@pnelson thank you for your comments here, and participation. This has been a bruising thread from some, and I appreciate you helping to tie off some loose ends.
Ann Did Not Lie
I want to reiterate some things here, and then I am putting a timer to close this thread. We can reopen it if and when you or @Agauger wants to try again.
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First of all, I want to agree that @Agauger suffered a great deal from the fallout of that whole meeting. I entirely believe you both.
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Looking closely at both Brook’s article, the wikipedia article, and Ann’s article, none of those three artifacts appear to accuse her of lying, which is a good thing.
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The account of the presentation by Brooks, also, seems to be evidence of her honesty. The only reason there is any evidence to attack her is because she was honest about her data. Perhaps she misinterpreted it, but even in that case it appears to be an honest error.
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Clearly some people (both on the internet and in person) have accused Ann of lying here, but it appears that they are in the wrong. I can see entirely why this would shake @Agauger so much too. I have real disagreements with her, but I have seen her to be honest. Where she is wrong (in my view), I think she is honestly wrong.
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Adding insult to injury the stock photo controversy is just hurtful ad hominem. That is irrelevant libel, because she does actually do experiments for goodness sakes. Truth is not served by this at all, and it is hurtful. Substantive critiques is where things should have remained.
The next time she is accused of lying here, I hope you point people to this thread. Ann has been unfairly targeted for being dishonest when she was not. I’m genuinely sad that this has happened to her. I hope this thread can help set the record straight.
What Was Going on with Dan Brooks?
I’ve been thinking about this, and might be able to make some sense of this, in a way that is consistent with your account that…
I’m going to make some reasonable state of mind observations, that could have been what happened with him.
It appears that Brooks did not realize till he got the conference that this was not a Gordon Conference. This does not mean that you misrepresented the conference, but it appears there was a miscommunication somehow at some point. Given that background misunderstanding, he might have not mentally registered the agreement not to share off-the-record, because that is just a background fact of Gordon Conferences. When he realized it was not a Gordon Conference, it seems the expectation of pre-agreement to off-the-record was swept away by him, because he probably had not registered the pre-agreement. Then, when he got the post-conference reminder to be off-the-record, he might have thought this was an attempt at damage control. For that reason, he might have felt the need to break confidentiality (thinking he had never agreed to it in the first place). Along those lines, he might have been told that it was off the record, and never agreed to it.
Alternatively, he might have not understood Wistar II was an ID event, and had he known, he would not have agreed to the off-the-record agreement. Honestly, I’m not entirely sure how that could be justified in this case. Gordon Conferences have a long tradition of this, for a specific reason. This was 2006, right? Immediately after the Dover Trial? I don’t understand what the justification could be for keep that off the record. I’m not saying it is right that he would break the agreement, but it does raise question about why the rules were this way.
Why was this whole conference off-the-record in the first place? This is not unheard of in science, but it is highly unusual. What was the reasoning you had for that? I’m not judging here. I’m honestly unclear why this would even be attempted in the wake of the Dover Trial and Kansas Hearings in 2005. Whether it is right or wrong, what was the reasoning?