I just re-read the analysis this evening. It is very very troubling. Also, I have a sneaking suspicion who wrote it. Have there been any reliable suggestions about the author?
The anonymous (2014-2015) Goffman critique
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I started reading it and forgotten about Alex: how she said to him he wouldn’t be in her fieldnotes bc he asked not to be, but has extensive quotes from him and she says she only uses direct quotes when she wrote it down and her descriptions indicate ethnographic data. 5 1/2 years later he asks why he’s not in the book and then she incorporates him. But how are all these descriptions and direct quotes from Alex in the book?
It amazes me how people brush off serious issues. She’s lying - either about direct quotes as written contemporariously or about not take notes on Alex.
Yet Goffman’s stranger defenders don’t address these very real issues and focus on allegations of “jungle book trope” (Rios) which imo divert attention from real issues of research misconduct to issues of identity and ideology
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I'm not pro or anti AG, but I am an ethnographer who cares a great deal about accuracy. I totally agree with what 7e4e says above and had the same reaction when I started rereading the critique. I had completely forgotten about Alex and that's just the tip of the iceberg. It is very troubling to me that these very legitimate questions about the methodology have never been answered.
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"GSDs are the ones who go ad hominem when any criticism of AG arises, and who insist that the burden of proof is on the accusers."
Issue isn't their insistence that her detractors shoulder the burden of proof--it's their refusal to acknowledge that it's already been met.
They actually remind me of "fake news" Trumpists.
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Goffman prepared a response to the anonymous critique. My understanding is that she never made it public. Why? Probably to avoid giving the critique more oxygen.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/magazine/the-trials-of-alice-goffman.html
Gonna guess Goffman would have released it if the author had published it, or even put their name on it. I don't think it's likely that it will ever happen, now that she's supposedly got denied tenure at Wisconsin, her research output has evaporated. Why would she release it now? Why would the author of the anonymous letter go public now? We'll never see it.FWIW, the people who have actually tried to fact-check her--like Jesse Singal--have actually found it checks out. Singal is kind of a tool in that article (and everywhere), but there's not any real evidence she made stuff up.