1.How Windschuttle swallowed a hoax to publish a fake story in Quadrant
2.Was it a fraud, a hoax or a prank?

NOTE: The right-wing Australian journal, Quadrant has just unwittinghly published a hoax article lauding GMOs and panning their critics.

Purporting to be by "Sharon Gould" a New York biotechnologist, the Quadrant article, entitled "Scare Campaigns and Science Reporting", says that Australia's ultra-industry-friendly public science body CSIRO has been experimenting with engineering human genes in wheat crops to fight cancer, modifying dairy cattle to produce milk suited to lactose-intolerant babies and modifying mosquitoes to carry genes that produced human antibodies to render their bite less dangerous.

The hoaxer - Katherine Wilson - has put online a blog-style Diary of A Hoax: "a short summary of what a stinking pile of fraudulent nonsense the essay I sent you [Quadrant editor, Keith Windschuttle] is, and of the issues surrounding many truth claims made in the name of 'science'."

In the Diary the author writes:

"My essay sets up strawman objections to GM and then bludgeons them with nonsense. It also argues that the forces shaping 'science' are somehow beyond public and media scrutiny, because, well, science is empirical. Always. Full stop. And just too complicated for us pundits (including journalists). And beyond our moral comprehension. Much evidence contradicts this: many studies suggest that the more educated people are about science and technology, the less likely they are to uncritically accept new products peddled in the name of 'science'. When it comes to these products, people tend to be good at sniffing out a daft notion when they see one."

The writer also notes:

"The essay is rife with outrageously stupid arguments. For example, it accurately reports that GM Golden Rice is bound in 70 patents and it's natural for those companies to expect returns ”” yet it also argues (parroting biotech industry spin) that Golden Rice was developed for altruistic reasons, to solve third world malnutrition problems. Leaving aside the reductionist nutritionism and blinkered agronomics, and leaving aside the health, social and environmental hazard potential of Golden Rice (not to mention other traditional non-GM crops that could do the trick), if Quadrant fails to see the absurdity of this argument, if it fails to scrutinise utopian claims of biotechnical 'solutions' to social, political and environmental problems, it's not alone. Much science reporting tends to see anything labelled 'science' as apolitical and unproblematic, existing outside the social.

This, dear Quadrant, is why the essay is so wrong; it is precisely why we need the fourth estate principles to scrutinise the way these products and utopian claims are promoted in the name of 'science'. It is precisely why my arguments might seem plausible to an uninquiring editor, journalist or reader."
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/crikey/files/2009/01/diary-of-a-hoax.html

In fact, the content of the article simply mimics, and to some extent understates, the kind of GM hyperbole and techno-untopian claims that regularly get broadcast and published.

As the Diary says, "hey, if you say you're a scientist, you can get away with saying anything [if it's ideologically acceptable]. Scientists, see, are a one-size-fits-all authority."
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/crikey/files/2009/01/diary-of-a-hoax.html
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1.How Windschuttle swallowed a hoax to publish a fake story in Quadrant
Margaret Simons
Crikey, 6 January 2009
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090106-How-Quadrant-swallowed-a-giant-hoax-.html

Keith Windschuttle, the editor of the conservative magazine Quadrant, has been taken in by a hoax intended to show that he will print outrageous propositions.

This month's edition of Quadrant contains a hoax article purporting to be by "Sharon Gould", a Brisbane [Australia] based New York biotechnologist.

But in the tradition of Ern Malley the famous literary hoax perpetrated by Quadrant's first editor, James McAuley the Sharon Gould persona is entirely fictitious and the article is studded with false science, logical leaps, outrageous claims and a mixture of genuine and bogus footnotes.

In accepting the article, Keith Windschuttle said in an email to "Sharon Gould":

"I really like the article. You bring together some very important considerations about scientific method, the media, politics and morality that I know our readers would find illuminating."

"Gould's" article, which is blurbed on the front cover of Quadrant and reproduced online, (subscribers only) argues for the insertion of human genes in to food crops, insects and livestock.

It contains the bogus claim that the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation planned to commercialise food crops engineered with human genes, but abandoned the projects because of "perceived moral issues".

The hoaxer, who intends to remain anonymous, has provided details of how the hoax was constructed, including a blog-style Diary of A Hoax, liberally studded with ironic quotations from Ern Malley's poetry.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/crikey/files/2009/01/diary-of-a-hoax.html

Diary of a Hoax is published here, and the article submitted to Quadrant is here but, unless it is taken down, can also be read by subscribers on Quadrant’s website here or in the print edition, which hit newsagents in the last few days.

I rang Keith Windschuttle this morning seeking comment. He said that claims the article was a hoax were "news to me" and said he wanted to see the material the hoaxer had provided to me before commenting. A copy of Diary of a Hoax and his own correspondence with "Sharon Gould" was emailed to him this morning.

He rang back a short while ago, and said that he would respond to these events in full on the Quadrant website shortly. More on Windschuttle's conversation with me below.

"Gould's" article uses a melange of fact, misconstrued science and fiction masquerading as science to argue that science research, such as that behind genetically modified foods, should be above scrutiny by the media and the public. It criticizes the Rudd Government for "shameless populism" for inviting "ordinary" Australians to be part of the 2020 Summit. The article says:

"What has become unspeakable is that journalists and their publics, like small children reaching for the medicine cabinet, do not always understand what is best."

In a ruse designed to lampoon Windschuttle's historical research, which began by checking the footnotes of leading historians, the article contains some false references.

In Diary of a Hoax, the hoaxer writes:

"Some of the footnotes are completely fabricated. Others are genuine references to science articles, but have nought to do with what's asserted in the essay."

(The footnotes have not been included with the published version of the article. In keeping with Quadrant practice, a note at the end says that they are available from the Quadrant office.)

The Gould hoax is designed to be a companion and a counter to the famous Sokal hoax, in which the physicist Alan Sokal submitted a paper to a postmodern cultural studies journal to show that post modernists would "publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions."

The Sokal affair became part of the "science wars" which were a series of intellectual battles between post modernists and realists, and a companion to Australia’s “history wars”, in which Windschuttle has been a leading contender.

On the day Windschuttle informed "Gould” that the article would be published, the hoaxer wrote in Diary of a Hoax:

"For pity's sake, Quadrant fell for my ham-fisted ruse! At least with the Sokal hoax, Alan Sokal was a bona fide physics professor. So it’s understandable that a journal editor might unquestioningly publish his nonsense. But so neatly did my essay conform with reactionary ideology that Quadrant, it seems, didn't even check the putative author's credentials. Nor it seems did they get the piece peer-reviewed. Nor did they check the "facts"; nor the footnotes. Nor were they alerted by the clues”¦Still, now my experiment has worked, I'm not sure how I feel about it. Do I feel schadenfreude? Not really. I feel ambivalent. I'm almost embarrassed for you, Windschuttle”¦ I didn’t do this to be unkind to you personally. This experiment wasn’t designed with ill-intent, but to uncover hypocrisy in knowledge-claims, and also spark public debate about standards of truth when anything is claimed in the name of 'science'."

The persona of "Sharon Gould" was constructed with a false e-mail address and a website, which was online but has since been taken down. We publish it here. In it, Gould describes herself as a 41-year- old New Yorker based in Brisbane with a Phd in biotechnology. She claims she is related to the American evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, and has been inspired by his example to embark on a popular science writing career. The website had suggestive links to other “Goulds”.

"Gould" claimed to Windschuttle that the article had earlier been presented at an international conference on genome informatics but while the conference existed, the paper was not presented there.

The article claims that the CSIRO wanted to put human genes into wheat so they could trigger immune responses to fight pre-cancerous cells, into cows so they would produce milk that would not trigger allergic responses in lactic intolerant infants, and into mosquitoes to render their bites less dangerous.

Commercialisation of both these projects was abandoned”¦ possibly”¦ because of perceived ethical issues in the public and media perception.

"Gould" first submitted the article to Windschuttle early last year, but did not hear back from him until “she” followed up in August. Windschuttle told “her” that the original article had gone missing. “She” resubmitted, and Windschuttle accepted the article enthusiastically. The only contact between the two was by e-mail.

Windschuttle asked for some changes, which involved cutting a lengthy explanation of the Sokal hoax from the first paragraphs which the hoaxer had intended as a clue.

Windschuttle wrote to "Gould":

Many of our readers would be aware of the Sokal hoax and its implications, and I think your introduction would lull them into thinking the whole article is another analysis of the follies of constructivism, whereas it is really much more interesting than that.

"Gould" made the changes Windschuttle suggested, but left a reference to the Sokal hoax in the first paragraph. A few other minor editorial changes were made between the version submitted and that published.

Keith Windschuttle is a leading cultural warrior. In recent years he has accused senior historians of falsifying and inventing the degree of violence against Aborigines. He has also accused academic historians of exaggerating the racism involved in the White Australia policy.

This morning in a conversation with me, Windschuttle asked to know the identity of the hoaxer, and was refused. He said that at least some of the footnotes in the article were genuine, and that it was not reasonable to expect the editor of a popular publication to check all footnotes. He asked me to provide him with information on which footnotes were genuine, and which bogus. This will be done by e-mail later today.

Comparing this to the Sokal hoax, Windschuttle made the point that Sokal had been frank about his role in the hoax, and that in that case all the footnotes provided with the article were bogus.

The nub of the Sharon Gould hoax is a play on Windschuttle and Quadrant’s advocacy of empirical research as being divorced from social and political consequences, and therefore beyond question.

Windschuttle said that the hoax would backfire, including on me and on Crikey.

In 2006 the Howard Government appointed Windschuttle to the ABC Board the last of a number of appointments of leading right wingers, including the anthropologist Ron Brunton (whose term has now expired) and columnist Janet Albrechtsen. Windschuttle’s term expires in 2011.

Windshcuttle replaced the controversial Paddy McGuiness as editor of Quadrant early last year. When his appointment was announced, Windschuttle was quoted as saying that he would campaign against decadence in the arts.

Quadrant is an historically important conservative magazine, praised by John Howard when he was Prime Minister as his “favourite” magazine and as a forum for "fine scholarship with a sceptical, questioning eye for cant, hypocrisy and moral vanity" and a "lonely counterpoint to stultifying orthodoxies and dangerous utopias that at times have gripped the Western 'intelligentsia".” Howard said Quadrant was: "Australia's home to all that is worth preserving in the Western cultural tradition". Howard described Windschuttle's articles on Aboriginal history as particularly close to his heart.
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2.Was it a fraud, a hoax or a prank?
Dewi Cooke
The Age, January 8 2009
http://www.theage.com.au/national/was-it-a-fraud-a-hoax-or-a-prank-20090107-7c0d.html
 
LITERARY hoax, mean prank or journalistic fraud?

These are the distinctions being made in the wake of the Quadrant affair, in which conservative historian and Quadrant editor Keith Windschuttle published an article on genetic engineering by an author purporting to be a New York biotechnologist living in Brisbane.

That the author, Dr Sharon Gould, was a pseudonym for an anonymous blogger who had mapped out the plan to dupe Windschuttle online over many months was revealed in the online news website Crikey on Tuesday.

The article's claims of CSIRO research into the commercialisation of crops, livestock and mosquitoes modified with human genes were quickly denied by the CSIRO, although similar genetic trials exist elsewhere.

But it is the question of the hoax, and the company which the hoaxer keeps, that has most affected both "Gould" and Windschuttle.

"Do journalists not recognise the vast difference between a hoax and a fraud? It's one thing to design a stunt as a piece of cultural criticism, but quite another to make false claims for personal gain," Gould complained, writing in yesterday's Crikey.

Gould has taken umbrage at the parallels that have been drawn with literary fakes Norma Khouri and Helen Demidenko. "Both Khouri and Demidenko received money for their fraudulent acts, and neither intended, to my knowledge, to be outed," Gould wrote in Crikey.

"Neither designed their fraudulent claims as a culture-jamming exercise, and both duped the public instead of powerful public figures or paradigms."

The University of Sydney's David Brooks, an associate professor in Australian literature, and a novelist, poet and lecturer on literary hoaxes, said hoaxes had the power to act as a "shoehorn or catalyst to a further stage of thinking".

"The hoax is a way of presenting something for people to think about without the culture having to take responsibility for it," he said.

"Oftentimes things that appear as hoaxes end up having a major influence on subsequent developments in a particular form."

Melbourne University Publishing publisher Louise Adler thought the Quadrant hoax was a "terrific" response to the so-called culture wars Windschuttle had become a part of.

"We've woken from a slumber because I think there wasn't much space for culture-jamming over the last 11½ years, in literary terms, and if this is a sign there's a sort of renaissance in it, that's great," she said.

Windschuttle, for his part, has maintained that he was duped by a fraud, not a hoax.