Dear Areo readers.
As many of you will now know, Areo was one of several outlets to have recently published pieces by a person calling himself “John Glynn.” It seems that Mr Glynn had claimed to have a PhD and a professorship in psychology to other outlets, and that these qualifications when followed up on, were found not to exist. To us, Mr Glynn just said he was a psychologist without further elaboration when asked for a biography. On learning that even this might not be true, we altered Mr Glynn’s biography to include a disclosure that his former claim to be a psychologist seemed to be false.
At that point, we seriously discussed the option of removing John Glynn’s work from our magazine but decided against it. Although we cannot condone the dishonesty of misrepresenting his qualifications for reasons (presumably) of personal gain, none of Mr Glynn’s essays, which were social commentary, relied upon his being a psychologist. At Areo, we believe very strongly that our job is to publish good arguments, which do not rely on personal or professional identity. If the submission contains factual claims that fall outside our expertise, we send them to expert reviewers and do so whether the writer is a professor of her subject or a high-schooler. Our editorial stance is to check the facts of a submission and the strength of an argument, not the identity, moral character, or pre-existing work of any of our writers before deciding whether to publish. Each argument must stand or fall on its own merits.
Had Mr Glynn still been writing for us, we would have asked him to stop sending submissions because of the breach of trust. However, we had asked him to stop and blocked his emails and social media accounts in April because his behaviour had become erratic and insistent. Consequently our tweets acknowledging his fraudulent claims about his identity aimed to combine transparency with compassion.
Today, it was brought to our attention that a comment on one of Glynn’s pieces from several months ago pointed out that he had so closely paraphrased Michael Gurian that Gurian’s words should really have been indented as a quote rather than a simple “As Michael Gurian points out….” If we had seen this comment at the time, we would have made that change to it, thanked the commenter, and impressed the importance of this on Mr Glynn. However, due to his fraudulent behaviour and being unable to be sure that none of his pieces contain genuine plagiarism, we have now decided to remove all of them from Areo and have done so.
We extend our apologies to Areo readers, who should be able to trust our biographies. While nobody needs any kind of qualification to be published on Areo, and we want to avoid being biased by checking the backgrounds of our writers, we do need a way to minimise the risk of publishing false biographical information. We will continue to discuss various options to mitigate this problem in future while aiming to continue accepting articles on their merits, not according to the identities of their authors. We certainly need to read all the comments as they come in so that we can pick up comments about errors or, as in this case, potential plagiarism and will do so immediately.
Thanks again to all of you who continue to support Areo and share our arguments. For our part, we will continue to do all we can to get good, balanced, and thoughtful arguments out there from all over the political spectrum.
Warmest regards
Helen and Iona
11 comments
And to be clear, I am not critiquing your editorial response to Glynn because I disagree with you or Glynn ideologically (I don’t) or for any other reason than the following
1. Intellectual property matters and people deserve to be praised for their ideas and their writing
2. Careful editorial oversight is key to the confidence people have in journalism and key to mitigating political polarization
We agree with this but you are mistaken if you think our editorial response to Gynn’s plagiarism was to defend it when we actually removed all his work & wrote an explanation of this.
Here is another one. This one was really clever of Glynn and really highlighted for me just how skilled he is at this. For example, instead of writing, “faith-belief dynamic” as the original author did, Glynn changed it to “conviction-based dynamic.” Instead of writing “Ideology fills two basic human needs: certainty and purpose,” Glynn writes, “Ideological validation fills two basic needs: confidence and purpose.”
Was any of this Glynn’s idea, nope, does he reference the original author, nope.
Source: http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2017/08/ideology-as-addiction.html
Sections of Glynn’s article that he took from Charles Smith:
Ideology is addictive. Though, unlike addiction, ideology is a conviction-based dynamic rather than a neurochemical process, like addiction, it demands constant reinforcement and replenishment. Like substance withdrawal, ideology withdrawal is a painful process, whose symptoms include irritability, fatigue, insomnia, headaches and difficulty looking at oneself in the mirror…
…within insular academic circles, the ideology addict gains validation by communicating and collaborating with other believers. Ideological validation fills two basic needs: confidence and purpose. A constant state of doubt exerts a corrosive influence over one’s mind—humans need purpose to function in an optimal manner and an excess of doubt impedes this. Ideological addiction appears to provide purpose; the addict’s actions are guided by a need to satisfy an ideological itch.
Take social constructivism: theorists argue that human development is socially situated, leaving little room for biological or evolutionary influences. This ideology provides purpose, as the believer—who often displays an evangelical fervor—feels compelled both to defend and promote the ideology as an abstraction, and to call for its manifestation in the real world. The allure of such ideologies is extremely powerful. If an individual can abandon the addiction at any moment, and feel no sense of physical, mental, or emotional stress, then, obviously, she is not addicted. However, ideological addiction is a game of absolutes, an all-or-nothing state of being. It’s like being a Lakers or Clippers fan: there are no half measures. There is such emotional and mental investment involved, that the believer becomes convinced that his ideological perspective is not just the correct perspective, but the only perspective. This, more often than not, results in an almost unshakable conviction. What we are dealing with here is much stronger than faith.
Here’s another example for you:
The following section of Glynn’s article actually came from the blog of a guy who wrote about it on Reason several years ago. Glynn not only copies his sentiments and sentences, he even copied the chronological ordering of those sentiments. Glynn is really good at substituting words. Did Glynn reference this guy in his article, nope.
Source: https://reason.com/2016/03/07/this-university-of-oregon-study-on-femin/
Glynn’s section:
Take, for example, a 2016 paper linking gender theory and climate change, entitled “Glaciers, Gender and Science—A Feminist Glaciology Framework for Global Environmental Climate Change,” co-authored by a team of historians from the University of Oregon, and funded by the National Science Foundation. Here’s the abstract:
Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental change. However, the relationships among gender, science and glaciers—particularly related to epistemological questions about the production of glaciological knowledge—remain understudied. This paper thus proposes a feminist glaciology framework with four key components: 1) knowledge producers; (2) gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of scientific domination; and (4) alternative representations of glaciers. Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.
The paper is littered with linguistic landmines. A very specific language game is at play here, in which the authors use evocative buzzwords designed to trigger visceral reactions in their readers. A paper like this is designed to target a particular audience. Terms like colonialism, marginalization, masculinist discourses, etc., which appear with alarming frequency, are used as linguistic devices designed to reel the reader in, appealing more to emotion than logic.
Feminist and postcolonial theories augment and harmonize with each other by showing how gender and colonialism are intertwined, as well as how both women and indigenous peoples have historically been ostracized. Feminist glaciology appears to be a mutation of feminist postcolonial studies. No longer content with the analysis of gender dynamics, the neo-glaciologists claim that alternative knowledge can explain glaciological activity.
Helen Pluckrose you are defending a plagiarist and a fraud. You are publicly saying that he needs to be given “more forgiveness” and he should have quoted people instead of just referencing them.
1. He doesn’t reference all of the authors he plagiarizes and 2. If he quoted them, most of his articles would just be quotes. Glynn is a clear plagiarist and anyone doing a day’s worth of research could figure that out.
He plagiarized far more than that single paragraph you reference, Helen, I commented about it on your website in hopes you would look closer, my bad, you didn’t. He plagiarized most of that article and all the ones I’ve checked so far. This is irresponsible and lazy editorial practice. It seems you are hiding behind the moralistic position that good writers don’t necessarily need a PhD, this is obviously true, but it is changing the subject.
Here is another example since you think that paragraph is the only one.
The following section of Glynn’s article was plagiarized from an article on Quillette that Glynn never mentions. Here is the link to that article and below is what Glynn “wrote.” Compare them for yourself. Glynn just changes words here and there. Would you like more examples. I have plenty.
The original source: https://quillette.com/2018/11/06/blame-modern-life-for-political-strife/
From Glynn’s article:
“Part of the ideological intoxication can be explained by the out-group homogeneity effect. Basically, we tend to believe that members of our own groups are unique, exceptional beings, while those in other groups are homogenous blocks in a monolithic belief system. In other words, we oversimplify, stereotype and belittle the out group. By painting the out group as the intransigent other, we no longer need to think of its members as individuals. We can default to our biases. It’s much easier to see those others as an amorphous entity than as a set of unique beings.
Buddhists believe that our minds create reality. If ideology influences our minds, then, clearly, ideology shapes our realities. Perceptions, false or not, govern reality. Millions of Americans are convinced that they are engaged in a political dogfight—the enemy being a homogeneous tribe of interlopers. In 2018, a nationally representative study found that 15% of Republicans and 20% of Democrats believe that the United States would be better off if people in the opposing party ceased to exist. For decades, social scientists have argued that the effects of partisan prejudices are reduced by cross-cutting encounters, which provide a sort of mutual common ground, a place where political rivals can put aside their differences and cooperate. If a well-to-do Democrat and a working-class Republican both attend the same church, then, for forty-five minutes a week, they can leave their differences at the door and come together in the name of community. However, in this era of moralizing and finger pointing, the sorting of individuals into specific tribes has dramatically diminished the likelihood of any cross-cutting ties.”
Thank you for all this detailed information, Alex. We are not defending him. On the contrary, we have removed all of his articles from our website and have blocked him on email and social media.
We do our best at Areo and will attempt to do even more so in future, but we do not have unlimited time and resources (we have far fewer resources than some of the well-funded publications Glynn also bamboozled). This is not an excuse but a fact. Given that, I would suggest that if you spot any errors in an Areo article or any plagiarised ideas, you bring those directly to our attention. We absolutely want our publication to be the highest quality it can be.
We’re not, Alex. We defended keeping his pieces but not him when we learnt he had misrepresented his qualifications. We removed all of his pieces when we learnt that he had not cited properly and that he could even have plagiarised. Thank you for bringing more evidence to our attention that he has. Our response to this is going to be making sure I scan all comments to ensure that we do not miss anyone bringing an ethical or factual problem to light (hence seeing this) and our business-manager is looking into getting plagiarism detecting software. I’m not saying Glynn needs more forgiveness. I said one of his pieces was about that. I don’t think we can do much more than acknowledge the problem, apologise for it, thank the people who brought it to light, remove all of his work and tighten up processes for avoiding plagiarism.
Makes me think of “My Cousin Vinnie”.
All good. Due diligence.
Thank you.
Thank you, Charles. x