09-26-2008, 08:49 AM
Quote:You think the guy sits at home googling himself so he can jump in places?Unfortunately, I think that that is perfectly possible. We have already seen that Holland or his editor are not below producing fake reviews.
What is worse, I know that there are many writers who "autogoogle". You would be surprised to see how much mail I receive from authors who want me to rewrite parts of my website. Sometimes they try to cover up their errors; usually they point at more recent information than I have access to. For example, Nikos Kokkinos, a well-known specialist in the Herodian dynasty, kindly showed me additional literature; Oliver Hoover of the American Numismatic Society sometimes sends me corrections ("that coin is not Antiochus I, but Antiochus II" - and then I send a message to the museum that has erroneous explanations); Eibert Tigchelaar knows everything about the Dead Sea Scrolls. They are all scholars who found my website by googling themselves, and usually, their information is reliable.
But now, take this review I wrote about a book by Kaveh Farrokh. Within a month after publishing, I received a long, inconsistent message from someone defending Farrokh, and I have the strong suspicion that it was Farrokh himself, or someone very close to him. Now take a look at this page, a debate whether to delete Farrokh's Wikipedia biography (I noticed its existence because I suddenly received a lot of visitors to the review). He has obviously asked all his friends to help him; he is not so very well-known that an internal Wiki debate causes so much attention.
What I am trying to say is that (a) scholars are usually very interested in what is written about them, and that this is not necessarily a bad thing; (b) the example of Farrokh shows how much writers are willing to do to protect their reputation; © Holland and his author are already on record for review fraud. So, to repeat the initial question:
Quote:You think the guy sits at home googling himself so he can jump in places?- the answer is that it is within the realm of the possible. Please note that "Blah" has been a one time visitor.
