From where did Schaefer derive his thicket of falsehoods regarding DIO publisher D.Rawlins having “abused” M.Hoskin over alleged JHA “rejection” of a Rawlins paper?
O.Gingerich, HASTRO 2000/4/22 and DIO 9.1 [1999] p.41:
Hoskin was prepared to accept the paper in question . . . [but] …. Rawlins refused to allow the sentence [“that Ptolemy has indeed been shown to have been a liar” — which (due to purposeful Gingerich truncation) isn't a sentence] to be changed, so the paper never proceeded to press. … abuse … continued to arrive in the mail from Rawlins, so [Hoskin] simply stopped opening it.
B.Schaefer, Sky&Tel 2002 Feb p.40:
The manuscript was ultimately rejected for publication after Rawlins refused to remove the claim [versus below] that Ptolemy was a liar, and thereafter Rawlins . . . . started sending abusive letters to Hoskin, who soon stopped opening them.
(This incident reminds me of Peter Sellers' immortal contretemps in Only Two Can Play, when he fakes a newspaper review of a play he missed actually seeing — only to learn the next day that the theatre had burned down just before the performance.)
Obviously, Sky&Tel has
done well in choosing
its defender of the Great Plagiarist, Claudius Indoor Ptolemy, who preferred
to adopt Hipparchos' positions for stars rather than check them himself.
Brad Schaefer [since (thus?)
world-promoted
as a judicious historical Expert and Discoverer
by the American Astronomical Society and its Historical Astronomy Division]
simply repeated the Hoskin-Gingerich JHA fantasy without bothering
to check the actual Rawlins-Hoskin pre-cutoff correspondence,
which appears in detail at
DIO 1.2 [1991]
§§B2-B3 [pp.97-100], and reveals
[a] whose paper triggered Hoskin's rage,
[b] the actual sentence in question,
[c] who started
“abusing” whom.
Read it: it's weird stuff. If Hoskin believes
DIO's account has unfairly omitted anything, then JHA is
free to publish it. (Or ask DIO to. Which we promptly will.)
Note: DR's actual
statement (on Ptolemy & lying)
is not quite what OG-BS indicate. See honest Gingerich's slei-slyght
cheating
here, exposed in thorough (and especially) contextual detail at
DIO 9.1 [1999]
‡3 §F7 [pp.41-42] — and note §F8 re double-standards!
[DIO 1.2 [1991]
(§B2 [p.99]): the JHA-banned sentence's “main aim
was to tell the hitherto protected JHA readership that
there was a live scholarly controversy over Ptolemy's integrity.
[E.g., the famous mathematician and science-historian
B.L.van der Waerden was by this time convinced that Ptolemy had lied.]
JHA's aim was to suppress that truth long enough
to make it obsolete. Without DIO,
this neatly circular plan would certainly have succeeded.
[Note added 2014: Ptolemy's dishonesty is
no longer even controversial.
See the 21st century work even of centrists, e.g., A.Jones & D.Duke.]
Which tells us worlds about the honesty & worth of
[the history-of-astronomy] community.”]
Addenda:
Note that both Gingerich and Gingerich-Schaefer
imply that DR harrassed Lord Hoskin
with letters for months or years after this incident.
Just another kook-level fantasy
(born of rage-poisoned imagination), which the JHA of course
cannot
document any more than its other fabrications.
[Apoplectic
— ultimately demented
— Hoskin's behavior was hardly that of BS' image of
the weary-but-tolerant recipient of a long series of cuss-out letters.
The whole blowup involved merely 2 DR letters, one not even opened,
and took barely a month (effectively less than 3 weeks: 3/3-21),
MH→DR 1983/3/3, DR→MH 3/14, MH→DR 3/21, DR→MH 4/8
(returned unopened:
DIO 1.2 [1991]
n.17 [p.100]), because as soon as Hoskin was shocked by resistance to
suppression & dictatorship, He killed correspondence, 1983/3/21.
No MH-DR letters occurred in either direction after 1983/4/8.]
Questions:
[a] Is the AAS indicating by its silence that it wishes to feed
Lord Hoskin's (understandable) desire for immunity from
criticism?
[b] Does the AAS or its HAD not care whether slanderous dements,
nuts, and-or deceivers have received the AAS-HAD's highest honor?
If it doesn't (so long as a public fuss can be
prevented
from breaking out), then
the American Astronomical Society is telling us a great deal about itself.