Talk:Deirdre McCloskey/Archive 1

Untitled
this entire article plagarizes one of its references! http://www.pfc.org.uk/node/1003 --larz 06:15, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
 * great catch, larz. plagiarism removed; article re-drafted (or, actually, written for the first time). Jeremy Tobacman 22:41, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

thanks for the good work, rick. larz 07:12, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Going through the history, I don't understand the claim of plagiarism -- someone needs to define what the issue was, it appears to be nothing more than a preference for what was on the site.


 * Please sign your comments on talk pages, with four tildes, to facilitate conversation and improvement of the article. In this case, this revision contained substantial text copied verbatim, but not quoted, from this reference. Jeremy Tobacman 02:49, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

"Campaign of Harassment"
The NYT article makes it clear that there was a campaign of harassment: "What happened to Bailey is important, because the harassment was so extraordinarily bad and because it could happen to any researcher in the field," said Alice Dreger. And McCloskey actively participated in this harassment. How else do you characterise trying to get him in trouble both with his employer and with the government? And certainly Andrea James's actions can't be called anything else.

The campaign had its desired result - they made Bailey's life a misery. He "would wake up in the middle of the night unable to think of anything else. He took anti-anxiety pills for a while. He began to worry about losing his job." They "brought research to a near standstill in Dr. Bailey’s laboratory, and clouded his name among some other researchers", who "were quite scared", and "were advised by a government grant officer that they should distance themselves from Dr. Bailey". There is no other way to describe this; it's not POV at all, it's a simple three-word summary of the facts as described.

The article also makes it clear that McCloskey didn't act alone, but in concert with at least one other person; therefore it's perfectly fair to say that she participated in the campaign, even if she wasn't responsible for every single act taken against him. Zsero 23:48, 21 August 2007 (UTC)


 * The NYT reported it as fact, why do we need to say "according to the NYT"? Why not report it as fact, with the footnote for the source.  Is the NYT not a WP:RS? (Well, I'd say it isn't all that reliable, in the Pinch Sulzberger era, but I doubt that's what you mean.)  Zsero 01:37, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Because it needs attribution otherwise it's "according to Wikipedia", and we don't need D. McCloskey calling OTRS regarding allegations that may be unsubstantiated - A l is o n  ☺ 01:42, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Since when is that the standard on WP? That's what refs are for.  Imagine if every referenced fact were preceded by "The NYT says this", and "This book says that"!  No, properly sourced facts are given without inline attribution, and the sources are given in the references.  I'd like to know why you think this is different. If you can't explain why it's different, then it should be treated the same way.  Zsero 04:50, 22 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Can you please include the full NYT \? Jeremy Tobacman 03:33, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Huh? What's missing from the ref as it is now? (Of course the link will soon decay, and when it does it will have to be deleted, but the rest of the ref will still be valid.  I think we've got 2 weeks for the link.) Zsero 04:50, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

The New York Times report did not include any mention of harassment on the part of Bailey as is mentioned in the wiki on McCloskey. The article did mention that the allegations made by McCloskey were proven false by Dr. Alice Dreger which brought allegations of bias from the same anti-Bailey forces that were investigated by Dreger. That fact is not included in the wiki. The account of the events described on this site appear to be innaccurate and incomplete. If there is a report in the Times suggesting Bailey also harassed McCloskey there should be a reference included. King Ghidora 04:01, 22 August 2007 (UTC)King Ghidora
 * What are you talking about? Everything above is taken directly from the NYT report Zsero 04:50, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

The report referred to in the New York Times is a part of the public record and includes verifiable information. I believe it is a mistake to exclude it from the wiki on McCloskey. In my opinion this is vital information about McCloskey because it contributed in a large way to her becoming a public figure. The facts concerning McCloskey's actions are not disputed. Only the conclusions by Dreger are a matter of contention and the fact she is not connected to either of the factions gives her credibility. The Times reported that she was predisposed to discount the conclusions of Bailey so the idea that she was biased in his favor has very little merit.

Repeating what has become a part of the public record shouldn't qualify as libel by this site and facts that have become a vital part of any overview of a situation are covered by fair use doctrine. It is common practice for news organizations to report the findings of rival organizations as facts without verifying those facts themselves. References such as the New York Times article are considered part of fair use because they meet the criteria of "significance", as discussed earlier (it's essential information for understanding the role of McCloskey in our society which is important for education and for developing criticisms of her actions), and "no free equivalent" (only the New York Times has reported the conclusions of Dreger and other pertinent quotes from Bailey's peers). King Ghidora 04:01, 22 August 2007 (UTC)King Ghidora
 * What have "fair use" and "no free equivalent" got to do with it? They're concepts in copyright law, not defamation law, which is what I thought we were discussing.  As far as copyright is concerned, it would only be relevant if we were to copy large chunks of the NYT report verbatim, which we haven't done. Zsero 04:53, 22 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I am Deirdre McCloskey. I've been upset by the undue emphasis on my gender change in the article, but recently someone has been on a campaign to make the gender issue---and my dispute with Bailey---the overwhelming subject. I can hardly be objective, but it seems a little silly, and reduces the objective value of the article. I am a well known economic scientist. My gender change is interesting, I suppose (I myself wrote one of my 20 books about it), and the dispute with Bailey is worth mentioning (though not at the unreasonable length or in the accusatory terms that the local transphobe/editor does). But my main contributions are scientific, not political. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.80.123.175 (talk • contribs) 18:36, 30 August 2007 (UTC)


 * One paragraph is hardly "unreasonable length". The terms used are accurate descriptions of what you did.  You did write to Bailey's employer, and you wrote to the government with the intent of getting him in legal trouble (which is hardly consistent with your previous public identification as a libertarian).  If you'd like more about your scientific work, feel free to suggest material that others can incorporate into the article (best if you don't incorporate it yourself because of COI).  And watch whom you're calling "transphobe", if that's a word; you have no evidence of any such thing, and it's a breach of WP:CIVIL.  Zsero 18:55, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
 * And while we're on the subject; let's be very careful about accusations on the talk page, just because you don't need cites for them. Stating someone's intent like that is not acceptable, given it has legal connotations. Please don't do that - A l is o n  ☺ 19:00, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Excuse me? She wrote to the IL Department of Professional Regulation, alleging that Bailey had been practicing psychology without a license - that is in the NYT article.  That her intent was to get him into legal trouble is obvious; what other intent could she possibly have had?  For what other purpose does one send such information to a regulator?  I resent your claim that I've done something unacceptable here; her act speaks clearly to her intent and it is perfectly acceptable to note it, in order to criticise it as inconsistent with her publicly declared political philosophy.  Zsero 19:06, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

It is outrageous that Deirdre McCloskey gets to decide what is and is not on her own wikipedia page. Alice Dreger wrote a peer-reviewed article concluding that McCloskey, Lynn Conway, and others tried to ruin Bailey's career with baseless accusations. McCloskey has simply been unable to counter Dreger's critique, which certainly belongs on McCloskey's page, the same way that Phil Spector's trial testimony belongs on his page, even though Spector is deservedly known primarily as a musical genius. (Note: I am not suggesting that McCloskey is a genius.)Stoplying 23:54, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
 * No, she doesn't get to decide that. The editors of this page decide that, based on consensus and the norms that govern Wikipedia. Since you don't seem to have experience editing Wikipedia other than this talk page, I suggest that you familiarize yourself with those guidelines if you wish to become a participant. SparsityProblem 00:07, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Bailey
McCloskey's exchange with Bailey is probably significant in the Bailey article, but of greatly less importance here. McCloskey is known first and foremost as an economist, not a gender rights activist. McCloskey was not the only one outraged by Bailey's book. I have pared the dispute down to essentials and have replied to OTRS emails from McCloskey and her colleagues to the effect that they should consider coming here and discussing the matter. Guy (Help!) 10:35, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
 * You haven't "pared the dispute down to essentials", you've omitted it altogether. What's significant isn't that there was an "exchange of emails", it's that she took active part in a campaign of harassment against Bailey, that she wrote to his employer to get him in trouble at his job, and most significantly for someone who is known to the pubic first and foremost as a libertarian economist – an editor at Reason – she wrote to the government to get him in legal trouble.  It is vital that this be noted in her biography, and I don't see how those facts could be relayed in fewer words than they were; I'm not surprised that she doesn't want it to be, but since when do we take that into account?
 * She's welcome to come and edit out any factual errors, or ask others to do so if she wants to avoid the appearance of COI. If she feels it takes up too high a percentage of the article she's free to suggest more material for the rest of it, but the relative brevity of the rest of the article doesn't justify deleting this paragraph, or making it any shorter than it needs to be.
 * -- Zsero 14:37, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Zsero, this is POV. McCloskey's view is that she (and several other mainstream scientists) levied allegations of academic misconduct against Bailey through the proper channels that are reserved for doing so. Including the section on Bailey at the length it was before gives undue weight to a minor dispute with someone who might be considered a fringe academic. SparsityProblem 17:19, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Whether she was justified is a question of POV, but the fact that she did these things are not. And there can be little question that her actions were inconsistent with her public position as a libertarian, which makes them notable.  Once you reduce it to "she had an email exchange with somebody", the next step will be to delete it altogether because that's not notable at all.
 * As for the claim that all she did was to "lev[y] allegations of academic misconduct [...] through the proper channels", the allegation was clearly frivolous (talking to people is obviously not "human experimentation" within the meaning of the restrictions on that - this wasn't Tuskegee!), and the independent reviewer the university brought in to consider the matter called it what it clearly was - harassment.  What McCloskey is now demanding from WP is a whitewash.   -- Zsero 17:44, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
 * To call it "harassment" requires a reliable source. The only source cited before was the NY Times article, which never actually called McCloskey's actions harassment, but quoted Alice Dreger as using that term. That doesn't fly; it's like saying in the Larry Craig article "Craig is not gay" because newspapers have quoted Craig as saying "I am not gay". The same standard applies to your other claims. Wikipedia's role is to document controversies, not to take sides in them.
 * And yes, "talking to people" is human experimentation. Researchers who do studies that consist solely of interviewing people have to be supervised by their institution's human subjects protection committee, just as medical researchers do. SparsityProblem 17:52, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
 * JzG, your revised version looks good to me. SparsityProblem 17:19, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I concur, per WP:UNDUE - A l is o n  ☺ 17:23, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

You've got to be kidding. You think that it is irrelevant to McCloskey's career that she tried to ruin a man's life because she didn't like the ideas he wrote about? You think McCloskey's fame is not based in large part on her transsexualism? McCloskey doesn't want this stuff on her page, obviously, because it makes her look really bad. Deservedly really bad. SparsityProblem referring to Bailey as a "fringe academic" to block mention of this--that is neutral? JzG refers to the attacks on Bailey as "an argument with a homophobe" and that is neutral? You people should be ashamed of yourselves.Stoplying 23:45, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
 * NPOV doesn't apply to talk pages, although civility does. Let's keep this about articles and not people. SparsityProblem 23:52, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Well why don't you respond to the point that your comments about Bailey are less than neutral, and hence that your influence on articles related to him (e.g., the one on McCloskey, who attacked him because she didn't like his "fringe" ideas) is likely to decrease their accuracy?Stoplying 00:07, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I was responding to your point. This is a talk page, and I am not obligated to be neutral here. I am obligated to be neutral when editing the article itself, as I try to be. I'm not sure what you mean by "[my] influence on articles related to him." I have no more or less influence on this article than any other Wikipedian does. SparsityProblem 00:10, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

So accuracy is not a concern with you, it seems? You have no evidence that Bailey is a "fringe academic" apart from the organized campaign that McCloskey helped organize, but which is not central enough to McCloskey's career that it deserves space on her wikipedia page. You see a problem here?Stoplying 00:11, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I certainly have evidence that Bailey is a fringe academic, but this is a talk page, and as such, I'm free to state my opinion without citation. If I were editing the article on Bailey, I would certainly be obligated to back up such a claim with a citation to a reliable source. If you are concerned about any edits I've made to the article, feel free to discuss them here, with specific links to diffs. SparsityProblem 00:16, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

What's your evidence. The evidence that you helped remove that McCloskey tried to censor Bailey via an extraordinary campaign of harassment, including numerous false charges is here: http://www.bioethics.northwestern.edu/faculty/work/dreger/controversy_tmwwbq.pdfStoplying 00:26, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Quoting myself: "this is a talk page, and as such, I'm free to state my opinion without citation." What are your concerns about the article as it currently stands? SparsityProblem 00:28, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

My concerns are that you and JzG and even Alison seem determined not to allow further discussion of the Bailey controversy on McCloskey's page, even though McCloskey was a big impetus for the controversy and the controversy is important. McCloskey clearly doesn't want such discussion there--and who can blame her?--but it is utterly unconvincing to simply say that she is an economist and so her biography should not be smeared by her own disgusting efforts.Stoplying 00:34, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Please avoid personal attacks like "disgusting efforts". In addition, I was asking what your concerns are with the content of the article, rather than with the contents of my, JzG's, or Alison's psyches. None of the three of us control anything; the extent to which the controversy is discussed is determined by consensus, and you're free to participate in that consensus if you can do so with an eye to the editing guidelines of Wikipedia and while limiting your comments to the content of the article rather than the character of McCloskey, myself, JzG, Alison, or anything else. SparsityProblem 00:40, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I am a former student of McCloskey's (when she was Donald). I don't know anything about the dispute described herein, but I do know quite a bit about economics.  I think that this wonderful professor (talk pages are exempt from NPOV!) deserves to be treated better than she is on Wikipedia as the page stands on 11 March 2011.  Specifically, the strengths and weaknesses of her work as an economist, methodologist, economic historian, and philosopher should receive WP's primary attention, and her gender change should be treated as very much secondary.  Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, and Milton Friedman had quirks too. 75.52.252.35 (talk) 10:29, 11 March 2011 (UTC)Larry Siegel

Article needs revising
The article seems incomplete from the point of view of a long-time collaborator and former student, of which I am both.

Omissions The article omits mention of many of McCloskey's major scientific achievements. For example, it does not mention her celebrated career in quantitative economic history, late 1960s to the late 1980s. McCloskey's work on British iron and steel, Victorian failure, open fields, the gold standard, and the industrial revolution, to name only the most famous of her historical contributions, is what earned her tenure (and reputation) at the University of Chicago Department of Economics. The current article doesn't mention it (See "Introduction: D. N. McCloskey and the Rhetoric of a Scientific Economics," in S. T. Ziliak, ed., Measurement and Meaning in Economics: The Essential Deirdre McCloskey [Edward Elgar, 2001].)

After the 1980s McCloskey's already prodigious output hit a new growth spurt---she's now the author or editor of 20 books and over 300 articles, on subjects ranging from statistical significance to Jane Austen. It is not surprising if an editor or so isn't aware of all of it. But as Ziliak (2001) and others have shown, she's been a force for the now firmly established fields of the rhetoric of economics (notice that the top methodology journals, such as the Journal of Economic Methodology, list it as a major field), and for libertarian economics (for a quick example, see www.econjournalwatch.com), for feminist economics, for the new economic literary criticism, and for the now flourishing heterodox economics movement. These facts are not mentioned or adequately discussed in the article. (On her influence on feminist economics the reader may consult Ferber and Nelson, eds., Beyond Economic Man: Feminist Theory and Economics [University of Chicago Press, 1993] and early issues of the journal Feminist Economics. For evidence on her role in departments of English and Culture Studies, see for example Woodmansee and Osteen, eds., The New Economic Criticism: Studies at the Intersection of Literature and Economics(Routledge, 1999). And for evidence on her important leadership role in the heterodox (non-mainstream) economics communities, see "Taking on Rational Man," Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. 24, 2003, and Edward Fullbrook's website and several edited books on Post-Autistic Economics [www.paecon.net].)

Errors The article is erroneous in other ways. For example, it wrongly asserts that McCloskey discussed her work on economic versus statistical significance in the first James Buchanan Lecture. "On this last topic her contributions have been particularly well-regarded," the article correctly notes. "She has argued that economists often celebrate "statistically significant" results while ignoring the economic significance of results." But then the article says, "McCloskey discussed some of these issues [about significance] in the inaugural James M. Buchanan Lecture at George Mason University on April 7, 2006. . . Her latest book The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce [1] provides further analysis." This is incorrect, factually speaking, and illogical besides. The article mistakenly equates McCloskey's work on statistical significance with her work on capitalism and virtue ethics.

References Many of McCloskey's major publications are missing from the References section. For example, on the topic of economic history, one should mention the two editions of her volumes (with Roderick Floud) on The Economic History of Britain Since 1700, a standard in the field. On the topic of statistical significance, the article fails to mention McCloskey and Ziliak's well-known 1996 Journal of Economic Literature article, "The Standard Error of Regressions" (JEL March 1996), the 2004 Journal of Socio-Economics symposium on the Ziliak-McCloskey research, and the book by Ziliak and McCloskey, The Cult of Statistical Significance: How the Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and Lives (University of Michigan Press, 2007). On the topic of rhetoric there is no mention of her on-going influence in the fields of rhetoric and communication studies itself through for example J. Nelson, A. Megill, and D. McCloskey's, ed., The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences: Language and Argument in Public Affairs (University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), a book that attracted the attention of Rorty, Kuhn, Hirschman, Elshtain, and many others.

Personal life And the article throws a dubious light on McCloskey's personal life. For example, it descriptively employs the clinical pejorative "transsexual" instead of the objective "transgender." The talk of "madness," "crazy," and "J. Michael Bailey" seems wholly inappropriate and insubstantiated. It says nothing of her actual intellectual relationships with others, such as with her mentor, the late economic historian Alexander Gerschenkron. 75.3.30.69 (talk) 16:31, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
 * You'd be welcome to revise the article as you see fit. It sounds like you're more than qualified to do so; I would only suggest that you create an account so that your edits can be consistently linked to a single identity. As for the choice of language "transsexual" vs. "transgender", I can say as a trans person that there is very little consensus in the trans community about which term, if any, is acceptable. Personally, I don't have any problem being labelled as "transsexual" but I dislike the term "transgender" as it's extremely vague and I perceive it to be often used pejoratively. I don't know what McCloskey prefers, though; I know that she uses the term "gender-crosser" in her autobiography, but as this isn't a widely used term, I'm not sure it's appropriate to use it in the article. In general it's best to refer to people using the labels they prefer be used to describe them, but this has to be balanced with understandability.


 * If you aren't inclined to work on the article yourself, perhaps another editor could use these comments as a starting point. SparsityProblem (talk) 22:54, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Recent edits
I'd like to thank User:Suade for the recent edits, which flesh out the article and de-emphasize McCloskey's gender identity in a way that I like. However, there are some style issues: the article reads more like a promotional bio in places than like an encyclopedic article. I suggest a quick read over the Manual of Style. Cheers. SparsityProblem (talk) 00:46, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Why is the statement "Both works are evident signs of advanced madness." still in this article? Is it OK to remove it? This is a personal opinion which has been inserted into the end of a paragraph describing her writings on capitalism. If someone wants to create a separate section in the main article to describe criticisms of McCloskey's views, that should be OK, but this is not what is presented here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.96.165.241 (talk) 18:52, 13 July 2010 (UTC)


 * Only still there because you didn't revert it when you saw it. I fixed it. Dicklyon (talk) 03:13, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Much better now. Thanks for the effort. 67.173.10.34 (talk) 08:45, 23 September 2012 (UTC)Larry Siegel

As an academic economist, I think this article now de-emphasizes her gender change too much. Not because it matters in evaluating her work necessarily, but because of the name change - all her early significant work was published under the name of Donald McCloskey. I would hope that this type of article would allow a person to track down the author's works, independent of any links in the article itself or potentially-incomplete list of works, but that is less likely to happen unless one knows the person's birth name (just as if one changed a name through marriage). There is currently only one brief reference to "Donald" and the title of one article is mis-quoted as a response to "D. McCloskey" when the original says Donald. I'm not an expert on editing or I'd take a stab at it myself, but I appeal to the judgment of those who are. MJM. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.110.242.112 (talk) 05:12, 7 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Clarifications added. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.110.242.112 (talk) 02:41, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Bailey again
I have shortened the coverage of the controversy surrounding Bailey. There is no indication that the lengthy quote that was added refers to McCloskey; to me it seems more likely that it's meant to refer to only Conway and James. See also the old discussion above for appropriate coverage of the Bailey episode. Huon (talk) 01:03, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Deirdre McCloskey. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive {newarchive} to http://www.uic.edu/depts/engl/faculty/prof/dmccloskey/bio.htm

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