During the summer, I noted the bizarre case of an article (on philosophy of love) by Carrie Jenkins, published in Ergo, that devoted one section of the paper to criticizing the (alleged) views of Alan Soble, a leading contributor to the philosophy of love literature--except it turned out the target of the criticism was an anonymous paper posted on the Internet actually written by an undergraduate, that even criticized Soble's views and that Jenkins recklessly attribute to Soble. As a colleague elsewhere said to me, "This is an undergraduate mistake," not the mistake of a professional, or so one might hope. Instead of retracting the paper, Ergo added the following erratum:
The original published version of this paper incorrectly attributed, in §5, an unpublished manuscript to Alan Soble. That manuscript is by an anonymous author who is not Alan Soble. The author regrets the error, and apologizes to Professor Soble for the misattribution.
But section 5 of the article is devoted to refuting the (obviously feeble) arguments of an anonymous undergraduate who was himself/herself criticizing Alan Soble. This erratum is itself a fraud. It should have said that section 5 "of the article refutes the view of an undergraduate on the Internet, views that were carelessly attributed to a professional philosopher, who was defamed by the attribution."
Ergo did itself no credit here, quite apart from my (widely shared) low opinion of the author of the article. A peer-reviewed journal that publishes an article, a major portion of which is devoted to attacking arguments by anonymous undergraduates on the Internet, ought to apologize and remove the article. The on-line, peer-reviewed publication model is terrific, but it needs to involve adult peer-review, and adult corrections. Ergo should do better.
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