Ben, I want to say thank you for putting in a tremendous amount of work, and also for being willing to risk attempts at retaliation when that’s a pretty clear threat.
You’re in a reasonable position to take this on, having earned the social standing to make character smears unlikely to stick, and having the institutional support to fight a spurious libel claim. And you’re also someone I trust to do a thorough and fair job.
I wish there were someone whose opportunity cost were lower who could handle retaliation-threat reporting, but it’s pretty likely that anyone with those attributes will have other important opportunities.
I respect you and have followed your general commentary with interest for some time. Given that, reviewing this comment section a few months later I want to explicitly state that I believe you made a number of understandable but major errors in your evaluation of this process and should reevaluate the appropriateness of publishing a one-sided article without adequate error-checking and framing requests to correct verifiable, material errors of fact as retaliation now that the more complete picture is available. I’m coming at this fresh with the benefit of never having seen this post until the more complete story was out, but given what is now known I believe the publication and reaction to this post indicates major systemic errors in this sphere.
Ben, I want to say thank you for putting in a tremendous amount of work, and also for being willing to risk attempts at retaliation when that’s a pretty clear threat.
You’re in a reasonable position to take this on, having earned the social standing to make character smears unlikely to stick, and having the institutional support to fight a spurious libel claim. And you’re also someone I trust to do a thorough and fair job.
I wish there were someone whose opportunity cost were lower who could handle retaliation-threat reporting, but it’s pretty likely that anyone with those attributes will have other important opportunities.
You’re welcome! I think it was the right thing to do. I’ll see whether I regret it all in a month from now...
I respect you and have followed your general commentary with interest for some time. Given that, reviewing this comment section a few months later I want to explicitly state that I believe you made a number of understandable but major errors in your evaluation of this process and should reevaluate the appropriateness of publishing a one-sided article without adequate error-checking and framing requests to correct verifiable, material errors of fact as retaliation now that the more complete picture is available. I’m coming at this fresh with the benefit of never having seen this post until the more complete story was out, but given what is now known I believe the publication and reaction to this post indicates major systemic errors in this sphere.