Lise Fontaine Personally Attacking Her Paper's Reviewer

Lise Fontaine wrote to Sysfling on 23 august at 01:11:

Dear fellow Sysfling members

Perhaps I should be flattered that 'The Blogger' has set up an entire blog for the sole purpose of discrediting me and the ideas I put forward in a paper from 2017. However, I don't appreciate it at all. I certainly have no objection to people disagreeing with those ideas, or to showing where I was wrong, misinformed or otherwise rubbish. However, this personal attack not only makes me feel very bad, I feel it is very bad for our community for a single person (presumably?) to anonymously attack someone without any recourse for dialogue.

I am pretty sure I know who has done this. This sort of thing has happened before. I can't imagine what I've done to deserve these repeated misrepresentations and personal attacks but I hope this person realises that this kind of thing has career destroying potential especially at a time when evaluations of work can be done by searching online. Luckily I'm at the end of my career so I don't care too much but if anyone who is an early career academic gets this treatment by 'The Blogger', it could ruin their chances of getting promotion, getting invited on projects etc.

If anyone is close to 'The Blogger' please encourage this person to think carefully about the damage they are doing to academic discussion in our community, not to mention to individuals.

Here is the website in question: https://lexisasmostlocalcontext.blogspot.com/

with best wishes

Lise

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading because it is untrue. The blog is a meticulous review of Fontaine (2017) which uses theory and reasoned argument as evidence to clarify and critique the ideas put forth in the paper. Any intelligent scholar can deepen their knowledge of SFL Theory by taking the trouble to read the review closely. If anything discredits Fontaine, it is the quality of her paper and her misrepresentation of the review as a personal attack.

personal attack (plural personal attacks)

1. An abusive remark on or relating to somebody's person instead of providing evidence when examining another person's claims or comments.

[2] This is misleading, because it falsely claims that the blog does not show "where I was wrong, misinformed or otherwise rubbish", and falsely claims that Fontaine has no objection to this being shown.

[3] This is misleading, because it dismisses all the carefully reasoned argumentation in the review as a personal attack. More importantly, Fontaine has chosen to negatively judge ("personally attack") the reviewer instead of addressing any of the argumentation in the review of her publication.

[4] This is misleading because it is untrue, since the review is not anonymous and "recourse for dialogue" is afforded for every post by the provision to make comments.

[5] This is misleading in two respects. On the one hand, it falsely claims that the reasoned arguments in the review are repeated misrepresentations and personal attacks. On the other hand, it falsely claims that Fontaine has only acted at all times with propriety, despite having previously abused her position as Sysfling manager to unsubscribe her reviewer from the list when she was made aware of the review of Fawcett (2010), by Robin Fawcett posing as 'Dmytro Poremskyi' on the NASFLA site; see here.

[6] This is misleading because it is inconsistent with Fontaine's claim that the content of the review is repeated misrepresentations and personal attacks, rather than reasoned argumentation. On the one hand, this is an unintentional acknowledgement of the validity of the argumentation, and on the other hand, it argues that institutional promotion should not be based on the academic standards demonstrated by the candidates.

[7] This is misleading, because it is the lack of reasoned argumentation that threatens the academic and intellectual standards of work by members of the SFL community.

∞

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.

— Thomas Paine

Without freedom of thought, 

there can be no such thing as wisdom,

and no such thing as public liberty 

without freedom of speech.

— Benjamin Franklin