Talk:Robert A. Baker

Reference syntax error

I repointed a reference to a review of a Thomas Szasz book by Dr. Baker. It does not appear properly in the References but I don't know how to fix it. If you know how please repair it. Nicmart (talk) 19:41, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

I fixed it for you. Thanks for finding that, it's an awesome reference for this article. Krelnik (talk) 11:02, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks much. Nicmart (talk) 14:41, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

External links modified

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Those links are fine. Nicmart (talk) 13:34, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Plagiarism controversy

Most heroes have feet of clay, and Baker was no exception. The current entry makes no mention of the fact that a lot of his later published work contains significant amounts of plagiarism, e.g.:

https://www.discord.org/lippard/Bakerreport.txt

Some of this was detected by Jody Hey, Terence Hines, William Grey, and myself, and was largely covered up or ignored by CSICOP until I finally published that on the Internet, a year after giving it to CSICOP Executive Council members. At that point, they knew they could no longer ignore it, and published a critique by Terence Hines in the Skeptical Inquirer, along with a deceptive response by Baker.

This is one of those events that critics of organized skepticism know more details about than skeptics do, which is a shame--we should know our own failings and weaknesses.

As a direct participant in these events with a potential bias (Baker did, after all, suggest he was going to sue me, though he never threatened me directly), I'm not ideally suited to write an NPOV account. But the data is out there--it's both quite clear in Baker's published work, and an allegation about part of it appears in print in Terence Hines' review of Baker's Hidden Memories book in the July/August 1995 issue of the Skeptical Inquirer. (Also in William Grey's letter to the editor in the Summer 1994 issue, about the first part that came to light.)

Timeline of events: https://www.discord.org/lippard/Bakerchronology.html

Lippard (talk) 13:54, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't excuse plagiarism, but it is worth noting that Dr. Baker was in declining health during this period and in almost constant pain. He wasn't the person, or the scholar, he had been. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.46.211.151 (talk) 04:22, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

It is worth noting that Baker's plagiarism stretched from at least 1987 to 1995, covering most of his productive time in organized skepticism. Fourteen years later, there's still no mention of the issue in his Wikipedia entry. Lippard (talk) 20:13, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

I have restored some content about this to the article. I see there are other references on this [1], [2] Psychologist Guy (talk) 20:53, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Just out of interest, Nicmart removed two references from the article in 2018 [3] claiming "No valid source substantiating plagiarism claims". So the Skeptical Inquirer is not a valid source? Let's not white-wash content from the article. The Skeptical Inquirer is a reliable source. Psychologist Guy (talk) 21:00, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

Some acknowledgment of this issue is better than nothing, but it's worth noting that Baker's excuse that ends the plagiarism section currently is transparently false: "Baker responded in Skeptical Inquirer. stating that he used Melvin Harris' book Investigating the Unexplained as a source, rather than the article or Hines' book, and that he gave Harris credit but forgot the quotation marks." The wording, content, and structure of Baker's quote follows Hines, not Harris, as I showed in the section "BAKER, HINES, AND HARRIS" of this update to my lengthy report on Baker's serial plagiarism, which is far more extensive than acknowledged in this Wikipedia entry: https://www.discord.org/lippard/Bakerreport.txt Lippard (talk) 04:13, 21 April 2024 (UTC)