Quod Erat ad Demonstrandum (QED)

[Note: This is a response to an anonymous posting to the ScienceInsider discussion forum. In Hungary, left-liberal critics are being systematically harassed in a smear campaign abetted by the Hungarian right-wing government. The ScienceInsider forum was intended to bring these tactics out into the open. Here is an instance where an anonymous poster tried such a smear tactic against me, suggesting that the reason I launched the Open Letter and campaign in support of the accused philosophers was for self-promotion, citing data on self-edits on my Wikipedia entry by way of incriminating evidence.]

I first posted the following to ScienceInsider, explaining why my reply would appear here rather than there:

For the reasons already stated in the Anonymity FAQ, I won't respond on Science Insider to Anonymous's enterprising attempt to put a sinister spin on trivial Wikipedia data. But for those for whom the nonsense (and mischief) is not already transparent, I have responded openly on Open Access Archivangelism.

I am rather grateful to Anonymous, however, for having so helpfully provided the world with this paradigmatic example "revealing the 'dynamics in Hungary'".

This is precisely the kind of tactic that the accused philosophers (and a growing number of other scholars and artists) are facing in Hungary today, but without the benefit of an open international forum to which their governmental accusers must answer for their conduct. (Hence the anonymity of Anonymous.)

And, yes, the "evidence" in the Hungarian Philosopher Affair really is all pretty much at the same level as this Wikipedia evidence, along with the attempt to give it a spin that makes it appear symptomatic of wrong-doing -- except that the philosophers are now facing Hungary's Prosecutor General on the basis of such accusations.

Apart from that, I refer Anonymous to the Anonymity FAQ.

(For Science Insider readers I must add, though, that not being the moderator of ScienceInsider discussion forum, I am alas powerless to prevent anonymous posters from continuing to try to turn it into a vehicle for exacting revenge on those who criticize and expose the very tactics that are being used in Hungary to exact revenge on the Government's critics and adversaries. But perhaps the exercise will still prove instructive, maybe even salutary.)

1. Most Wikipedia authors and editors are anonymous, or, rather, pseudonymous. My decision to use my real name as my Wikipedia login -- the one that permitted "Anonymous" to make his shocking discovery -- is, as far as I know, relatively rare on Wikipedia. I did it very deliberately from the outset in 2005, because (for many reasons) I am opposed to anonymous, unanswerable Wikipedia puttering.

2. As far as I know, most contemporary academics who have a Wikipedia page either manage their own page or have their students do it. But few use their own names as their Wikipedia logins.

3. Hence it would have been impossible for Anonymous to make any objective comparisons between the number of self-edits I make on my own entry and the number of self-edits other authors make on their own entries. His data are hence just empty numerology -- all the moreso since my Wikipedia entry is relatively tiny, and the 43 corrections and updates I've done since 2005 have been tinier still. (E.g., I today removed -- for the third time [right there that's already 3/43 of the total edits since 2005 that Anonymous has so helpfully counted for me!] -- a misattribution someone kept adding, wrongly crediting me with contributions to the work of my mentor.)

4. Anonymous's accusations about violating the Wikipedia rules on "Autobiographies" and "Conflict of Interest" are nonsense not only because (i) managing one's own Wikipedia entry is permissible and widely done, but because (ii) I reveal my identity openly, hence anyone in the (extremely officious!) ranks of Wikipedia's self-appointed editorial hierarchy could at any time have blocked me for "self-promotion" on my entry if I had ever done anything that looked like self-promotion across all those years:

"In clear-cut cases, it is permissible to edit pages connected to yourself. So, you can revert vandalism; but of course it has to be simple, obvious vandalism and not a content dispute. Similarly, you should feel free to remove mistaken or unreferenced out-of-date facts about yourself…. and so on."

5. In reality, my Wikipedia entry is extremely short, low-key and (if I may say so) modest, among entries of academics (i.e., those who bother to have a Wikipedia entry at all -- or bother with policing their entry if others have created one for them).

6. Not only is my number of self-edits on my Wikipedia entry actually quite low for a current item that has been up since almost the inception of Wikipedia, but I didn't even create my entry! I discovered it there one day in 2005 -- and as I recall it turned out to have been just a bowdlerized cut/paste of the bio from my university staff page, apparently up there since about 2003; so my first edit was to cut it down in size. I've mostly been cleaning up the rot that keeps accumulating across the years since I first discovered it; and I occasionally do a reference update, including updating the photo (the original one, if I recall -- perhaps Anonymous can go and check to correct me? -- had been placed there from an old gif found in Google images).

Now, when you are conducting an ad hoc smear campaign against someone you don't like and would love to discredit, you do the kind of Digging That Anonymous did; then you try to put the most sinister possible spin on whatever you think you've come up with (while claiming to just be reporting the objective facts); and if that fails, you get back to digging for and announcing something else. No target is immune to such a litany of innuendos; the charges are endless, and never admitted to have been refuted (like Freudian symptom-transfer, as soon as one fizzles, another one is launched to take its place, without acknowledgment, let alone apology), and it is never conceded that the whole process has been a farce, from beginning to interminable end, all in the service of relentless, malign ends.

And this is exactly the kind of thing the Hungarian government, its unidentified informants and sleuths, and the government-side press have been doing in their still-growing campaign selectively directed against the philosophers (and others) they don't like and are bent on punishing.

(What I encourage Anonymous To Do next is to go and check my research grants!)

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[Anonymous has since posted on ScienceInsider again. Here we go again...]

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The Doppelganger(s)
(1) First, please let me cheerily admit what I have never denied: I do indeed speak, read and write Hungarian! (It's just that I have a hunch that it might perhaps be more useful to keep this discourse in a language that all witnesses can understand…)

What I had cheerily denied (multiple times) was that I had ever before known (or known of) any of the accused scholars, or that any of them had previously known or contacted me, seeking help. I thereby had disappointingly to disconfirm the hopeful hypothesis of "Anonymous" (who was then going by the patriotic name of "Istvan Magyar" and apparently at a loss to fathom why else anyone could possibly have taken up the victims' cause) as to the real reason I had done so. But now at last Anonymous has astutely discovered my real reason: It was to enhance my Wikipedia profile!

(2) I would be no less cheery, though, if "Anonymous" were eventually to find a way to calm his impulse to further enhance my Wikipedia profile by posting my name quite so frequently in the ScienceInsider forum! After all, all those unearned bonus hits in which my name is lately luxuriating are really owing only to having to keep invoking the Anonymity FAQ in declining to respond on ScienceInsider to "Anonymous's" enterprising, persistent but somewhat distracting antics; after all, that's not the only thing Science Forum was created to bring out in the open…

Now a light-hearted hypothesis of my own: Since the "signature" of their tactics is so remarkably similar, would it not be an ironic coincidence if this decidedly "Anonymous" doppelganger turned out to be one and the same as that shadowy whistle-blower who had launched the entire philosopher affair with an anonymous police denunciation? Or are they just stylistic and ideological soul-mates?

What is the real head-shaker in all this is not that there exist mischievous malcontents like "Anonymous" in Hungary -- they alas flower aplenty, everywhere on the planet -- but that an entire government would stoop to making common cause with their likes.

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[Double Trouble: "Magyar Istvan"'s back again...]

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I solemnly promise that if Anonymous and "Istvan Magyar" reveal their true identity I will publicly apologize to them both for the insult of having suspected them to be one and the same scallywag. Alas, different IPs for anonymous posters won't quite do the disentangling trick. And with the abrupt termination of "Istvan Magyar"'s omnipresence on this forum mysteriously coinciding with Anonymous's debut, and only the charming style and somewhat inquisitorial slant perduring, one can hardly be blamed for thinking... (though my conscience is a little relieved upon hearing that "IM"/A is not a stranger to being ill-used in internet discussions). Otherwise, the Anonymity FAQ is all I can offer by way of trying to make amends for "Double Trouble"'s travails.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum