Sad conclusion to the Scott-Taylor matter

[BHoover]

Sorry but it is much more than that. Read what Tommy wants from Phil, this is now about making people pay. How dare anyone make a mistake, apologies be damned. I said long ago to have patience, that the day Phil knew that this was a ruse he would come on here and admit he was wrong.  He did, he was hurt, he is sorry, he was fooled. We have all been in his shoes, we should be compassionate not vengeful.

There is always room for forgiveness and compassion, but at the same time, should not one who seemingly holds himself out as an expert on golf course architecture (or any topic depending on the situation) be held to a high standard? A true historian is supposed to base his conclusions on verifiable evidence, not make assumptions or assertions about the purported truth that are not supported by evidence.

What I wouldn't give to just once err on the side of compassion.

Is that after you toss one of your proverbial molotov cocktails and then sit back and revel in the carnage?

[Tim_Cronin]

We've all been duped in some small thing, or large, in our lives.

Phil was the unfortunate victim here, and it's Scott-Taylor whose reputation now suffers. Not Phil's, not Ran's.

Live and learn.

[JR Potts]

If there were ever a "major controversy" that had no real effect on anyone's life or legacy this would be it.  So, the guy is a fraud?  Outside of 10-20 people on here, does anyone really care?

Lesson learned.  Ran - there is a great service being presented by this site - and if a bad apple or two seems to rot along the way, so be it.  The treehouse is certainly capable enough to expose it and sort it all out.
 

[Pat Burke]

Boy, my family got pretty crazy and dysfunctional at times.
But GCA???  Very impressively so!!

As a watcher in this who read along the whole time, some were correct, some were not.

For one, I have zero problem with this site or Ran in this FWIW

[Tim Martin]

We've all been duped in some small thing, or large, in our lives.

Phil was the unfortunate victim here, and it's Scott-Taylor whose reputation now suffers. Not Phil's, not Ran's.

Live and learn.

Tim-I can't imagine that Phil gets a pass. Despite a mountain of evidence contradicting his position from a number of sources he blindly soldiered on. He was way more than an unfortunate victim and at least in my world his reputation has suffered

[Richard Choi]

We've all been duped in some small thing, or large, in our lives.

Phil was the unfortunate victim here, and it's Scott-Taylor whose reputation now suffers. Not Phil's, not Ran's.

Live and learn.

I strongly disagree that Phil's reputation did not suffer. As a fascinated by-stander, even I can see that Phil's (and Neil Crafter's) reputation is in close to ruins. It is hard to believe they were not active participants of this con. I don't care much about their apologies as their actions speak much louder.

Ran's reputation will depend on how he conducts himself/site after this mess. I suspect he will come out just fine as many a great men have been fooled by con-artists.

This is why science papers go through peer review and are replicated by other scientists. I think publishing papers like this is just fine as long as the corresponding research and supporting documentations are available on request. Without it, no essay should go further than "In My Opinion" section.

[John Kavanaugh]

There is an elephant in the room. Didn't something similar happen before with a make believe article?

[David_Elvins]

Phil was the unfortunate victim here, and it's Scott-Taylor whose reputation now suffers.

There may likely never be a 100% conclusive decision that the drawings are fake but it would have been easy to discover that the 'interim report' was fake by contacting the supposed contributors.  Unfortunately those with access to the report (Phil, Neil etc) never bothered to make this check despite many red flags including:

-the claim that the authors wished to remain anonymous.
-the fact 1300 words was copied from an unrelated document available on the internet
-the blatantly ridiculous language used in the report.
-the claims that someone made a harassing phone call to Ian's sister.

It's been 4 weeks since Phil published excerpts of the report on here.  But he only found out, to his shock, that the 'interim report' was fake when he took a phone call from Ran who received a call from STEP who received a phone call from one of their members, who received a phone call from an interested reader of this thread.  

Phil could have short circuited a heap of the process by making 1 phone call 5 weeks ago and David Moriarty would have been able to spend a a heap more time with his kids.  

[Geoff_Shackelford]

As one who has been supportive of Phil and Ian i am obviously disappointed and saddened to learn that the authentication report was not genuine and that Ian had written it. Naturally I am embarrassed by this and extend my apologies to all here for my part in this.

My involvement was originally in looking at a set of 18 hole plans apparently drawn by Mackenzie for Riviera. They certainly appeared genuine to me based upon the numerous Mac plans I have seen over the years, and I said so.

Obviously I am very disappointed, upset and saddened that Ian fabricated the report, which naturally casts a grim shadow over all this material, the Riviera drawings included. What material is genuine and what material is not is now mixed up in a murky soup. Sadly it's all tainted now.

While I find it difficult to believe that these Mac plans plus the two from Augusta that I have seen, are forged, and while that possibility has always been there, it is perhaps far more prominent now. Anyway, there will be more fall-out on this to come no doubt.

For my part, I have argued a case that I believed in, in good faith. For being wrong, well, mea culpa.

Neil,
You, Phil and Ian Scott Taylor explicitly instructed those you shared the purported Alister MacKenzie Riviera drawings with to keep the sketches from being shown to me. Your lengthy authentication report was a key component of the attempt to sell these drawings and yet, knowing my background as author of books on Riviera and George Thomas, you conspired in the not-so-good-faith effort to not ask if I had thoughts on the authenticity of the drawings, or to provide some insight into who did renovation work at Riviera prior to the 1929 Los Angeles Open (it was not Alister MacKenzie, as you now hopefully know and something confirmed as not possible by your own MacKenzie timeline).

So do not suggest here this was a good faith effort on your part or Phil Young's. There was a concerted effort to deceive and conceal by both you and Young. This is not behavior consistent with how historians who truly love this art share information amongst themselves.

[Tim_Cronin]

Clifford Irving made up an autobiography of Howard Hughes and fooled so many, including publisher McGraw-Hill, Hughes got on a conference call to say Irving was a liar, while lying himself about his obsessions. Irving went to prison for 17 months.

The German newsmagazine Stern was once fooled into publishing excerpts from "The Hitler Diaries," which turned out to be fakes authored by Konrad Kujau, a German forger. Kujau went to prison.

For those who believe Phil Young was in cahoots with Ian Scott-Taylor (an Irving or Kujau), rather than duped (a McGraw-Hill or Stern), you'd best have solid evidence presentable in a court of law.

I have neither a cat nor a dog in this chamber pot fight. As I wrote way back, nice drawings, no matter who drew them.

Best wishes to all.

[Jeff_Brauer]

At the end of his posts, David Moriarty includes a quote from Tom MacWood:
Golf history can be quite interesting if you just let your favorite legends go and allow the truth to take you where it will.

This is interesting to note and remember.  TMac and David saw that many club histories were under researched and often wrong when it came to the golf courses themselves (while the results of the 1934 ladies C league tennis tournaments were probably stunningly accurate).  So, they and a few others have taken it upon themselves to try to get more accurate histories of golf architecture than the mainstream press has done, and the clubs have done, etc.

It gets prickly, it upsets some establishments, and of course, given the assumption that many "legends" are wrong, also runs the risk of mistakes on their part as well.  All of history is at least part opinion or point of view.  Of course, Phil would consider himself as part of that movement as well, and perhaps his wanting to have a real find seems to have influenced this situation.

As for the ever more detailed study of gca, I am not sure how groundbreaking our researchers are, or the site that allows them to do it.  But, it does seem like a bit of a historic change in ways things are done in our little area of historic interest.  It probably has to happen this way, and it probably had to wait until recently to happen, given the relative ease of record searching on the net.  In more mainstream history areas, historians figure we have enough Abe Lincoln tomes, and I have had to route courses to preserve 1800's trash dumps because some historian wants to study it someday to see how the real people of the 1800's lived.  As time goes on, history goes to less well covered subjects, and gca is one of those.

I guess with the interest, it was only a matter of time before someone also tried forgeries for whatever reason.  Fake gca history memorabilia.  Whooda thunkit twenty years ago or so? Who would have even known?  (the downside being how much good stuff probably got thrown out as "unimportant."

[Adam Lawrence]

The Hitler Diaries comparison was made months ago in one of the earlier threads on this subject. By analogy, Phil and Neil are the Hugh Trevor-Ropers of this story, the experts who promoted the fake documents. Trevor-Roper's reputation as a historian never recovered from that.

I want to make one more point. Phil's first post in this thread explains how he witnessed Ian turn down a large offer for the drawings, and that convinced him they must be genuine. Leaving aside the possibility that he was holding out for a better offer (there is a bunch of hubris across this whole story), Phil says "That is why I was convinced they were genuine, fought so hard in arguing it and was willing to “carry the weight” for Ian."

The phrase that I want to pick up on is 'fought so hard in arguing it'.

Historical work is NOT an adversarial process. Why, Phil, were you 'fighting' for these documents? Because that is where it all started to go wrong. You engaged in a war, and you staked your reputation on it. Yet you brought no evidence of your own to the table, rather, you went back to Ian whenever a clear hole in your story was demonstrated. When it was proved that Tillinghast could not have been at the alleged dinner at the Scores, you changed your story to say he mailed the drawing earlier - presumably at Ian's direction. When the Scores was shown not to have existed in 1901, you made the ridiculous claim that it was an informal name given by players who went there to tot up their cards. When it was shown to you that DST could not have been a Royal Navy officer in 1901, you simply asserted that he was (while changing your story to claim his commission was post the alleged Queen Victoria episode). If this was true you could have proved it by a few minutes online research with the Navy List. But you didn't. Instead, you continued to go back to Ian, who obligingly provided more diary material to support his stories. You failed to address any of the flaws clearly pointed out in the diaries and drawings. You should have been seeking the truth, as a proper historian would. Instead, you preferred to act as a promoter or advocate.

That, I am sorry to say, is why your reputation as a historian of golf lies in tatters today.

[Bill_McBride]

One thing for sure, it's a good thing we weren't paying David Moriarity for his research, not at those LA lawyer rates!  I wonder how many hours he volunteered in his sleuthing in this fascinating case. 

[john_stiles]

Boy, this sure seemed like it was going to be a train wreck from the very beginning.  

It was very interesting to read the results of the great research by DM and the many others on this site and Tommy's Max's .

But then I see the last post #83 by Geoff S and read  " So do not suggest here this was a good faith effort on your part or Phil Young's. There was a concerted effort to deceive and conceal by both you and Young. This is not behavior consistent with how historians who truly love this art share information amongst themselves. "    

Realizing I will never know all of the back story,   such statements are a bit alarming but mostly sad.

Nevertheless, agreeing with the many other testaments above,  GCA is a wonderful site for many and varied reasons.


But,  I do want to say one thing directly to Ran.

Ran,

Please cash my  n-th  check, now in the mail,  in support of the site and your efforts, as soon as possible.  

I need to know by checking balance going into Christmas.

Cheers !
John

[Jeff Taylor]

"I guess you can take this site and those that manage it for what it is and maintain a willingness to overlook its weaknesses or you can revel in others mistakes and misfortunes and stir up hatred."

Those are not the only choices.

[Craig Sweet]

Yawn......

[Mike_Young]

Come on guys....all of us have had the past month or longer to read this stuff and draw conclusions...at the end of the day this stuff is way down the list of what matters in the golf world and yet to a couple of guys here it probably feels like the world is caving in.  What is the old saying" be careful what you say because everyone is fighting some kind of battle"....these guys know it was a screw up but in reality it did not affect the courses one single bit...you have to realize most of golf architectural history is entertainment and often revisionist anyway.  Nothing to be gained kicking PY and others....cheers...

[Jeff Taylor]

"you have to realize most of golf architectural history is entertainment and often revisionist anyway.  Nothing to be gained kicking PY and others"

I get the impression that something was trying to be gained.

[ANTHONYPIOPPI]

John and Kelly:

Thank you for reminding everyone about the disgusting incident that took place on this chat room in regards to the fake golf course rankings article. When the scam artists were brought to light they immediately defended themselves by placing blame on those who reproduced the work as if somehow trusting the integrity of the chat room was the real problem.

We now have a second incident of the site attempting to perpetuate a fraud, which means there is a pattern of deceit here.

From the very beginning there were problems with this tale of sketches, meetings and a rewriting of history. First, in my mind, a former newspaper reporter who investigated corruption and fraud, was why bring this “discovery” to light here on a chat room with marginal reputation for honesty? Had there been unequivocal proof that these documents were genuine, the likes of Golf Digest, the Guardian or the Smithsonian magazine would have been interested in revealing them to the golf world. Those involved knew this is not a place to hold the research up to legitimate and fair criticism, but it is a place where deception is embraced.

The fact is the people who run this chat room had an active and supportive role in perpetuating this swindle. Had it been pulled off and some of the fakes sold as genuine before the con came to life then certain individuals may have found themselves in court defending their actions. Claiming ignorance and/or stupidity is not the best defense for such actions. Claiming ignorance, though, is apparently a good way to get people to keep supporting you financially. Some people will always willingly drink the Kook-Aid. Dr. Oz is still in business even after duping hundreds of thousands with a tale of bogus weight loss pills.

Adam Lawrence and some others should be lauded for not only displaying a healthy skepticism and revealing the fraud, but also doing without the mean-spiritedness that is a hallmark of this chat room. He gave the dishonorable a chance to remove themselves from the scheme while still maintaining a bit of their honor. They chose not to. He is a gentleman for doing so.

There are many conclusion to be reached here but, for me, one stands out: this chat room is not a bastion of integrity (except for Joseph Bausch, Adam Lawrence and a scant few others) and, therefore, it is not a place for serious discussions of history, facts and truths. It is a place to bloviate, to deceive, it inflate one's ego. In other words, it is a barroom.

Those who wish to push aside this incident as if it is nothing but an unfortunate small error, fail to realize that this wretched episode has the potential to harm those of us who make a living striving to research and write golf course history while maintaining the highest standards of research that we can. When a supposedly bona fide historian is shown to be anything but, I fear others in the field will suffer.

I’m genuinely sorry that this incident happened and that many of you have seen the curtain pulled back on a hero or two, but I am not at all surprised.

Anthony

[Ally Mcintosh]

How many people actually "make a living" from researching golf course history?

Honest question.

[Paul Gray]

Well this is certainly a First World problem. Talk of heroes being exposed; please don't tell this grown man Santa Claus isn't real. A little perspective perhaps?

[Michael Moore]

disgusting incident that took place on this chat room in regards to the fake golf course rankings article. When the scam artists were brought to light

Do you consider the Ordnance Survey to be disgusting scam artists for including copyright traps on their maps and catching the Automobile Association red-handed?

[Sven Nilsen]

We now have a second incident of the site attempting to perpetuate a fraud, which means there is a pattern of deceit here.

Anthony:

I think there is a marked difference between the Foulpointe Listing and the David Scott-Taylor Fiasco.  Ran was complicit in the first one, and there is no excuse for having presented that course ranking as factual.  In the more recent case, unless you know something the rest of us don't, I don't see him having been aware of the fraud and letting it continue.

You could say he should have had a better set of "fresh eyes" with regard to the material he was asked to present on his site, but I don't think that rises to the level of intentional deception.

I do agree with your points that the downfall of the discussion hereabouts lies in the interpretation.  There is a bit of excitement in finding something new, and often that leads to presenter jumping to conclusions.  Throw in an obvious bias when folks have tied themselves to particular figures in golf history, and its a recipe for disaster.  It is often hard to remember (and to write in a way that clearly delineates) what is fact and what is conjecture.

Sven

[Ulrich Mayring]

The Foulpointe listing was a joke and I think a good one. I'd have done the same thing without hesitation in order to expose those stealing material from my site, while having a laugh. Grow a sense of humour, this is not a federal court, but a hobby place.

OTOH, the DST material wasn't meant as a light-hearted joke, but supposed to be actually genuine and valuable.

Ulrich

[Sven Nilsen]

The Foulpointe listing was a joke and I think a good one. I'd have done the same thing without hesitation in order to expose those stealing material from my site, while having a laugh. Grow a sense of humour, this is not a federal court, but a hobby place.

OTOH, the DST material wasn't meant as a light-hearted joke, but supposed to be actually genuine and valuable.

Ulrich

Ulrich:

You need to revisit the Foulpointe story.  The manner in which the "joke" was allowed to perpetuate was not above board.

Sven