I had a long correspondence with Deirdre McCloskey about what she and Lynn Conway did to try to ruin Michael Bailey. Most of it is on her website. The most interesting part was at the end.
She wrote:
Dear Professor Roberts:
Anyone who is chilled by being challenged intellectually, I suppose you agree, doesn't belong in intellectual life.
Anyone who is chilled by being investigated for wrongdoing when he's done wrong is just a moral coward, as I reckon Bailey to be. You don't understand The Letter if you don't think the women were mugged. You've not walked in those shoes, or bothered to find out. You haven't read Bailey's book if you think the women were not "research subjects." He called them that, and bragged about it. After the book came out he said, oh, it was "only a trade book. Not science."
I replied:
Dear Professor McCloskey,
If you believe that Bailey should be punished for helping those who came to him for help, you have a most unusual and unfortunate view of how people should treat each other.
If you can’t tell the difference between a trade book and a research monograph, we are again at a curious place in intellectual history.
McCloskey does not include my reply on her website, in spite of including her response to it. I wrote to her pointing out the omission. No answer. She answered all my other emails.
I like to think she omitted it from her website because it was too clear. When McCloskey and Conway complained to the State of Illinois that Bailey had practiced psychology without a license, they were saying that Bailey should be punished for helping those who came to him for help.
