The notion that every criticism is "holier-than-thou" is the ultimate chilling effect. Disallow criticism, and you abandon accountability.
I doubt anyone thinks that
every criticism thus far expressed is "holier-than-thou." I assume Urlich was referring to the severity of the condemnation and the piling-on, but I am more disturbed by the hypocrisy of some (but not all) of the criticism. Allow hypocrisy and you abandon reason.
Some of you obviously realize it, but I hope the rest of you come to realize that whatever condemnation you have heaped on Tom
must apply equally to Ran Morrissett, because he was apparently in on it the entire time. I say this not to further condemn Ran, but to suggest that perhaps some of the comments might have been different had Ran been the one who came clean about the scam.
But if some of you really think the act was as damning as you have indicated, isn't it bit hypocritical to even stick around on Ran's website, given his complete lack of credibility? If you need instructions on how to delete your access, I'll be glad to help you out.
Also, over the years this website is been treated to some extraordinarily unethical behavior, yet many of you have turned a blind eye to it and repeatedly so. Where was your outrage then? I'll not distract from the topic by getting into it here except to note that a few of you have even have the nerve to hold up the worst aggressor as a paragon of virtue in comparison. If that isn't the ultimate in hypocrisy I don't know what is.
Anyway, I am not here to pretend that Ran and Tom didn't screw up. They did; Tom has said as much and repeatedly so. But from my perspective they have each done a hell of a lot of positive things for this website and had few if any strikes against them before this. So as much as I disagree with what happened, you won't find me self-righteously claiming that they have forever lost all credibility because of this single screw up, especially given the context in which the "hoax" transpired.
It is not uncommon for false entries and false information to be inserted into various texts which are particularly susceptible to copying, such as reference sources, transcriptions, musical scores, or any texts where it takes great time and effort to coherently compile and present useful and valuable information. (Here is a link to the relevant wikipedia entry generally describing the phenomenon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry) As I understand it, the general idea is that the copier will repeat the false information and thus identify him or herself, but the honest writer who has done his/her own work will never put themselves in that position because they would not pass off another's work as if it were their own.
I haven't communicated with Ran or Tom about any of this, but this seems to be somewhat like what happened here. Tom and Ran have placed an enormous amount of useful and valuable information on this website for all of us to access, free of charge. Understandably, they don't like it when others pilfer their work and pass it off as if these "researchers" had come up with it themselves. So they planted one false article amongst an incredible amount of accurate information, and low and behold at least a few bottom feeders took the bait and acted as if they themselves had found the information.
Take this Robert Fagan guy. He copied the entire fake article verbatim, but never bothered to mention that what he was really copying was Tom MacWood's IMO on Ran's website. More than that, he tried to pass it off as if it was his own research that had unearthed the article! From his website:
No, Golf Digest Magazine or Golf Magazine did not invent golf course rankings. They existed many years before either magazine ever was envisioned. In research for my upcoming book on the classic golf courses in America, I came upon a most interesting World Ranking of “Finest Golf Courses” dated 1939. It was published by The National Golf Review in their Annual Review, and featured the usual golf literary talents of the day, Darwin, Rice, Keeler, Martin, and Bobby Jones. . . . Bullshit. Rather than do his own research as Fagan implied he was doing, he came across Tom's IMO and ripped it off, essentially word for word. He tried to pass off Tom's work on Ran's website as if it were his own. You guys should save some of your outrage for this guy and others who are riding Tom's and Ran's coattails by ripping them off. I've had it happen to me and it is no fun.
The Wall Street Journal guy may have been more lazy than anything else, but he sure as hell ought to know better than to write what he did without checking up on it first. Or, if he is too lazy to do his own research, he at least ought to properly cite the source by noting that, '
according to Tom MacWood on golfclubatlas.com, in 1939 the National Golf Course Review . . .' Anything less than such an acknowledgement is unethical at the very least.
It is wrong to take someone else's work and present it as your own. This is true whether such work is fact or fiction. And you guys who say that others need not have gotten Tom's permission before copying his IMO almost verbatim are just flat out wrong.
That said, while I have no sympathy for anyone who copied the "article" as if they had found it themselves, such traps raise all sorts of ethical issues, especially when bystanders (as opposed to researchers and writers) put their trust in the sources, and this seems to be what happened here, and obviously it went on much too long. But even so, I am not positive it is as clearcut as some of you make it out to be and will continue to consider not only this incident but also how these two have consistently behaved. I'll not damn them forever because this one time they let their desire to stave off the bottom-feeders get the best of them.