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.