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Revision as of 03:20, 7 June 2006

• Archive 1 (February 8 to May 5, 2006)
• Archive 2 (through June 5, 2005)

Thank you

Thank you for all your effort on Seckel entry. I am trying to send you a very brief reply to Seckel's boldfaces, but I am unable to copy it. I will try again.Tmciver 16:48, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Seckel is now showing his true colors, threatening to sue unless the "previous" (his) version is restored. I wanted a vanilla version all along, which was why I requested AFD.

Re Popoff: Yes, Seckel was running SCS at the time. But the investigation, in San Francisco, was Randi's, was sponsored by CSICOP's CSER. The "God's Freq." article referred to was written by Seckel himself, and published by CSICOP. SCS is not mentioned. There is no mention of direct participation by Seckel because there was none, though elsewhere (as in his wikipedia acount) he implied otherwise. See Randi's accounts. The amicus brief: I stand by my facts. I was involved myself. Gell-Mann and Lehmann have published accounts. The article Seckel refers to was written by Seckel himself, not co-authored with Lehmann. The brief itself was credited to Lehmann and other lawyers, and is written about widely. Shermer wrote his article (in STHV) before forming Skeptics Soc., and believed Seckel's version. I *do* have the cite. He knows better now. I told Pat Linse about Shermer's article; she told him about Seckel, and Linse and Shermer began a partnership at his new Skeptics Society. I was then added as a contributing editor. Re Darwin fish: I go with the published accounts. The court records would be useful. Re illness: I never doubted that Seckel entered the hospital. I merely pointed out there has been no documentation of leukemia presented, which is a fact. Seckel here directly accuse me of libel. I stand by my statement that SCS's collapse was due to mismanagement and preceded this, regardless of how long it existed on paper. Re Seckel's articles: I have Seckel's articles too, and can provide them. Plus sources they are based upon. Re Seckel's book citations: I specifically said they were "accurate." I added that there were claims of "forthcoming" books in his Contemp Authors entry that were never published. This is fact. Re magician: I specifically said he was NOT listed as co-author, and Seckel was listed as sole author. In fact that was the point. Re Feynman: Of the huge number of works about him, Seckel cites one mention in the acknowledgements of just one. The letter from Feynman's secretary says: "As soon as I had my information I told Feynman, who dropped Al immediately (he really disliked a phony)." I can provide a copy, plus the original. Re Pearce Williams: Seckel accuses me of "fabricating" his letter—an extremely serious accusation. I can provide a copy, plus the original. It postdates the lecture Seckel refers to. In the letter he says "For years, I have warned Al Seckel that he was misrepresenting himself but he paid no heed to me." Also: "He immediately latched onto me like a puppy dog. It is an absolute lie that I ever said, publicly or privately, that Al was my best student. In fact, he was never technically a student of mine at all! He never took an examination from me, he never wrote a paper for me nor did he even show me through oral communication that he was anything but a dilettante who could fake knowledge of history of science fairly well." And more, ending like this: "One of the reasons I broke off contact with Al was that I began to suspect that he was defrauding me. I know for a fact that he has withheld money that he owes one of my children for some seven years now. Not being a lawyer, and being rather simple-minded, I would call this theft. You may use this letter in any way you wish and have my permission to show it to anyone. I hope it has been of some use to you." Re Caltech affiliation: I said he was not listed in the directory, and that the University did not answer inquiries about his affiliation. I know he had some lab affiliation, which was my point: why then no official directory listing? I e-mailed one of the labs but did not phone. I did not claim misrepresentation about lab affiliation, but rather his earlier claim of being a Caltech grad student on the verge of a PhD. Re SCS audit: Shneour claimed CSICOP performed an audit of SCS. When I asked CSICOP, they denied this, saying someone *else* did the audit. When I told this to Shneour he threatened to sue me if I asked any more about it. There was no audit.

Tom McIverTmciver 17:12, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I see Seckel is continued to pump it out on the Seckel entry discussion site. For anyone interested in finding out about him, they should contact Pat Linse, or Michael Shermer himself (who Shneour's letter is addressed to). I am glad Seckel made that letter public, for I knew of attempted intimidation but had no documentation. Now Shneour calls it an "informal" audit. What it was, was figures Seckel showed to Shneour, who believed him. My admittedly strange point about wishing to include the LA Times articles is that, though overwhelmingly positive to Seckel, they repeat demonstrably false claims made by Seckel about his credentials. Seckel does not want these sources available. I'd like to remind Seckel that his vociferous supporter Klass (now deceased) contributed huge amounts to Saucer Smear, including defenses of Seckel. AFD, followed by a clean slate and perhaps a vanilla entry written by independent third parties would have been far easier. Please feel free to e-mail or telephone me. I appreciate your suggestions of external criticism pages, but that would be tremendous work and any contributors would be subject to intimidation, perhaps leaving me facing Seckel alone, as in the past. And I too have other things to do. I am not pursuing Seckel, but when his outrageously self-promoting and dishonest entry appeared I could not in good conscience let it stand uncorrected. BTW, in the original entry Seckel boasted of how Shermer's Skeptics Soc. was a continuation of his SCS. This is absolutely false, and was corrected by another editor before I began any editorial involvement. Seckel's dark allegation that I associate with fringe groups such as creationists is most amusing. Anyone is welcome to see my cartoon in Feb 24 Science magazine, in the Holden article about creationism. Or long review of my book on creationism in Nature, 1989 May 25, or article in LA Times about my PhD diss on creationism (1989, forget date). (Tmciver 18:37, 6 June 2006 (UTC).

If you are actually willing to investigate this mess, might I also suggest a science citation search on Seckel, since he claims to be such a scientific authority? For years he boasted of working as research neuroscientist in the labs of both Shin Shimojo and Christof Koch (and he indeed did have some sort of lab affiliation with them). They have authored many hundreds of articles. Surely he is listed as co-author at least on some of these, given his reputation; and given that listed co-authors sometimes include even the test-tube washers. Surely he also has lots of peer-reviewed scientific articles of his own too. I've done these searches myself and know the answer.Tmciver 23:07, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Note: when I mentioned Contemporary Authors I did not realize there was an updated entry on Seckel. The 1988 entry lists at least two interesting books "in press" or "publication expected." The new entry (2006) lists his illusion books, and does not mention those other two. It gives his credentials as BS from Cornell, 1980, and his address as the Koch lab at Caltech, with a "work in progress" from MIT Press.Tmciver 23:49, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

WP:RFCU clerk comment

As a personal recommendation, you may want to withdraw part of your comment in WP:RFCU#User:Rex071404 that is marked as a clerk note about needing more evidence. Not that I don't agree with you that they shouldn't request again w/o more evidence, but I said a very similar thing on a different one that was in a comment with a clerk tag. Essjay removed it with a comment about not doing that in the edit history. Kevin_b_er 00:09, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

RFCU chat

Do you by chance use AIM? Prodego & I are doing real-time work on the RFCU thing, and we'd like to add you in if you can. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 03:20, 7 June 2006 (UTC)