New Scientist has an article on sock puppets (subscription required):
IF YOU thought sock puppets were made merely for the amusement of small children, think again. In cyberspace, a sock puppet is a vandal's alter ego, an additional account that they use to pose as a different user and tamper with facts and dishonestly promote alternative viewpoints.
The article ends with:
And one academic was caught using a sock puppet to review his own book and to pose as one of his students. It's not just small children that sock puppets keep amused.
They don't mention the name of this academic, but we know who it is.
More like this
This is an annotated list of John Lott's on line reviews at Amazon
and at Barnes and Noble.
Most of his reviews were posted anonymously or under a false name, and he used this anonymity to post many five-star reviews of his own books and to pan rival books.
When you post a review at…
Howard Nemerov has a post defending Lott and responding to Chris Mooney's Mother Jones article. Unfortunately, he gets his facts wrong, leaves out inconvenient facts and indulges in fallacious arguments. I'll go through his post and correct these, but first some general comments.
Even…
Science has printed a letter from Lott (subscription required) responding to Science's editorial suggesting that the AEI should deal with Lott the same way that Emory dealt with Bellesiles:
Donald Kennedy's editorial "Research fraud and public policy" (18 April, p. 393) alleges that I made up a…
Astute readers who have followed the Discovery Institute and the Intelligent Design Creationism movement may have noticed a relatively new name cropping up in the recent press releases concerning the Cobb County case, that of Seth Cooper. Cooper is a recent law school graduate who is now a legal…
Hey Tim, did you catch this article?
http://insidehighered.com/news/2005/12/06/bradford
In particular, "But the more attention Bradford got, the more people started asking questions, and the more peculiarities arose. In September, Lucas Sayre, a second year law student and the head of Indy Law Net, noticed that Bradford's comments were coming from the same IP address as posts from other user names. Sayre, who had taken a course with Bradford and said he was a great professor, questioned Bradford about it, and Bradford admitted to using fake names to post "cheap shots, schoolyard bickering," Sayre said."