How to Correct Authors With Bad Ideas
Nov. 19, 2012
Because I have over 100,000 people on my Tea Party Economist mailing list, and because I have my own website, Gary North.com, and because I publish several times a week on Lew Rockwell.com, a lot of people see what I write. Because of the large numbers of people who read what I write, some small percentage of them will take offense at this or that article. Among these people, a small percentage will in turn feel compelled to give me a piece of their mind, even though they cannot spare it. So, day after day, from morning to night, I get e-mails from people telling me that I don't know what I am talking about.
These are strangers. They have never contacted me before. They are convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that for some reason I should care what they think. They are so convinced of this that they take the time to tell me just how wrong I am. Occasionally, some of them write five or six paragraphs explaining it. I always stop reading those letters as soon as I realize there is more than one paragraph. My time is valuable, and obviously they think it is worthless. They, on the other hand, have too much free time on their hands.
I have written about these people in the past.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north49.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north866.html
I don't know what motivates someone to write a stranger to tell him that he does not know what he is talking about. I do know this: the people who tell me this never have a signature file at the bottom of their e-mails. A signature file is an identification, and it is used to promote visitors to a website. It is automatically inserted at the end of every e-mail that a person sends out. I have had a sig file in my e-mails for over 10 years. It always refers people to my Gary North.com website.
Anyone who does not have a signature file in his emails is missing a trick. He is probably not a professional writer. He probably has no website. He probably has no audience. He surely has no understanding of the basics of marketing. I respect people who understand marketing.
But he has strong opinions about my beliefs, and he is ready to share those opinions with me. I am the target of his opinions.
Do you really want to persuade an author to change his views? Follow these guidelines.
First, he probably knows more about the subject than you do, because he went into print. Have you? Why not?
Second, if you happen to know more than he does on this narrow topic, you had better have your position posted online somewhere. If you do not have sufficient courage to put your strong opinions online, where anybody can see them, then your opinions do not count for much.
Third, the classic sign of somebody who does not know what he is talking about is the fact that he will write a letter to a stranger who has published in the field to correct him.
Fourth, if the critic has enough information to be of use to the recipient, meaning that the information will help the recipient fix a public error, the information had better be posted in a public location and arranged coherently. It should also have either footnotes or direct links to supporting material. This means that an individual who is going to send a correcting e-mail to somebody needs to have a page on his website that goes into the details of why a particular idea or statement is incorrect. This means that the individual has to have his own website. This means that the individual has been paying attention to this issue for a long time, and therefore has been willing to go into print regarding it.
Fifth, a person who (1) does not have his own website and (2) has never published something in this area is not worth the time for the recipient to read the correction that is contained in e-mail. I don't mean that the person is incorrect if he has found typographical error, or a grammatical error, or some technical error. Authors should be wise enough to appreciate this kind of correction. They can get their material revised, so that they don't look foolish. I'm speaking here of fundamental errors, or alleged fundamental errors.
Sixth, any critic who is not willing to take the time to post a detailed analysis of the alleged error on his own website should save his time in sending a critical letter to a stranger who has gone into print on a particular topic. The stranger is going to regard the person who sent the e-mail as a crackpot, or at best a lazy, ill-informed person whose opinions are not worth considering, and whose effrontery and arrogance in trying to correct a specialist indicates that he is a dolt.
In short, if you send an email of correction, include a link your your posted refutation. If you have not posted such an article, don't send the email . . . unless you want to look like a dolt.
You don't want to look like a dolt.
Basically, it's not worth your time. Instead of correcting the author, persuade others of his error.
If nobody else cares, you have a problem. Sending an email to the author will not solve it.