In response to my reply to her letter, Deirdre McCloskey wrote again:

Dear Professor Roberts,

You are not listening, which I rather expected you would not. You are satisfied with debating points rather than trying to get to the scientific truth. Is this your modus operandi, or are you for some reason wedded off-stage to Bailey behaviorism, say, or transphobia? I really would like to know where your indignant certitude about things you know practically nothing about is coming from.

“The big issue” for you is free speech. In what way have I or anyone else in this debate abridged anyone’s free speech? We aren’t the government. It’s just confused to identify published complaints by private citizens about someone—justified in this case, but let’s for the moment set the issue of the merits aside—with censorship or some other governmental act in violation of “free speech.” People complain about other people all the time. For example, I complain about Paris Hilton.

Your confusion fits smoothly with your strange assertion, swallowed from Dr. Dreger’s self-dramatizing piece published at bizarre length in a distinguished journal run by the chief Baileyite, that we have “great power.” That’s how the Bailey-as-brave-victim line, adopted by Mr. Carey of the NY Times from an uncritical reading of Dr. Dreger’s assault on me and others, got going.

Hmm. In what does our great power lie? Professor Bailey, like us, is a senior, tenured professor. We objected to his work and to his behavior, through our writings and through channels. What exactly is the exercise of “great power” there? Isn’t this power called “the power of the pen,” and isn’t that exactly the “free speech” you believe you are so courageously defending? The National Academy of Science, which published Bailey’s unscientific book, and which has been taken over it would appear by a clique of Gay Gene theorists (I suppose it is an indirect effect of Bush’s administration, but I don’t know), is powerful. That’s the hand of a governmental advisory body, great power indeed, right? We are a couple of professors not in sexology who objected to the mistreatment of some of our poor and ignorant friends, and objected to Bailey’s theories and especially to his lack of interest in investigating the bulk of the actual scientific evidence on the matter, namely, any serious sample of the lives of gender crossers. Where’s the power?

And how about our right of free speech? We complained to the licensing board about Bailey practicing psychology without a license and you regard that action as requiring defense. (One reason the board did not act, by the way, is that the physician-created statute of limitation on malpractice had run out. It has a notably short fuse.) We complained about his abuse of scientific subjects (it’s his claim, not ours, that they were scientific subjects), to the proper authorities. The proper authorities took what you call an “absurd” complaint most seriously, and Bailey resigned from the chairmanship of his department. You regard our actions not as the “free speech” you believe you are defending but as attempts to destroy Bailey.

May I suggest that you are not making sense? Criticizing people in open forums and through channels is precisely what Dr. Dreger, and now the reporter for the Times, and now you, have done. That’s fine. I do not call Dreger’s hysterical letters through channels against Andrea James, or her Bailey-group subsidized piece which you have so completely swallowed, an attempt to “destroy” James or me. I call her action self-dramatizing and illiberal, and I call her writings unscientific and nonsensical, politically slanted pseudo-history. I do not call your blog retailing Carey’s article an attempt to destroy me or to suppress free speech. I call it a silly remark about a subject you have no experience of.

What sort of double standard are you applying to my speech but not to your own? My criticism and complaint is “an attempt to destroy.” Dreger’s, the reporter Carey’s secondary, and now your tertiary criticism and complaint are then. . . what? I say both are free speech, the duty of serious citizens in a democracy. Go to it. Aux barricades for a free press. But stop making these unsupported claims about censorship and destroying Professor Bailey’s life.

Speaking of “destroyed lives,” by the way, what about our lives and the lives of the gender crossers we sought to protect? My children have not spoken to me since I transitioned, in 1995. I have two grandchildren I have not been allowed to meet. One important reason is the sex, sex, sex theory, known in the field to be of little scientific merit, which Bailey defends with shallow evidence but which is attractive to ignorant outsiders hostile to gender crossers. More widely, the sex, sex, sex theory is one potent reason for transphobia and for the numerous violent deaths of gender crossers. You may consult GenderPak on the issue, if you can rouse some scientific curiosity about the actual facts of the matter. Or you can read the hate mail I have received since Carey’s piece.

Let me ask you what you would do in a similar case. I don’t know what your scientific work has been, but let’s be symmetrical. Suppose an economist had written a book with a exiguous selection of evidence saying that psychologists were liars and sexual perverts, and refused to risk his theory in a serious scientific test by interviewing a wide range of psychologists. Suppose he found, by searching in places where prostitutes gather, some psychologists working as prostitutes, and concluded that psychologists tended to be prostitutes. Suppose the psychologists he interviewed were very eager to get The Letter that would, they believed in their innocence, give them, say, very valuable rights to trade on the New York Stock Exchange, and suppose the economist said he would write the letter if they would talk to him. Suppose he then in addition slept with one of the psychologists, and then used the “evidence” thus acquired to support his unscientific theories in a long book published with the government’s imprimatur filled with anti-psychologist lore. First, kill all the psychologists.

What would you do about the economist’s unscientific claims, let us say, on your blog? And would you also complain to the legitimate authorities about the economist’s unprofessional and fraudulent behavior? When someone mugs you or a friend on the street, do you report it to the police? And would your just complaints against such a character be an attempt to ruin him? Or would it be fair comment in a free society and the exercise of the rights and duties of a citizen?

You may quote anything I write, in whole or in part. My pieces are posted on my webpage, deirdremccloskey.org. I expect, however, to be answered again with silly debating points. You have closed your mind on the issue, and are not open to evidence or to reason. It is a most unscientific stance. Shame on you. (That’s called fair comment in a free society, dear, not an attempt to destroy you.)

Sincerely,

Deirdre McCloskey

My reply.

In reply to Deirdre McCloskey’s second letter, I wrote:

Dear Professor McCloskey,

I’m glad to hear more of your side of the story. To answer your questions:

“In what way have I or anyone else in this debate abridged anyone’s free speech?” By attacking someone — Bailey — who said something you didn’t like. Fearful of future attacks from you or Conway or Andrea James, others will keep their mouths shut. The term is chilling effect. Here is Wikipedia’s definition: “A chilling effect is a situation where speech or conduct is suppressed or limited by fear of penalization at the hands of an individual or group.” Wikipedia’s example is fear of a lawsuit — which you have threatened (” I’m going to sue Bailey for defamation if . . . “). Minutes after I posted my second blog entry about the attacks on Bailey, the first post that mentioned you, I got an email from a wise friend. “There has been a big McCloskey/Bailey feud, I believe involving also lawsuits or the threat thereof,” he wrote. It was a warning. He was worried.

“In what does our great power lie?” In four things: 1. Job security. Not only tenure — you and Conway are near the top of your professions. 2. Money. 3. Respect. Your upcoming honorary degree, for example. A recent memoir by an esteemed economist praised you for your “courage.” Conway’s membership in the National Academy of Engineering. 4. Knowing how the system works — in particular how to get powerful bureaucracies (such as Northwestern’s) to do what you want. “We are a couple of professors not in sexology.” Please. You and Conway are not average professors. What fraction of professors get honorary degrees? What fraction of engineering professors are in the National Academy of Engineering?

“What about our right to free speech?” You think calling your absurd complaints to credulous and powerful authorities “free speech” somehow defends them? I don’t.

“What about our lives? . . . My children have not spoken to me since I transitioned, in 1995. I have two grandchildren I have not been allowed to meet.” Yes, that is horrible. No one should be treated like that. But the fact that you have been treated badly doesn’t justify doing something awful (your absurd complaints) to someone else.

How would I react if your scenario about psychologists came to pass? I would do nothing. I’m supposed to get upset that Person X asked Person Y for a letter and before Person Y wrote that letter he asked Person X to speak to him — perhaps about the contents of the letter? On what planet is that wrong? I should react because someone “had sex with a psychologist”? I should be upset that the person “used the “evidence” thus acquired to support his unscientific theories in a long book”? We are at a curious place in intellectual history when a Distinguished Professor of this and that, soon to receive an honorary degree from a major university, thinks that a sane person might be upset that someone had sex with a psychologist.

Your complaints to powerful and credulous authorities, you say, were not absurd because they were taken seriously. (”They took what you call an “absurd” complaint most seriously.”) Okay, here is why your complaints were absurd. 1. You and Conway complained to the State of Illinois that Bailey was practicing psychology without a license because he wrote letters on behalf of several persons who had come to him for help. He helped them! They came to him for help! To complain about this is absurd. To say your complaint “protects” anyone is absurd. To say what Bailey did resembles “mugging” is absurd. No one seeks out a mugger and asks to be mugged. 2. You and Conway orchestrated the filing of human-subjects complaints against Bailey. These complaints assumed that persons mentioned in stories in Bailey’s book were “research subjects” — simply because they were in the book. Never before in the history of science had the subject of a story told to illustrate a point been thereby considered a research subject. Bailey’s book is not a scientific monograph. It is not a piece of science. It is a trade book about science. When I or anyone else gives a lecture about a scientific subject, and tell a story from everyday life to make the conclusions come alive, do we need informed consent from everyone mentioned in the story? Of course not. No one has ever been required to do this. No one has ever done this. No one has ever even conceived of such a thing. The whole idea is absurd. Northwestern administrators may be credulous; I’m not.

Twice in your letter you combine two very different activities as if they are similar. “My criticism and complaint” is one example; “criticizing people in open forums and through channels” is the other. These two activities of yours were very different. Open-forum criticism, if factually correct, is fine with me. Absurd complaints to credulous authorities with the power to destroy someone’s career are much much less than fine with me. When Dreger says you tried to “ruin” Bailey, she is referring to the absurd complaints. Not to the review in Reason.

Sincerely,

Seth Roberts

Yesterday, to my surprise, I received an email from Deirdre McCloskey, whom I had criticized. Here it is:

Dear Professor Roberts:

I imagine you are not longer open to persuasion on the Bailey/Dreger issue, having written yourself on it in no uncertain terms after reading Dr. Dreger’s article and especially Mr. Carey’s piece in the Times. People are like that, I know. They swallow a line hastily acquired—in this case the Bailey = Galileo, “transsexual activists” (e.g. Barres, Roughgarden, McCloskey, Conway, and other distinguished scientists) = The Inquisition—and then won’t listen any more. It’s one of the main supports for the culture of yelling we seem to have developed in the United States over the past couple of decades.

But in case you are more careful and thoughtful than your blog suggests, I attach a couple of attempts to persuade you that you’ve got the story wrong. Dreger is wrong, and what’s more important in the long run a theory based on ignoring most of the scientific evidence, and appealing instead to the sort of prejudices about queers you praise in your piece, is wrong.

Sincerely,

Deirdre McCloskey

Attached to the email were copies of her Reason review of Bailey’s book, a commentary by her on Dreger’s article, and her vita.

I replied:

Dear Professor McCloskey:

Thank you for writing. I am happy to have complaints about my writing but it would help if you were more specific. What in my blog wasn’t “careful and thoughtful”? When you say I wasn’t careful you seem to be saying there are factual mistakes in what I wrote. If so, please tell me; I would like to correct them.

In your letter, you seem to say I have “swallow[ed] a line hastily acquired.” This is puzzling, since in my blog I mention writing to you about Bailey’s book draft many years ago. Surely thinking about something for many years isn’t hasty. One of your attachments is the review you wrote for Reason. Another puzzle because I quote from this review in my blog.

In your article about Dreger’s paper, you “deny that [you] worked ‘to ruin Bailey professional and personally” but this denial is incomplete and unconvincing. It’s incomplete because you don’t defend the letter you wrote to the State of Illinois complaining that Bailey had practiced medicine without a license. That is exactly trying to ruin someone.

And you don’t convince me that causing to be filed an absurd human-subjects complaint against Bailey constitutes some sort of virtuous act. “Complaining through channels about mistreatment of his victims”! Please. It is another example of trying to ruin someone.

In your email to me, you write:

what’s more important in the long run a theory based on ignoring most of the scientific evidence, and appealing instead to the sort of prejudices about queers you praise in your piece, is wrong.

This may be the big issue to you; it isn’t the big issue to me. The big issue for me is free speech. Two professors (you and Conway) with great power tried to silence someone who said something they didn’t like. I titled my blog posts on the topic “Can Professors Say the Truth?” The “truth” was not Blanchard’s theory; it was that Blanchard had proposed a theory, a theory that Bailey accurately described. Blanchard said something; Bailey accurately reported what he said. The accurate reporting was the “truth”. Somehow it was not enough for you and Conway that Blanchard’s theory, if false, would eventually be discarded. Somehow it was not enough to attack the theory; you had to attack Bailey too, and in an awful way — by filing absurd complaints with credulous and powerful bureaucracies.

Sincerely,

Seth Roberts

Today she replied to my reply.

The Whole Foods – Wild Oats merger can finally take place, I was pleased to learn. A court denied the Federal Trade Commission’s request for a stay. The world needs more CEO’s like Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. In a talk he gave at Berkeley last year, he quoted Michaelangelo: “Criticize by creating,” a wise and memorable saying that I hadn’t heard before. That’s exactly what Mackey has done.