Just for the record Frank Furedi.
To avoid any more ironic "Staes of Denial", I originally bust the Moral panic Myth in 2013, when I proved that despite 45 years of claims made by British criminologists that they invented both the phrase and the concept of moral panic in the late 1960s and early 1970s, new research of the literature reveals that both have in fact been in use throughout the last 183 years in the USA and Europe
This blog post is a story abut exactly how dysological academic myths start.
As if it was not enough that a bone-headed Wikipedia editor named "Orange Mike" gleefully deleted the link the reference on the Moral Panic page of that encyclopedia - which a kind soul posted in 2013 to my original and prior published busting of the myth that Stanley Cohen coined the term and concept of the moral panic on 10th April 2013 - now a brother criminologist, Frank Furedi, has written an article that implies very strongly, in my opinion, that it is he who has priority for my published discovery! Check out his article and my comment on the Times Higher Magazine .
For those interested in winning the war of veracity over claptrap here is the original article that busts the Moral Panic Myth, which I wrote. It was published on January 15th 2013 at 6.57 US time: HERE on Best Thinking. At the time of writing (18th December 2015), that article has been visited by 4,896 distinct viewers.
Of course, this sort of thing bothers me. That is why I wroteNullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret , which is also published with ThinkerBooks.
My book reveals that many Darwinists are in what the late Stanley Cohen describes as a great state of denial over their namesake's proven science fraud plagiarism by glory-theft of Matthew's prior publication of the entire hypothesis of natural selection.
Now the big question is: was Furedi's a genuine 'independent multiple discovery': or was the brain of Frank Furedi knowledge contaminated by my prior publication of the discovery he replicated?
Read-up on my escalating dynamic typology of Knowledge Contamination: Here
This is a social science question in need of an answer.
As well as being most weirdly ironic, the Furedi multiple is a very valuable case study, simply because it goes to the root of our need to appreciate and build on Robert K Merton's superb work on priority and independent multiple discovery in all the sciences - including social science. Professor Furedi claims to have been unaware of my earlier publication on the origination of the term and concept of "moral panic" whilst conducting a Google search that revealed the same as my earlier published finding. What I find mysterious, therefore, is that he never found my earlier myth bust using the same search technology - since it is the top three hits on the Google search term "Moral Panic Myth" - which any scholar writing on the topic of priority should surely have searched on to ensure THEY were not glory-stealing the original cognate labours of anther.How ironic!
Currently, I am in the middle of writing a sociology journal article on the topic of priority and multiples. Consequently, this blog post essentially does two things. (1) It stamps my desire to ensure my glory is not stolen and (2) it is a request for Frank to help me out with my research into this area in the comments section below.
After I tweeted him today on this topic Frank promptly and very kindly responded that he would acknowledge my priority (here ) and claimed to have been unaware of my prior published work in the field (here ) - (which is odd because we follow one another on Twitter. And I Twitter on and trumpet from the rooftops rather a lot about it) . On the question of the concept of 'knowledge contamination' - he responded that I should "grow up" (here ). I think he thought better of it and deleted that one tweet just as I retweeted it back into life. Such are the dangers of social media where "delete never means delete". I've requested he retract that published statement. I have also written to the Editor of the Times Higher Magazine - informing him of my prior publications in the area of Furedi's article and asking if I might also be allowed just 1,000 words in that esteemed publication to share my ORIGINAL BigData findings with its readership.
Personally, I think the topic of claimed independent multiple discoveries - and implied discovery by academic failure to seek out and cite the cognate labours of others - is a most grown up and particularly serious topic in academia. I am very interested in studying the complex problem of claimed cryptomnesia in research replication of prior published work.
My hero on this topic is Rober K. Merton, who is widely considered a sociological genius, He spent an academic lifetime on research and publication focused on this very issue. That's good enough for me. Mind you, there is myth about Merton that I hope nobody overtly or implies they originally discovered independently of my prior discovery and publication on it.
Anyway, I replied to Frank via twitter that perhaps he might care to help out with my research into such claimed multiple independent discoveries of prior published work via the comments section below. I have also made Frank aware of my research on this very topic and asked for his assistance with his own case of claimed independent multiple discovery of a prior published finding (here ).
On which note, I'd like to begin by asking Frank very directly:
(Q. 1) "Since, in the Times Higher Education Magazine article you say you used the very same BigData Google method that I used to debunk the moral panic myth, how is it you missed my prior publication of the busting of the myth?
