Michael Bailey and Alice Dreger have responded to Joan Roughgarden’s KQED appearance and her blog post. The NY Times article. Dreger’s paper. Bailey’s book.

In her KQED appearance, Roughgarden said that Bailey’s book was “fraudulent” because it used the word science in its title. Here’s how she said it:

The bottom headline to the cover of Bailey’s book says “The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism.” But in point of fact, there is no science in the book, as they’re apparently now agreeing. And on the whole, the book, as a work of science, is fraudulent.

Dreger notes “by this logic, the publishers of Science Times of the New York Times, the magazine Science News, and thousands of popularizations of science are also guilty of fraud.”

In Pale Fire, the narrator quotes Erich Fromm’s claim that in Little Red Riding Hood, the red hat is a symbol of menstruation. Does Fromm actually believe this? the narrator wonders. Dreger raises a similar question: Does Roughgarden, a professor of biology at Stanford, believe that Science News and the Science Times section are “fraudulent”?

Bailey links to a page with the abstracts of twenty articles by Blanchard related to his typology of transsexuals, which I found very interesting.

Continuing our voluminous correspondence (here, here, here, here, and here), Deirdre McCloskey wrote again:

Dear Professor Roberts:

Yup. [In answer to my question “In your last letter, by ‘self-experimentation’ did you mean dress as a woman?”] That should be obvious to you. That it’s not, and that you sneer at the idea, is indicative. No one who has not actually tried to pass in the other gender has any idea what it is like not to pass, how dangerous and embarrassing it is. No one who has not tried the experiment can have any idea how important it is to have nose jobs and the like. It’s exactly out of such non-self-experimentation, and the lack of real empathy it implies, that the God-wants-you-to-be-thus, Clarke Institute torturing comes.

I don’t remember our discussion about Crossing.

You think Bailey’s book will be a powerful force for toleration? I suppose you’ve actually looked at the evidence, right? You’ve consulting the blogs, and you’ve read the hate mail? And your conclusion is. . . what? That a wave of transphobic filth stimulated by your blog and Carey’s article will lead, somehow, to the promised land? You have here a questionable social theory, but let’s hope you’re right.

Disagreement, as you should well know from your own self-experimentation, is not the same as “harassment.” Nor is holding people to ethical standards in their scientific behavior. We didn’t “do” anything to Bailey. We exercised our rights as free citizens and as ethical scientists. That you were “appalled” shows that you got fired up by Carey’s article (just as he wished) and didn’t bother inquire—as you easily could have done (you keep making a point of our previous e-mail relationship) but most assuredly did not before shooting off your ill-considered blog—with the principals. You wanted the story to be Bailey = Galileo, and were not going to let such silly things as evidence stand in the way. You’ve stoutly defended it ever since, with no heed to the evidence.

I’m not impressed that you praise Holocaust deniers, or that you give standing to naive creationism. It just shows what is evident in your defense of Bailey, that you are willing to encourage the worst in our society in aid of a simpleton’s version of “fairness.” You would have been “fair” to Goebbels and the Inquisition, the Ku Klux Klan and the first Chinese emperor. Your position of “Let them have uncriticized speech to advocate idiotic and harmful proposals” depends on people like Lynn and me exercising our free speech to criticize such people. You would be the first person the Nazis you defend would come for. No, actually, on second thought, you would be the second, after me.

Sincerely,

Deirdre

I replied:

Dear Professor McCloskey:

I don’t “sneer” at the self-experimentation you propose. It has a long and admirable history.

I did not get “fired up by Carey’s article.” My blog posts on this topic appeared before his article.

I mentioned our correspondence about Crossing in my blog posts about this.

I didn’t “praise Holocaust deniers” — I just think they shouldn’t be harassed or silenced.

I don’t mind criticism of Bailey — of course not. I mind attempts to ruin him — which is what your and Conway’s absurd complaints to authorities were.

Sincerely,

Seth Roberts

She wrote again:

Dear Professor Roberts:

Let’s make this a convergent series, by undertaking to answer in half the space as the last one. Your only–only–argument against our complaints about Bailey’s behavior is to assert repeatedly, unadorned by evidence, that they were “absurd.” Northwestern University did not think them absurd. They fired Bailey from the chairmanship; they investigated him for a year. The lawyer we consulted did not think them absurd; nor did the state licensing bureau. Alas, the statute of limitation had run out.

We did nothing to “silence” anyone. Get this: we are not the government. We argued with Bailey. We complained about his behavior. None of that constitutes “silencing,” unless indeed poor, dear Bailey is too feeble for this world.

Regards,

Deirdre

I replied:

Dear Professor McCloskey:

Please see my earlier letter for a detailed explanation, including evidence, of why your complaints were absurd. No one has ever gone to a mugger and asked to be mugged. That’s my evidence for your State of Illinois complaint. And no one has ever been considered a research subject because they were in a story in a trade book. That’s my evidence for your Northwestern complaint.

When you say that Bailey left the chairmanship because of your complaints, you are wrong.

“We did nothing to ‘silence’ anyone.” If you don’t understand the term chilling effect, we are again at a curious point in intellectual history.

Sincerely,

Seth Roberts

She wrote again:

Dear Professor Roberts:

Anyone who is chilled by being challenged intellectually, I suppose you agree, doesn’t belong in intellectual life.

Anyone who is chilled by being investigated for wrongdoing when he’s done wrong is just a moral coward, as I reckon Bailey to be. You don’t understand The Letter if you don’t think the women were mugged. You’ve not walked in those shoes, or bothered to find out. You haven’t read Bailey’s book if you think the women were not “research subjects.” He called them that, and bragged about it. After the book came out he said, oh, it was “only a trade book. Not science.”

Regards,

Deirdre

I replied:

Dear Professor McCloskey,

If you believe that Bailey should be punished for helping those who came to him for help, you have a most unusual and unfortunate view of how people should treat each other.

If you can’t tell the difference between a trade book and a research monograph, we are again at a curious place in intellectual history.

Sincerely,

Seth Roberts

On her website, McCloskey includes almost all our correspondence. The omissions are trivial, with one exception: She doesn’t include this email from me, in spite of including her reply to it. Curious!

I wrote to her about the omission:

Dear Deirdre:

Thanks for posting our correspondence on your website. I too am glad we had it. A tiny flaw: You omit my email below (“If you believe…”).

Seth

No answer. One of the few letters from me she didn’t answer. She continued writing to me. I believe she omitted that email from her website because it makes things too clear.

Joan Roughgarden has responded to my comment about her recent KQED radio appearance. Her response includes this:

Today, in 2007 only a few, like Roberts, still take Bailey’s work seriously.

In 2006, Bailey’s work was featured on 60 Minutes in a piece titled “The Science of Sexual Orientation.” After the piece aired, a blogger criticized Bailey. Shari Finkelstein, the producer, responded:

His work is highly regarded by all of the researchers in the field who we spoke with.

What a difference a year makes, if Roughgarden is correct.

Before I could reply to her third letter, Deirdre McCloskey wrote again:

Dear Professor Roberts:

Having looked into it a bit I am very intrigued by your diet, and will buy the book and try it out.

You have a lot of nerve, however, to quote Bohr— “The common aim of all science” is “the gradual removal of prejudices”—and then without self-experimentation, without consulting people like me who have self-experimented, without examining any of the literature except the sort you like, to relay to the world your prejudices about gender crossers. A lot of nerve.

Sincerely,

Deirdre McCloskey

I replied:

Dear Professor McCloskey,

I’m intrigued. What self-experimentation should I have done? [Later I realized she meant dress as a woman.]

Thank you for reading my book. Yes, Bohr’s quote is relevant. Science does remove prejudices. Including the science in Bailey’s book, I believe. I think Bailey’s book will be a powerful force for tolerance, you think the opposite. Let history decide.

I am not anti-gender-crosser. Nor is Bailey — but I wasn’t appalled by what you and Conway did to him because I liked his book. I have defended Holocaust deniers and praised a book with a generous view of creationism. I don’t deny the Holocaust and I’m not religious. I believe everyone deserves to speak, to be heard. Everyone. Without harassment or punishment.

Sincerely,

Seth Roberts

What a nice title, I thought, when I read in Marginal Revolution about a collection of essays called Do Economists Make Markets?. A few glances later I realized I had misread it. The title was not Do Economists Make Mistakes?

Do psychologists make mistakes?

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

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.

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.