Oh Graham. What a sad little website OLO is now. I remember when OLO was compulsory reading, full of exciting and stimulating articles. Now it's predictable garbage full of vicious nonentities slagging off each other. You have done a magnificant job in trashing OLO. It's telling that the comments have turned into a bitchfest directed at Tim Lambert.

As regards the article, I was going to say something much nastier, but I'm starting to feel sorry for you. I remember Max Harris saying that the Ern Malley poetry was the best he had read and that McAuley and whatsisname were incapable of writing bad poetry. Maybe. But that's not what people remembered. People remember it as a confirmation of their suspicions that modern poetry was crap. Now, I'm not saying this hoax is in the same league as Ern Malley, but any subtle meaning, any "the joke's really on the perpetrators" is just whistling in the dark. This episode confirms to most of us our suspicions - that The Right are washed up, discredited, a joke. The Right are not being taken seriously anymore

I love history; I am passionate about historiography and the integrity and ethics of writing history that's based on available facts. When I read an historical account, I expect an historian to put down verifiable fact and offer objective interpretation or to make their biases known and explain them.

Historians can and I think should seek to describe people and their values and beliefs as they existed in their own time - they can then draw out ways in which we need to progress - to do better.

We didn't need lies perpetrated by people like Reynolds to inspire a sense of responsibility to change what was bad for Aboriginal people. Just the facts would have sufficed - like the restrictions on movement; the ways in which labour was exploited, the well meaning actions and dreadful consequences of those actions.

I am glad that Windschuttle had the courage to go through the available evidence and get the history right. He did much more than just agonize over a couple of footnotes; much as people want to diminish his efforts. I am glad because history writing isn't supposed to be a fairy tale written to bolster current politics; it's supposed to be a discipline with standards and integrity.

http://www.sydneyline.com/Manne%20reply%20Australian.htm

- and despite reading the MASSIVE corrections he has made; I am as committed to social justice for the effects of previous policy and actions as anyone can be. I think the Aboriginal people have suffered enough, then and now, without having misguided, undisciplined 'historians' manufacturing non-existent evils.

There was no reason to take the micky out of Windschuttle, if that was the purpose of the article under discussion. If it constituted some other sort of experiment, fair enough, but I wouldn't compare it to the Ern Malley hoax - which was about pricking pretentiousness and aesthetic judgement.

Pynchme,

Your claim to be a lover of history and historiography is shot to ironic pieces in the same post when you declare, "I am glad that Windschuttle had the courage to go through the available evidence and get the history right".

Of course Windschuttle claims to have 'got the history right' but the overwhelming majority of eminent historians agree that his analysis is partial in both senses of that word - and patently inadequate. He is not a scholar so much as an ideologue looking for the facts that support his presuppositions.

And leave off with the holier-than-thou "Aboriginal people have suffered enough, then and now, without having misguided, undisciplined 'historians' manufacturing non-existent evils". That's transparent hypocrisy which Indigenous Australians can well do without.

I agree with you on one thing though: it's wrong to compare the Quadrant hoax to the Ern Malley hoax which, as you say, was about pricking pretentiousness and aesthetic judgement. The Quadrant hoax was about exposing Windschuttle's pretensions to being a careful and impartial scholar of contact history.

More homework please.

Gday Spikey,

No matter what one's current politics are (including Windschuttle's or Reynold's) some of the blatant untruths Windschuttle uncovered go too far in compromising integrity and standards of history writing.

It doesn't matter what we think of him; it's the history that matters. I was already aware of and opposed to racist behaviour when I became a Reynolds student, and I believed him (and others). I was devastated to think that our ancestors had been so cruel. I didn't need those lies and having grieved over them for years, I feel duped and cranky about it. As I said, the facts alone were enough to understand that there were wrongs that needed/need to be put right.

For example:

"In discussing one of the key documents of early Tasmanian history, the final report by Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur about the infamous Black Line of 1830, Henry Reynolds wrote in his book Frontier: "he argued that such was the insecurity of the settlers that he feared 'a general decline in the prosperity' and the 'eventual extirpation of the Colony'."[4] Arthur's actual words, however, were: "a great decline in the prosperity of the colony, and the eventual extirpation of the aboriginal race itself."[5] Arthur's concerns were not about the survival of the colony but of the Aborigines."

http://www.sydneyline.com/Macintyre%20Grimshaw%20reply.htm

See, I don't understand how people can defend that.

Tim Lambert (UNSW)

Was it the poor imitation of thug a like George Costanza reference that has got you all worked up?

I don’t need to copy anyone to know that: you’re intellectually dishonest, run a hate site, tried to ruin Bate’s reputation, you play victim whenever caught out in lies and general dishonesty, write deliberately confusing threads which are meant to draw people away from your dishonesty, use your site to attack people, as well swarm them with your sycophantic followers, haven’t published in an IT journal for a decade, you aren’t a scientist , send hate mail, you had a word created after your name (lamberting) to describe unpleasant dishonesty, you’re a bully and a thug.

Normally at other sites I have referred to you, as the “poisonous cherub” and I can’t recall Graham ever accusing you of being one, has he?

Why on earth would I need Graham to figure those things out about you (the insinuation just boggles the mind)? The only thing I’ve ever used was the word “tic” to describe your operating methods, which I thought was apt in so many ways.

Graham, I suggest you get ready for a barrage of emails from Lambert, as he seems to spew out abuse when he’s feigning anger, which is the very thing he accused me of several years ago.

See here:

http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/05/08/legal-eagles-take-flight/#comments

“you sent me not one but *three* abusive emails and have been back to hounding me since. you really are a vindictive little twerp and if you continue this I may just be inclined to publish those emails and tell you boss about them, ok? get over it. I made one snark at you and you’ve been spending the last few months trying to get back at me. get some psychiatric help.”

You truly re a disgusting creature, Lambert.

Pynchme,

Stuart Mcintyre said long ago that all historians make mistakes. When Reynolds or Ryan make an error, however, Windschuttle called it deliberate falsifying of history and led the charge to their bosses demanding they be sacked. When Windschuttle himself makes a mistake, he says he’s not responsible and that you have to consider the context in which he works.

Windschuttle now says: “…there is a point beyond which such sub-editing practices cannot go, especially when dealing with an author’s discussion of the detailed content of several books and their footnotes.” Footnotes on the other foot? http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2009/01/margaret-simons-and-an-apparent-hoax-on-quadrant

Again, you are being disingenuous about your own position. “It doesn't matter what we think of him; it's the history that matters…I didn't need those lies and having grieved over them for years, I feel duped and cranky about it.” Not exactly a dispassionate response but one that says more about you than about Reynolds. By the way, Windschuttle is not saying that lots of deaths did not happen in Tasmania, but not as many as Ryan and Reynolds claim. So you don’t have to feel ‘duped’. It’s the history that matters, as you say.

The single example you give of a so-called error corrected by Winschuttle is reproduced from Windschuttle’s own website. Have you independently checked the accuracy of that example? What was that you said about objectivity?

And how many of the 857 references in Ryan’s 500 footnotes did Windschuttle find error with? Windschutle is proud to claim that 11 out of the 18 footnotes used in the hoax paper he published in Quadrant were genuine – that means about 40% (he says only were contrived and Windschuttle can’t be at all proud of his scholarship there. He clearly failed to do checks on the authenticity content or the footnotes because the article general drift was in line with his political ideology.

Yet in his own defence, he told the SMH that he was able to satisfy himself the totally phoney article was "only 10 to 15 per cent invented. When I discovered that my gloom and embarrassment changed completely." http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/quadrant-falls-victim-to-hoax/2009/01/06/1231004021054.html