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Fake or Find (APPLIED EPISTEMOLOGY)
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Mick Harper
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You've gone all Ishmaeli, Wiley. Yes, the bloke is a preening publicity hound; yes, he stumbled on a good 'un when he was doing something else; but no, it wasn't electoral fraud.*

* Except in the sense that congressional districts, electoral colleges etc are created on the basis of census data and how they are interpreted.
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Wile E. Coyote


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I think Ishmael likes this you tuber's presentation. Wiley can't make sense of it. It's just the latest in a line of folks that feel they were cheated out of the election, who are struggling to articulate it.
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Mick Harper
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Ridiculous. Are you prepared to name one of these 'folks', Wiley? Not Ishmael, he never has the least trouble articulating it. Although, now you mention it, there were several hundred 'folk' who undertook an exhaustive examination of the Arizona count. Ishmael has not articulated the results of their enquiries. Not like him at all.
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Mick Harper
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We are all waiting for the Arizona re-count to come in because it will mean the end of the Who Won The Election debate (either way) and the end of the Right as we have come to know it if nothing is found. In theory. It should have been today but the Ninja Counters are anti-vaxxer as well as anti-Biden so they've all gone down with Covid, meaning the result will have to await tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
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Mick Harper
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We are now well into September and still no word from Ishmael. He can't be hiding out somewhere because all his information comes via the internet which, I understand, is available in all parts of the world. It may be that he's got the results of the Arizona recount but has been sworn to secrecy. But what I want to know is whether that is because it went Trump's way and he is fearful of Biden's secret police, or did it go Biden's way and he is actually hiding out planning their next step?

Don't leave it too long, Ish, or we'll be electing a new president. Presumably Trump but one never knows with all this gerrymandering going on.
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Mick Harper
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I commend this article https://thecritic.co.uk/receptiogate-and-the-absolute-state-of-academia/ for some insights not just into one episode of academic malpractice but the general parlous state of the 'industry'. Intellectual, I mean, not financial -- there seems to be money awash for all sorts.

Hatty and I have a soi-distant relationship to it (which I'll report on further if it amounts to anything) but you can all meanwhile get up to speed and report anything that might come in useful.
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Mick Harper
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I posted this story up on medium.com as part of my efforts to open a new front -- and become a billionaire. It provoked an exchange that has some interesting AE angles.

--------------------

Ten Important Books That Are In Fact Fakes

I have no doubt in my mind that all these books are fakes i.e. not written by the person named on the cover (where appropriate) but who precisely did write them and when, insofar as that is known to me, I will reveal if anyone shows any interest. On the whole, people prefer things the way they are but we’ll see.

The Canterbury Tales
Officially written by Geoffrey Chaucer, late 14th century, in England
The Pepys Diaries
Officially written by Samuel Pepys, 1660–1669, in London
Candide
Officially written by Voltaire, about 1760, in Switzerland
The Book of Kells
Officially copied by unknown monks, in the 9th century, Iona, Scotland
Casanova’s Memoirs
Officially written by Giacomo Casanova, 1790’s, in Bohemia
The Mabinogion
Officially compiled by unknown scribes, 11–13th centuries, in Wales
The New Testament
Officially written by various hands, 1st century AD, in the Middle East
Beowulf
Officially composed by an unknown Anglo-Saxon poet, 8th-10th centuries, in England
The Encyclopédie
Officially compiled by Diderot and d’Alembert, 1750’s, in France
De Bello Gallico
Officially written by Julius Caesar, around 50 BC, in Rome

------------------------

I was worried that somebody would choose one or other for which the evidence is (more than usually) thin or for which I hadn't done much legwork but fortunately I got this reply

John Welford wrote:
OK - so who did write The Canterbury Tales then? And what about all the other works in my edition of "The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer"?

John, as most of you know, is an old sparring partner of mine on medium and what happened subsequently is worth following for the way that highly educated people treat evidence -- as well as stick to their guns where orthodoxy is concerned.
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Mick Harper
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I did not cover myself with glory over the subsequent rat-a-tat but I was slightly handicapped by needing to appeal to a medium audience over and above John (who is an extremely well-established and widely followed medium writer). He of course had a single quarry in his sights (and I have no doubt the support of the medium audience). Since I knew John so well I could afford to start off aggressively without the usual dangers of doing this.

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Mick
If somebody would kindly scrape a full stop off one of the existing eighty-four surviving manuscripts (have you ever stopped to consider how ridiculous that is?) and subjected it to a tuppeny-ha’ppeny carbon test (or spend a bit more on putting it under the hood if they can’t bring themselves to do that) then we would at least know what century the manuscript was written. It may be fourteenth century and then (but only then) you can continue with your caterwauling.

John
I am curious to know why you should think that there is any doubt about the authorship of the Tales? For one thing, if the Tales are later than you say, then they could not possibly be any later than 1475-6, which was when Caxton printed them. As it was, Caxton had to make do with a very incomplete set of documents, as it is clear that that there are several incomplete Tales which break off in strange places, suggesting missing pages. Would a forger not have presented something more complete and consistent?

You might also want to look at the strange little document known as the "Retraction" - I have written about it on Medium. In this, Chaucer apologises for several of his works, which he lists - not just the Tales but others including Troilus, the Book of the Duchess, and at least one that has subsequently been lost. Are you saying that all these are forgeries as well? I think you need to state your case more fully, so that it can be answered more fully.

Mick
Where to start? Why not at the start. There is no evidence whatsoever that Caxton printed the Canterbury Tales. If you will provide me with some, I will proceed with your other points.

John
So what do you think counts as evidence? Clearly not the editions of Caxton's Tales sitting for all to see in the British Library!

Mick
I hardly think they'd let everyone look at them if they didn't have Caxton written on them bold as brass. Now, please, get serious and offer some evidence.

-------------------

So far, so good. The battlefield is reasonably established. I didn't want to get bogged down in the technical stuff -- about which John clearly knows more than me -- but onto the nature of evidence which, as we shall see, I know a great deal more than him.
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Mick Harper
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Although I have made a tactical error in somehow allowing the Chaucerian and Caxtonian canons to get involved -- it is only the authorship of the Tales that is in question -- it soon becomes clear that John, being academically trained, regards citation from authority as being the only acceptable form of evidence. This delusion is at the heart of everything we do.

John
So references to just about every source you care to mention, relating to the history of the Tales, is not good enough for you? I have yet to find anyone - apart from you, of course, who doubts that Caxton set up a printing works in the late 15th century and his many projects included the first edition of the Canterbury Tales in 1478. I therefore repeat my question - if that's not good enough, what counts as evidence as far as you are concerned?

Mick
Honestly, John, 'everybody says' does not constitute evidence. I have not mentioned anything about Caxton setting up a printing press in the late 15th century because there is evidence that he did. Nobody would claim to possess a Caxton edition of anything if he didn't. Now, just stick to the point, and give me some evidence (not 'everybody says') that the Canterbury Tales was printed by Caxton. Because for sure he would have done so if they had existed at the time.

John
Mick, I have asked you on many occasions to tell me what constitutes evidence in your view, but you have never done so. I am also puzzled by why you seem to think that Caxton did not print the Canterbury Tales - apparently you are under the absurd impression that they did not exist at the time. But why? Are you saying that the rest of Chaucer's works were by Chaucer but the Tales were not, but instead date from at least 100 years later? What on earth has given you that impression?

Mick
Evidence can be primary (the actual document) or secondary (contemporary reference to it). Since nobody will objectively date any of the manuscripts or any of the Caxton printed versions of the Canterbury Tales, we have no primary evidence. Since nobody refers to them until much later, we have no secondary evidence. Sorry, but even you will have to accept that. You can carry on believing Chaucer wrote Chaucer's works because 'everyone says so' but you should at least concede that is the only evidence that he did.

John
I suggest you start thinking about the internal evidence that is presented by literary works before asserting that they are somehow "fakes". The Tales are chock-full of such evidence. I have already mentioned the "Retraction" in which Chaucer lists a number of his works, including the Tales. There are also the linguistic and stylistic similarities between works such as Troilus and the Tales that point to them having been written by the same author.

I know you have stated before your conviction that many supposedly early works were forged by bored monks who had nothing better to do after being thrown out of their monasteries by Henry VIII. If that was the case here, there are certainly more questions than answers. For one thing, would monks who had lost their comfortable living as a result of the Reformation have written Tales that are so highly critical of the Catholic Church and its representatives? Would a monk have written so approvingly of the Parson - a devotee of the reformist Lollard movement?

And - whoever the forger was - would they really have composed a work that is so muddled and incomplete and clearly in need of much editorial attention? Even today, nobody is quite sure of the order in which the Tales were supposed to have written - they were preserved in 9 distinct fragments - and that leaves aside the fact that there were supposed to be many more Tales than there actually are. This list of such evidence - gleaned by experts far more highly qualified than me - goes on!

Mick
John, you may call this evidence but I call it commentary (at best). I assume from your silence you have not found any primary or secondary evidence so I'll deal briefly with your commentary.
1) The whole Chaucerian canon being written by a single hand does not mean it was Chaucer's hand.
2) I doubt that hand was a bored monk
3) Forgers know their business at least as well as academics.
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Mick Harper
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I keep thinking I’ve nailed him, he keeps coming back at me. I will break up arguments here for clarity’s sake. Medium is not well suited to these kinds of exchanges but we both did our best.

John
I would be interested to know what your views are as regards evidence presented in courts of law. I would certainly agree that much of the latter has been proved in the past to be highly questionable, but there is also evidence that is regarded as strong enough to ensure a conviction, based on such things as documentation, witness statements and the application of logic. The same criteria surely apply to literary evidence

Mick
Your demands for courtroom standards for evidence are apposite because they are the exact same ones historians require for historical evidence: documentation (primary evidence) and witness statements (secondary evidence). That is unless a national icon is involved, in which case academics have a tendency to throw standards out the window.

John
If you want to prove a forgery, you have to produce that it could not possibly be the work that it is claimed to be, and internal evidence can be very strong in such cases.

Mick
Chaucer’s entire oeuvre is sui generis so nobody knows what that internal evidence is.

John
Chaucer is not "sui generis" as you say, because there was plenty of other literary writing going on at the same time, in various forms of Middle English. Surviving works include Piers Plowman (probably by William Langland), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and several other poems (which may or may not be by the same author). We know that Geoffrey Chaucer was a real person - he was far more than just a writer and he led a very active life in the service of his country.

Mick
Actually we don’t. If you care to dive into his life story you will find a number of … curiosities. I will not deal with them here since his existence does not prove he wrote The Canterbury Tales. If anything, it strengthens the case for why a forger would use his name if he did. And let’s not forget, The Tales are the only work of his that has the wow! factor. So not sui generis of the sui generis.

John
If you find word usages and phrasal constructions that do not long belong to the age which is claimed, alarm bells will start to ring. The same will happen if you find usages that are found nowhere else in a writer's known output. I have not heard of any such alarms in the case of the Canterbury Tales - which is a huge work when considered in total. Do you not think that a forger would have slipped up at least once? If they had, would not the vast number of PhD theses written about the Tales down the centuries have found a smoking gun by now? You keep asking me to find evidence, but the onus is surely on you to prove a positive rather on me to prove a negative?

And then there is the question of why anyone would pretend to be Geoffrey Chaucer when they were not! You are asserting that somebody - at a later historical period - wrote masses of stuff in the language of the 14th century (and as was used by other writers at the same time) and had no interest in claiming credit for a lifetime's output of literature, much of it of extremely high quality. Why on earth would they have done so? That is surely the most pertinent question of the lot!

Mick
For money of course. Or maybe fame. Or maybe for blowing raspberries at all those vast numbers of scholars you place your faith in. Fakers (and writers) are a strange lot.

John
Mick, the picture you are offering is simply fantastic, by which I mean it is pure fantasy! [More tomorrow. I'm afraid.]
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Grant



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He makes a good point: why would someone go to so much effort and then attribute it to someone else? We are not talking of a poem or two. The output attributed to Chaucer is rather large
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Mick Harper
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Three points:

1. I have not claimed that Chaucer's entire oeuvre is faked, only the Canterbury Tales.
2. It is agreed that the rest of the oeuvre is not particularly meritworthy (except in being early). Have you stopped to consider that the entire surviving corpus of pre-1400 English literature consists of 99% Chaucerian material? What are the chances of that?
3. Once you have set yourself up as a faker of pre-1400 English literature, there is no reason to limit yourself -- nor is it hard to turn out material once you've got your hand in and the first effort has passed muster. We know for a fact that both Scottish and Welsh pre-1400 literature was being forged wholesale.
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Mick Harper
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John Welford
You seem to be suggesting that - at some time at least a century later than the supposed time of Chaucer's activities - a highly talented writer set out to compose a vast amount of material that he refused to acknowledge as being his own work. Instead, he invented someone called Geoffrey Chaucer who lived decades or centuries earlier. He would have had to create a whole new persona, including all the historical links between this character and other well-known people - including John of Gaunt, who was the father of King Henry IV, and whose wife was the sister of Chaucer's wife. He was also a noted supporter of Chaucer.

This unknown writer would have had to deliberately write in a style that was already out-of-date in his own time, given that English went through a rapid transformation after the development of printing. He would therefore have risked not being able to find a ready market for his work - who is going to get excited about literature that is difficult to read - apart from literary scholars? He would have had to avoid writing about anything that was of prime interest to the time he was living in - not mentioning anything in the political or social realm that had occurred since the 14th century, but instead concentrating on what he supposed were the issues and mores of that long-past time.

His efforts would not have been a one-off piece of pastiche - such as that produced by Thomas Chatterton much later - but a vast body of writing that would take decades of work. And to what benefit? He could not sell anything and gain any kudos for so doing. He would gain no fame for so doing, because nobody would know who he was. And - apart from all that - he was a literary genius, and what person with such an amazing talent would be able to keep that talent hidden away for his whole life? OK - somebody like Gerard Manley Hopkins was able to do so, but this is a very different sort of output, as well as being vastly greater. No - sorry, but this scenario simply does not hold water!

Mick
You keep on telling me about Chaucer and all his works, I keep on telling you ‘just the Canterbury Tales’. Eyes on the prize, John. That disposes of most of your objections. Why you think literary pastiche is so difficult or so unprofitable I will put down to you being a librarian rather than a writer. Glad you mentioned Thomas Chatterton though. If you want to know how real he was, just read the first coupla lines of his Wiki entry

Thomas Chatterton (20 November 1752 – 24 August 1770) was an English poet whose precocious talents ended in suicide at age 17. He was an influence on Romantic artists of the period such as Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth and Coleridge.

They don’t even need to try very hard when it comes to hoodwinking the literary establishment. I'd laugh if I wasn't so busy laughing.
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Mick Harper
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John
The trouble is, Mick, that once you start on this "it's all fake" line, you end up in some vast conspiracy theory that has implications in multiple directions, leading to far more questions than answers. I would love to know what your theory actually is, but you seem to be very coy about putting it forward!

Mick
I have written two books and posted extensively on two websites about it so your standards for coyness seem unwarrantably high. As for 'vast conspiracies', one of the websites is offering a prize for the first person who can come up with a conspiracy theory that turned out to be true. I have yet to claim my own prize. But since you raise the point, my one and only point is that faking literary sources is more extensive than academic historians (and librarians) would have us believe.

Don't get me started on art. Or artefacts. Or... no I must remember to keep the implications down to manageable proportions. John said so.

John
Mick, I have looked at your books for answers to these questions, but looked in vain. You seem to specialise in vague generalisations along the lines of - "I don't believe what the scholars say, so the answers must lie elsewhere" without making any specific claims as to where that "elsewhere" might be. You delight in demanding that your critics produce evidence, but are remarkably reluctant to offer any of your own.

I also think that one mistake you have made is to forget that there is a huge difference between copies and fakes. Before printing, the only way to reproduce a document was to copy it, and so therefore most of what we have today in terms of manuscripts are copies of originals, not the originals. When copying, mistakes were often made - some text would be added and some omitted. That does not turn the copy into a fake. It is not as though somebody sat down and said "I will now write something that I can pretend was written hundreds of years ago". If they were that good as a writer, why on earth would they do that? It just doesn't add up!

Mick
This is a travesty, John, which quite shocks me. Meetings with Remarkable Forgeries takes a handful of books and devotes a chapter to each, hardly vague generalisations. I will leave Revisionist Historiography aside since you have not read it.

I don’t 'demand my critics produce evidence', I use their evidence. Flicking through the book, I would judge an average of two per page. I am not reluctant to offer my own evidence -- the book is, apart from some discursive passages, nothing but evidence. Since there was precious little of it to start with (the point of the book), this is mostly reasonable deductions from the evidence and refutation of academics' misuse of the evidence. If you found an unreasonable one, let me know, though I have to say you haven't produced a single example of an error on my part in any of your lengthy jeremiads so far. I know how much you dislike vague generalisations.

As for the difference between copies and fakes, I suggest you get your knees brown before lecturing me on the subject. I've been in the business quite some time.

John
I really wish my old Philosophy professor was still alive - he'd have a field day with this! What I am saying is that it's fine to doubt the authenticity of something - literary criticism is full of that - but what you must then do is offer a credible alternative - and that is what I am failing to find. By the way - I only see a passing reference to The Canterbury Tales in "Remarkable Forgeries", so your argument there is very hard to get to grips with.

Mick
That is because the book is about early medieval gospel books. Last time I looked, the Canterbury Tales does not fall into that genre. There is an entire chapter in Revisionist Historiography about them called (amusingly, as is my wont) The Wife of Bath Takes an Early Bath.

John
I may have to save up a few more pennies before I buy that one!

-----------------------

Ironically, I offered him a free copy when RevHist first came out, and told him when the cheapo Kindle version became available. But there our very lively exchange ended. Technically, he didn't lay a glove on me but then I didn't exactly knock him out either.
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Hatty
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An interesting, if all too familiar, case appeared in the Time Team Facebook group.

A Viking era ring inscribed with the words 'for Allah', found in the grave of a woman who was buried 1200 years ago in Birka, 25 km west of modern-day Stockholm. The ring constitutes a unique material evidence of direct contact between the Vikings and the Abbasid Caliphate.



Swedish archaeologists have surmised the woman probably visited the Caliphate at some stage.

Notably, they discovered that the stone in the ring is actually coloured glass – at the time an exotic material for the Vikings, though it had been made for thousands of years in the Middle East and North Africa. Even more notably, the ring displayed a remarkable lack of wear, leading the authors to speculate that it had few – if any – owners in-between its creator and its Viking owner.

There seems to be some problems with the dating as not only were no other Viking Age artefacts in evidence, there are no similar rings for comparison, this Arabic-inscribed ring being a 'unique' find for Scandinavia. Inscriptions are undateable, metal cannot be carbon dated and nor could the bones in the coffin be carbon dated as the skeleton, according to the report, had 'completely decomposed'. So, in lieu of scientific dating methods, the archaeologists resorted to assorted items of jewellery, foreign-looking beads and clothing and concluded the burial could be Viking Age because, they said, the clothing and jewellery were 'typical Scandinavian'.

This case seems to have distinct echoes of the goings-on of Augustus Franks & co. The 'Viking era' ring was found by an eminent Swedish archaeologist and first director and curator of the Swedish Museum of Ethnography, Hjalmar Stolpe, and is characteristic of rings made in the Middle East and north Africa (presumably not very common in western Europe, hence all the fuss). Stolpe spent more than twenty years (1872-95) excavating in and around Birka, famous for burial mounds dating to the Bronze Age. He also took part in a voyage of circumnavigation on the Vanadis (1883-85) in his quest for objects from foreign cultures for his newly minted ethnographic museum. Whether Stolpe's ring was from Birka or from one of the ports of call on the Vanadis expedition isn't clear.
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