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The Fact
Check Is in the Mail
I disagree with my friend
Jack Shafer ("Glass Houses") that fact checking doesn't protect magazines from
young writers who make things up. It does, just as it protects magazines from
old writers who get things wrong, no matter how many years they've been at it.
When someone reports a complicated story for many weeks or even months, stuff
happens--notes get confused, memories fail. Once the story is turned in, it's
the job of the editor to try to separate what is clearly not true from what may
or may not be. Beyond that, the fact checker is a safety net. Anything the
editor doesn't catch, the checker does, from misspelled names to lapses in
logic that only a fresh set of eyes can recognize.
When I was deputy editor of
the New Republic during a seven-month period of apostasy in 1994, there
were no fact checkers; it was before the whole Ruth Shalit business, so the
fact checking "department" that Jack describes did not exist. In fact, having
come from a magazine that rigorously fact checks every word of every story, I
had several conversations with fellow editors about why such a system wasn't in
place at TNR . No one could tell me, but more than one person mentioned
an article called "Are You Completely Bald?" It had run in TNR in the
late '80s, and it mocked the very notion of fact checking as unnecessary and
stupid. (The co-author of that piece was Rich Blow, then a TNR intern,
now an editor at George . Rich dumped Steve Glass as a George
writer following last week's revelations. It's a small, small world.)
If Chuck
Lane says that TNR now routinely fact checks stories, I take him at his
word--but it seems inconceivable to me that someone fact checked Glass' "Hack
Heaven" story if the subject of the story wasn't called and the company he
worked for wasn't contacted. Simply consulting the writer's notes ain't fact
checking.
-- Evan Smith Deputy
editor, Texas Monthly
Ahead of
the Curve
In a profile of Glenn Loury
("Glenn Loury's Round
Trip"), Paul Krugman writes, "Since The Bell Curve was published, it
has become clear that almost everything about it was inexcusably wrong: suspect
data, mistakes in statistical procedures that would have flunked a
sophomore."
While this
is true, it misses the most interesting aspect of that very bad book: Viewed
solely on the technical merits, The Bell Curve is no worse than many
more reputable examples of social science research. Many of the mistakes made
by Murray and Herrnstein are made routinely by scholars across the political
spectrum. The public policy literature is filled with confused causal modeling
and the use of flimsy, though grandly named, variables such as "socioeconomic
status" that don't mean what the authors think they do. Murray and Herrnstein
are hardly alone in presenting sweeping policy conclusions based on the narrow
correlations found in one limited data set. It is only the largeness of the
topics explored that exposes the smallness of method Murray and Herrnstein
employed. This book masquerades as reputable social science, which it is not.
However, the ease with which The Bell Curve assumes this guise may be as
sobering as the book itself.
-- Harold
Pollack
Bait and
Switch
Your "Gist" on alleged payments to
David Hale is so sloppy that one is tempted to assume some bias on the part of
its author, Associate Editor Franklin Foer.
The statement that Caryn
Mann "recovered her memory" and estimated Parker Dozhier's payments to Hale at
$200,000 is contradicted by the very Salon article Foer cites to support
it. Mann said that it was Dozhier who received approximately $200,000.
The author's claim that she "backed down" from that number in later interviews
(not cited) is thus groundless.
Foer also neglected to
mention that Mann's credibility is bolstered by the FBI's decision, after a
preliminary investigation of her charges, to refer them to the Justice
Department.
The
theory that Hale was just "hanging around Dozhier's bait shop, looking for ...
handouts" is contradicted by another allegation that Foer failed to mention:
Hale and Dozhier met on several occasions with American Spectator board
member Stephen Boynton and David Henderson, vice president of the
Spectator 's funding foundation. The FBI agents who escorted Hale on each
of his visits to Dozhier's bait shop should be able to testify as to whether
those meetings took place; if they did not, it seems unlikely the FBI would
have referred the matter to the Justice Department.
-- Robert
Lauriston
Franklin
Foer responds: Let me answer your criticisms in order.
1) In the first Salon article, Caryn Mann makes no specific estimate
of how much money Dozhier received. In the second Salon article, which came six days later, she gives
the $200,000 estimate for the first time. Mann admitted to the Washington
Post that the estimates she gave Salon were imprecise and
inconsistent. She told the Post , "I'm not an attorney. I spent more than
a year trying to forget this, and now I'm trying to remember it."
2) My piece specifically
mentions the letter written by Eric Holder of the Justice Department, in which
he called for a Justice Department investigation of Mann's charges.
3) The theory that Hale
was simply "hanging around" Dozhier's bait shop isn't mine. I credit it to
other reporters who investigated the allegations.
4) One
last point: My brief piece made it amply clear that Hale was thick with the
American Spectator crowd.
The
Fourth Letter We Printed This Week
Why do you
print so few e-mails to the editor? Is it that you actually get such a small
amount of e-mail? Last week Slate printed one letter! As someone who
enjoys reading this stuff, I would like to see an expansion of this area. I
know you have "The Fray,"
which is sort of similar, but couldn't you have both?
-- Mitchell
Kaften
Address your e-mail to
the editors to [email protected]. Please include your address and daytime phone
number (for confirmation only).
