitively, I cannot conceive of romantic love that is anything but exclusive. It seems patently obvious that romantic love requires exclusivity – two people who are exclusive and belong only to each other. For unity as I have described it to occur, perhaps it may not seem obvious that exclusivity is necessary. However, this isn’t a problem as of course I am giving exclusivity it’s own place in romantic love rather than trying to make it follow on from any other necessary feature as a hanger-on.
My main reason for thinking that exclusivity is a necessary feature of romantic love is that it just makes sense.
[2] Soble, 389
How could anyone who read this think these were Alan Soble's views, given that the author is quoted as agreeing with Soble about Soble's criticisms of someone else!
So how can one explain a mistake of this magnitude? The least charitable explanation is that she did not care whether or not Soble was the source of the arguments, she just wanted a prominent named representative of a position to attack (and she does criticize the real Soble elsewhere in the article, and he is a well-known writer on the philosopher of love). The more charitable explanation is that she carelessly conflated the anonymous author with Soble because they both agreed about the importance of "exclusivity" in romantic love contra Caraway. But that still doesn't explain how she could not notice that the argument she attacks was not Soble's, but by someone else who is explicitly discussing and sometimes criticizing Soble. Even on the charitable interpretation, her note-taking practices must be remarkably sloppy.
Prof. Jenkins, in her "apology" and elsewhere on social media, makes a big deal about how "everyone makes mistakes." Everyone does, of course, though not of this magnitude: this is not a case of getting the publication year wrong, or the page numbers wrong; this is a case of misattribution of views to an author on the basis of a text obviously not written by that author. If everyone were really making this kind of mistake, scholarship would be in a lot of trouble!
One interesting question this case raises is whether it rises to the level of academic misconduct of the kind a university ethics board would investigate. It's clearly not as clear-cut a violation as, say, plagiarism, and I can not think of a case where this kind of reckless misattribution of views gave rise to academic misconduct concerns (though this is because I can't think of any other case of this kind of error). But I suppose this will depend on the local norms and rules.
In any case, I'll give the final word to some anonymous person on one of the current iterations of the metablogs (no, I won't link, that never ends happily), who sums things up pretty aptly:
Carrie Jenkins apologizes for misattributing an unpublished MS to Alan Soble in published work. On twitter, she also apologies, but then blames Soble for being too too mad about it. ("I know everyone makes mistakes. But not everyone is judged or treated the same when they make a mistake.") What she DOESN'T say is:
1. She quotes the paper at length, as a main example of the position she's attacking.
2. The argument she quotes is terrible, and she (justly) makes fun of it.
3. The link to the MS in Jenkins's bibliography is to a copy stored in an online forum for Catholics. Googling it shows that the paper was posted by a random undergrad looking for feedback on it for a class.
4. The paper is 3 and a half pages long, and it actually discusses Soble and provisionally attributes views to him. There is literally no way anyone who spent 30 seconds skimming the paper could think it was by Soble.
5. Soble is pretty well-known in the love literature. Her claim to be saying something interesting and important substantially depended on someone of his stature being so wrong. So, by attributing an embarrassing paper to him, Jenkins makes herself look better by making him look shitty.
I'm fascinated by all this. I'm honestly not aware of a case of misattribution as egregious as this. But the way Jenkins tells it, she made an innocent mistake and she feels terrible about it, because she cares so much plus she's a woman with imposter syndrome plus the men are mean about it.
Maybe she's so...narcissistic that she really believes all that, I don't know.
UPDATE: Another reader reaction regarding a different breach of norms of responsible scholarship.
ANOTHER: Ergo finally issues an inadequate "correction."
Recent Comments