The Skeptics Society & Skeptic magazine


The Fabulist and the Publisher:
A Journalistic and Academic Fraud Exposed

To Our Readers

Between 2016 and 2019 a writer named John Anthony Glynn, whose biography includes a Ph.D. in psychology and professorships of psychology at several universities, had four articles published in Skeptic and eSkeptic (the online edition of print Skeptic). While we edited and fact-checked his articles, we did not verify his biographical claims and we were duped. A number of red flags that emerged over the past few months led to an investigation that revealed Mr. Glynn faked his Ph.D. As the Publisher and Editor of Skeptic I should have been more alert to these red flags and I take full responsibility for the publication of these articles under the pretense of his unearned expertise. I apologize to our readers and promise that from now on we will be more vigilant in our fact-checking. A Ph.D. is not required to publish in Skeptic, but fabricating one is disqualifying. Further research revealed that Mr. Glynn represented himself as a Ph.D. psychologist to several academic institutions (academic fraud), and under those credentials he published over 40 articles in 15 different publication outlets in 2019 alone (journalistic fraud). The extent of this calculated, systematic, and repeated deception warrants publishing our findings, the details of which follow.

In 2016 Skeptic magazine published an article on “Guns and Games: The Relationship Between Violent Video Games and Gun Crimes in America” (Vol. 21, No. 1) by John Anthony Glynn, who identified himself as a Ph.D. psychologist and as a professor of psychology. After that initial publication he began emailing me regularly (120 times this past year), pitching stories on a variety of topics, including the evolutionary origins of humor, online gaming, cybercrime, masculinity, political correctness, social credits and privacy, dopamine, and suicide. In one email he clarified that he earned his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Hertfordshire in England. In another email he claimed “I am head of behavioral science at a medical school, XUSOM” (Xavier University School of Medicine in Aruba, an island off the coast of Venezuela), on the pretense of inviting me to speak there. More recently, he told me that he was applying for a professorship of psychology at the American University of Bahrain, Manama, for which he asked me to be a reference. On April 13, 2019 he told me that he got the job. On April 25, however, I received an email that should have set off my skeptical alarms more than it did, in which he asked to borrow money after, he said, Xavier Medical School “is a fraud, pure and simple; it lacks knowledgeable faculty, basic facilities” and he was never paid, but that he would pay me back upon his new professorship at the American University of Bahrain. (Note: this article (archived version) from August 2018 says Xavier Medical School received its full accreditation, and this article (archive) from June 2019 says its new campus is under construction).

I declined to lend him money, but felt a twinge of empathy for him, so I kept the communication channels open. Perhaps I should have taken a cue from an August 20, 2019 email where he inquired if I had… “Any interest in another piece discussing the proliferation of experts who actually lack expertise?” In all, we published four articles by Mr. Glynn, two in print, two online:

  • “Guns and Games: The Relationship Between Violent Video Games and Gun Crimes in America” (print Skeptic, Vol. 21, No. 1)
  • “1984 in 2019: The New Privacy Threat from China’s Social Credit Surveillance System” (print Skeptic, Vol. 24, No. 2)
  • “Concept Creep and the Policing of Words” (online only, removed)
  • “Why People Die by Suicide” (online only, removed)

When he pitched the last article we published by him on suicide, Glynn assured me “As a psychologist, I would of course handle such a piece with care.”

Two of my former graduate students, and now professors, who also conduct research for Skeptic, became curious about Mr. Glynn’s credentials. They began by simply checking to see if Glynn was a professor of psychology at the American University of Bahrain (archive). Since the university wasn’t even open (it is supposed to open this Fall), that didn’t look promising, and his prior claimed professorship as the head of behavioral science at the Xavier University School of Medicine in Aruba was, by his own admission, a bust.

After we could not locate any kind of faculty profile or curriculum vitae online with more information about his background, we next turned to Glynn’s claimed Ph.D. degree. In various biographies since at least 2013, John Anthony Glynn has claimed to hold a doctoral degree from the University of London, and a master’s and a doctoral degree from the University of Hertfordshire. We attempted to locate a thesis by him using publicly available online databases, but came up empty-handed. A staff member from EThOS, the United Kingdom’s theses service, confirmed that there is no record of a thesis by someone with his name from the United Kingdom. A representative from the University of London (Goldsmith) confirmed that no one by that name received a degree from them. A representative from the University of Hertfordshire confirmed that they also could not find any records of someone with his name. I asked Mr. Glynn about these claims. He replied (August 24, 2019):

I never ever said that I attended the University of London. I did say that Hertfordshire is located near the city of London. Maybe this got lost in translation. Regarding proof that I attended the University of Hertfordshire, please find the scan of my PhD and transcript attached.

Here are the documents Glynn sent me:

I shared these documents with my associates and within an hour they sent a URL to a site (archive) that can produce that exact same diploma within minutes (for a price, of course, and apparently for any university of one’s choosing).

As a result, we then contacted multiple representatives at the University of Hertfordshire again, this time sharing the documents Mr. Glynn had provided. A representative from the Exams & Awards Office confirmed that these were fabricated documents:

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for your email.

This document is not a genuine degree certificate from the University of Hertfordshire and has not been issued by the University. The University of Hertfordshire has robust systems in place to register students and document their progress and study outcomes. Fraudulent certificates can easily be identified by the University and confirmed as such from our secure systems and processes.

Kind regards

Exams & Awards Office
University of Hertfordshire
College Lane
Hatfield
Herts, AL10 9AB
Tel: 0044 (0)1707 281111

For more information go to the Exams & Awards Studynet page

I sent this letter to Glynn and asked “What is going on here?” He replied: “I am sorry, Michael. I never meant any harm. However, I’m no fraud.” I asked for further clarification: “Did you or did you not attend the University of Hertfordshire? Did you fake that diploma? Please give me the full story now of what is really happening.” Glynn then confessed:

Michael, I deceived you. But please know that I never plagiarized any essay. Also, although I have taught at university, I have never, ever practiced as a psychologist. Never! And I never will. I worked in Korea, but at a language school, not university.

This was followed by a plea to keep the matter private.

Someone who would lie to this extent could be lying about not plagiarizing his work, so we ran the four Skeptic articles through the Turnitin plagiarism program. The results were negative; that is, he does not appear to have plagiarized the articles we published. We did not check the articles published elsewhere. For many (although not all) of these 26 publications Mr. Glynn either directly or indirectly claimed to hold a doctorate degree:

  • American Greatness
  • The American Spectator
  • Areo
  • Arts and Social Sciences Journal
  • The Federalist
  • FrontPage Mag
  • Huffington Post
  • Humor Times
  • I am Hip-hop Magazine
  • Journal of Nutritional Health & Food Engineering
  • Journal of Nutrition & Food Sciences
  • Last Word on Sports
  • Media Watch
  • MOOT (moot.ie)
  • OZY
  • Psych Central
  • Psychology Tomorrow
  • Quillette
  • South China Morning Post
  • Spiked-Online
  • Standpoint Magazine
  • WhatCulture.com
  • The Young Folks
  • American Thinker
  • Spectator UK
  • Spectator Australia

The most egregious of the trove was an article Mr. Glynn wrote for Standpoint (June 26, 2019) titled “Overrated: PhDs” (archive), in which, with (in hindsight) ironic mockery, he proclaims:

Is it worth pursuing a PhD? Sometimes, yes. If you wish to carve out a meaningful career in academia, a PhD is a must. However, if academia is not for you, think very carefully before signing up. After years of toil working towards a PhD in clinical psychology, I have been lucky enough to find a secure lecturing job.

Here is a sampling of articles from some of the publications, which will likely be taken down soon after this exposé is published. The number of feature-length articles he produced in such a short period of time is, frankly, unbelievable.

In conclusion, Mr. Glynn has repeatedly lied about having graduate degrees and it would be inaccurate to refer to him as a psychologist. Additionally, it appears to be the case that Mr. Glynn has used these fabricated documents to acquire academic positions outside of the United States. It would have been easy to quietly redact Mr. Glynn’s articles from Skeptic and leave it at that, given that he is not as prominent a writer as Stephen Glass or Jason Blair, who duped The New Republic and The New York Times (respectively) with fabricated stories. And although Glynn’s fraud is of a different nature than that of Glass and Blair, the extent of the journalistic deception and the seriousness of the credentialing swindle (especially the forged diploma and fraudulently-acquired faculty positions, which are truly horrendous), I ultimately decided it would be judicious to publish the results of our investigation at this point so other publications and academic institutions can be on the alert. Although Skeptic publishes many non-academic authors without graduate degrees, writing under the credentialing status of a Ph.D. is grossly unfair to all the people who labored to obtain their credentials legitimately, so this fraud is far from victimless. In addition to its threat to pollute the credence of Skeptic — and intellectual discourse more broadly — such acts undercut the integrity of journalism and academia in general because falsus in uno, falsus in omnibusfalse in one thing, false in everything. END

About the Author

Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the host of the Science Salon Podcast, and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University where he teaches Skepticism 101. For 18 years he was a monthly columnist for Scientific American. He is the author of New York Times bestsellers Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain, Why Darwin Matters, The Science of Good and Evil, and The Moral Arc. His new book is Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality & Utopia. Follow @michaelshermer.

This article was published on September 5, 2019.

 

53 responses to “The Fabulist and the Publisher:
A Journalistic and Academic Fraud Exposed

  1. Skeptic says:

    >>>> I love you, Shermer, but as of this red-faced admission, I’ve got one eye open (though the other eye’s still a devout reader).

    Shermer would probably say you should do that anyway. Shermer and “Skeptic” magazine are not and never claimed to be gurus who know the absolute truth. They merely claim to do the best they can to find it.

  2. Skeptic says:

    What he unintentionally showed is how worthless most “expert” opinion by “doctors” of this and that “soft” science are, being no more worthwhile than views you hear at the local bar, or of a journalist who merely pretends to have such a PhD.

  3. I would hope that Skeptic does not get duped again. This nnterprise is one of the trusted ‘science police’ sites, and if this site is subject to being duped, then what’s left but to relegate Skeptic to the ranks of the Glass articles, where we we’re egged on by the drift of emotion rather than a search for fact. I love you, Shermer, but as of this red-faced admission, I’ve got one eye open (though the other eye’s still a devout reader).

  4. Curtis H Kelly says:

    Wow. Interesting. And what a wonderful article you wrote about discovering the fraud. It will help all of us.

    But let me take a different tack here. While academic and science fraud is not excusable, the fact that you published much of his work, and we read it without complaint adds some credibility to his writing anyway. Could he be an autodidact?

    It reminds me of the infamous learning pyramid. It is completely fictitious in origin but has been published and republished in hundreds of scientific papers. That in itself, gives a credence to it. That people like it so much shows there must be some truth to the notion, just not the scientific proof we tend to prefer.

  5. tim hammett says:

    Dear Mr. Glynn,

    What on earth made you think it was a good idea to try to pull a fast one on a publication called the Skeptic?

  6. Ronald says:

    This is another test.

  7. Ronald says:

    This is a test

  8. Geoff Turner says:

    @Frank Stagg, post #10. What makes you skeptical about a perfectly legitimate university…the University of Bahrain? Even the mentioned American University of Bahrain is a legitimate university as both are regulated by the Higher Education Council of the Government of Bahrain. Please do not denigrate legitimate institutions, and thus cast doubt on the credentials of hard working academics, with your ill-informed comments.

    For the sake of transparency I am the Professor of Accounting and Finance at the American University of Bahrain.

  9. Robert Sheaffer says:

    Was Michael Shermer the first person to notice, and report on, Glynn’s impostures? If so, that is a feather in his cap, considering all of the other publications he has defrauded. Including The Skeptical Inquirer.

  10. Gary Henderson says:

    One has to wonder how many other pseudonyms he has been writing under. This may be only the tip of the iceberg.

  11. Cathy Goldberg says:

    Everyone makes mistakes, but not everyone owns up like you did – with ferocity! I can think of a few political leaders in dire need of the same ethics and honesty.

  12. Tom McIver says:

    Michael, I too applaud your decision to go public with this. It is difficult, and courageous, for a “skeptic” to admit to being deceived by phony credentials, and to publicize rather than try to hide that fact. But many “skeptics” have been similarly deceived by frauds and charlatans, as we both know. Al Seckel, of course, who was once very prominent in the skeptic movement, comes to mind: for decades he claimed to be a Cornell graduate and Caltech PhD and “Research Fellow.” When I tried to expose his fraud and alert fellow skeptics, many of the leading skeptics of the time refused to believe me or my evidence of his phony credentials. He tried to insinuate himself into Skeptic Society when you and Pat were just getting it started, I believe, but you refused him entry, to your credit. Coincidentally, he is now in the news because of his close relations with Jeffrey Epstein (he apparently conned Epstein, after marrying Ghislaine’s sister).

  13. Robert Christ says:

    I know someone who claims they got a phd in Business taking online courses. Now they call themselves a professor. Anybody who flaunts credentials they don’t have isn’t just stealing from the people who took the time and effort to get them. They are stealing from everyone.

  14. Mary Goetsch says:

    Craziness that someone fakes a PhD for “only” writing, which is a talent needing practice and affirmation, but not necessarily a higher degree. There is the polar opposite which also frustrates readers- the author using an assumed name; also, cases of overdoing fictionalizing of the plot in order to avoid all those imagined lawsuits (probably case of guilty conscience).

  15. Beth Ayers says:

    I wonder how many others he has asked for a “loan” – to me, this places him farther on the evil side of the line than his academic fraud. Seems to me that he needs to be investigated for the financial angle of his dishonesty as well as the academic side.
    And kudos to Skeptic for publishing the details of the academic fraud: I hope the other journals involved are equally forthright, cutting off Glynn’s opportunities to keep perpetuating his scam.

  16. Henry Kalir says:

    Dr Shermer is to be commended for his candor.
    As others have already stated – one’s skepticism should be extended to just about everything.
    A sad reflection on the state of things today, where you can only place “blind trust” at your own risk.

  17. Summer says:

    Why didn’t you use the baloney detector kit in him/her?

  18. Skeptic42 says:

    Can’t you just use a sharpie to fix this?

    The problem isn’t mistakes being made, but in how you deal with, fix, and learn from them. Candor is always appreciated.

    @Dr. Strangelove, it isn’t a matter of the weight of the PhD, or even its presence. He lied about his credentials. What else did he lie about? Lacking the credentials, does he even have the expertise to properly address the topics? Also, look at it this way, if the used car salesman hadn’t lied, would you have bought the car?

  19. ANDREW BOSWELL says:

    Wow. Glad he was exposed.

  20. armando simon says:

    More power to Shermer.

  21. Conrad says:

    @Filippo, of course anyone *can* write about hip-hop, but in the academic world, one tends to only publish papers in your specialty. I have a friend who is a uni psychology professor and he mostly publishes not only just psychology-oriented papers, but ones specific to his specialty (memory). There’s little time to do much else, and your professional reputation rests on it – “publish or perish,” as they say.

  22. Dr. Strangelove says:

    Dr. Shermer,

    Had Mr. Glynn not lied from the start, would you publish his articles? If yes, then why remove them? Just put a note at the beginning of the articles that the author fabricated his academic credentials but the article passed editorial review.

    If you want to punish Mr. Glynn, wouldn’t the shame be enough? Or you could sue him for fraud. Had Hitler published the theory of relativity, we would still teach it in universities but history would still judge him as a mass murderer.

  23. Alex says:

    I think we’re all omitting an even more serious concern here… Glynn didn’t just lie to journalistic outlets to make himself look more qualified–he used those “credentials” to fraudulently obtain academic positions where he was teaching students about topics he has no qualifications to teach!! Sharing your “opinion” is one thing, evaluating students’ command of a topic you also know nothing about, is another. He’s a con artist.

    To sittingbytheriver: it is true that you can have excellent views on a topic without a credential, but it is a whole different thing to write about that topic as if you are professionally experienced with it. Please feel free to share, but don’t do so while claiming some special expertise. When talking about serious topics like “suicide,” what Glynn did (i.e., claim to be a clinical psychologist) is very dangerous, irresponsible, and dare I say, immoral.

    I am proud of Skeptic for retracting his work! Shame on the outlets that don’t, they’re facilitating academic and intellectual fraud.

  24. Ken Farnsworth says:

    to sittingbytheriver:
    I agree that credentials in and of themselves aren’t that important. But, to claim them fraudulently implies a level of dishonesty that casts a cloud over everything else they do subsequently.
    Simply be honest about your credentials, or lack of them, and everything will be fine.

  25. Filippo says:

    Re: post no. 7 by Conrad: just congenially curious, who do you say is qualified to write about hip-hop, and on what basis?

  26. Jet Wimp says:

    A difficult and humiliating experience. But rest assured that scholarly fraud predates your experience by at least 2000 years, cf. the excellent book by the noted biblical scholar Bart Ehrman: Forged: Writing in the Name of God— Why the Bible’s Authors are Not Who We Think They Are.”
    I taught for many years at a large well-known University in Philadelphia.
    Our department received an application that excited us: a well-known computer scientist from Australia applied, submitting a stupendous resume. His letters of recommendation were exceptional, all from well known academics.
    It turns out the the applicant had simply adopted the persona of the Australian. Of course, his letters of recommendation were glowing. Unfortunately, he overplayed his hand– some slip up whose details I can’t recall– and an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer exposed the fraud. Good for us. We undoubtedly would have hired him.
    I’ve observed that the clever promoters of scams use a time-tested device to lure us in. In their approach they convince us that our discovery of them and their mission is an extraordinary event. There is always authentic cheese in the trap.
    About credentials, I am ambivalent. I have them, but don’t mention them online. All my mail is addressed to “Mr.” I want my arguments to be accepted at face value.
    I will this one time, though. Check me out if you wish.
    Jet Foncannon,(nee Jet Wimp)
    PhD, University of Edinburgh; DSc, University of Edinburgh.

  27. Greg Stenstrom says:

    Appears he was qualified to author “Perks of being a Psychopath,” and little else. It’s easy to be a “prolific” writer if you only have to pull thoughts and citations out of air, and easier still to be a populist by echoing the credos of whatever silo a target audience lives in. The true irony is the skeptic, wasn’t, making the well documented mea culpa, apropos, and appreciated.

  28. Dr Michael W Ecker says:

    Many thoughts swirl here… First, what is or was Mr. Glynn’s motivation? I mean, surely not all these magazines pay money? Does Skeptic? I had the impression that it could not or at least did not.

    Second, I would argue that Glynn’s output is most impressive. As others have pointed out, were it not for the fraudulent academic claim, one could admire the breadth of writing as well as the quantity. As one who sometimes fancies himself a bit of a polymath, I see no reason to think that working outside one’s main area in some way is disqualifying, suspicious, or even unbelievable. There are many multi-talented authors out there!

    Third, notwithstanding what I just wrote, as I scanned the publication titles, I could not help but be struck by how many had titles suggestive of right-wing propaganda screeds. This seems to fly in the face of my implied praise.

    Fourth, and unrelated… Michael (Dr. Shermer) – What happened to your writing gig at Sci Am? I always feel bad when a fellow writer suddenly finds a hole in his former income stream (particularly after it happened to me in the 1980s).

    (Dr. Michael W. Ecker, Ph,D., remains an active mathematician, computer collector, and computerist. He retired from his position as Associate Professor of Mathematics at Penn State U’s Wilkes-Barre Campus July 2016 after a 45-year teaching career, and from his editorship of the 21-year-running Recreational & Educational Computing.)

  29. Mark Wusinich says:

    American Thinker has resolved this by simply removing all references to his PhD.

    SAD.

  30. Jim Hammond says:

    I’ve answered my own question. According to the bio in Skeptic, Vol 24, No. 2 2019, these are the same people and are listed with the same name. The first issue I found was the one I refer to in my previous comment.

  31. Jim Hammond says:

    Maybe I missed it in your discussion of this but is the “John Glynn”, author of the article “Online Gaming-A Virtual Experiment in the Dark Side of Human Nature” in Skeptic, Vol 24, No.1, 2019 not the same person as John Anthony Glynn”? In your author bios “John Glynn” is listed as “a clinical psychologist from Cong, County Mayo, a small village situated in the west of Ireland”.

  32. sittingbytheriver says:

    The last two articles that were published in eSkeptic I found interesting enough to forward to others. I agree with Melnyk. What matters is the quality of the writing, not the credentials of the author.

  33. LindaRosa says:

    It looks like Mr. Gynn took in the “Skeptical Inquirer,” as well. Did this magazine alert its readers, I wonder.

    https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mP9JvByUESYJ:https://centerforinquiry.org/blog/authors/dr-john-anthony-glynn/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

  34. Phillip Carter says:

    I commend your effort to expose this fraudster. It was a difficult article to produce but I applaud your integrity and that of Skeptic to highlight the issue. Well done.

  35. LindaRosa says:

    I meant to add that this is a cautionary tale for us all. Thank you.

  36. LindaRosa says:

    Fascinating!

  37. Brian Swinehart says:

    In recent months I have reconsidered my subscription to the Skeptics Society after having read issues and articles that appeared to lean right-wing at a time when we can all be very skeptical about right-wing political content. I decided to not renew the subscription. After reading Michael Shermer’s correction and admission of error, I am reconsidering my reconsideration.

  38. Bad Boy Scientist says:

    First, kudos to the Skeptic’s Editors for their intellectual integrity & bravery! This sets apart this magazine from the rest.

    Second, let’s hold back on criticizing the editorial staff of the Skeptic for not fully vetting this particular author. The staff, being human, is subject to all sorts of human shortcomings. After publishing the first article they probably didn’t feel the need to spend the time & energy to re-vet… and who knows why they didn’t fully vet him on the first article? Maybe they lacked time or were short-staffed? Have some compassion along with your skepticism. If the skeptic discovers their error, let us all applaud him/her.

    However, when our fellow skeptics continue to make mistakes, we can point them out. [e.g. Most arguments against the existence of god seem to be mere products of the assumptions. Plus, rational arguments against god are as misguided as praying in a scientific conference for the community to accept your work.]

  39. Robin Collins says:

    I find a few of the comments reiterating the errors of Skeptic magazine for not catching the fraud to be a wee bit disingenuous, given Shermer’s article is effectively a mea culpa, and he promises to do better in the future. What more can be asked for, unless of course the goal is simply to damage Skeptic’s credibility further. For what purpose, one wonders?

  40. LP says:

    Absolutely fascinating. Any more details of who he actually is would be interesting.

  41. Bravo says:

    I am prouder today of being a reader of this magazine and member because integrity is doing the right thing when no one is watching. Thank you !

    As I read this article, I had just seen a video of a President not knowing how a sharpie was taken to an altered weather forecast. The contrast reminds me of the value this magazine nurtures. If science is the flame, then it needs a great handle. Thank you for asking the questions, and creating the conditions to discover what it takes to be a great handle.

  42. mike mackay says:

    I had assumed you checked out everyone’s credentials before you published them. My bad.

  43. Tpaine says:

    “One of the great commandments of science is, ‘Mistrust arguments from authority.’ … Too many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong.

  44. Frank Stagg says:

    Kind of embarrassing for the “SKEPTIC” to publish FOUR articles by a fraud, isn’t it? I guess you should be a little more skeptical and do some background checking in the future. I don’t even think this was a hard one to figure out, obviously the University of Bahrain? Xavier University of Aruba? True skeptics would have smelled a rat immediately.

  45. Conrad says:

    Mr Melnyk, as Shermer pointed out, they frequently publish articles by non-academics. You are quite correct, it doesn’t matter if the writer has so-called credentials or not, as long as the article checks out. But if Skeptic publishes an article by someone with fake credentials, they are essentially publishing false information.

  46. Millard J. Melnyk says:

    Credentials are so beside the point of anything that matters. If the merit is there in the ideas and their expression, what do credentials matter? And if the merit is not there, again, what do they matter?

    And if we can’t discern merit or its lack in ideas and their expression, but weigh credentials in to compensate, we’re just pseudo-skeptics.

  47. Conrad says:

    Well done, skeptic. Just looking at the list of all the articles he published would have been enough of a red flag. A psychologist writing about nutrition? And hip-hop?! Articles praising psychopaths. Anyone asking “Is Martin Luther King jr. a monster” is pretty much a giant walking red flag right there. So it’s CNN that has a “credibility crisis”? haha. I’m not familiar with most of those publications, but if they are in fact political, they won’t care ( or even believe what you’re saying) about credentials. Believers make up excuses for everything.

  48. Teresa Erhart says:

    Thank you for exposing yet another liar. This article should be shared with students of all ages around the world. As teachers and professors are always attempting to combat plagiarism and fraud, this is the best example of a human defrauding humans. Lesson to be learned: What goes around, comes around!

  49. Jack Meyers says:

    It takes guts to admit you got scammed, although when I read his supposed resume, it looked laughably dubious. Perhaps the better saying to end this piece would be ” Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me” Thank you for the retraction.

  50. Gene Pinder says:

    Applaud your candor and transparency, Dr. Shermer. Keep up the great work.

  51. js says:

    Notice the anti-PC, right-wing screed in all the titles of the articles. And of course, Quilette is on the list of sites where he pedaled his crap.

    Everybody wants to get in on the angry frogmen money and be the latest best-selling writer in the intellectual douche web. Pity the rest of them aren’t such obvious frauds….

  52. Judy Kaufman says:

    Thank you for the article exposing him. He is a prolific writer who might not have needed to lie about his credentials to get published. But it is hard to have credibility when your identity is a fraud.

  53. Martin McHugh says:

    Bravo. A tough but necessary article to write. I applaud you for your frankness.

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