Riposte to Spezzano

The editor has kindly allowed me to respond to Spezzano's spirited defense of Reisner (1991). Empathizing with the latter's uncomfortable position, Dr. Spezzano may well be right in imagining that he feels ambushed. Throughout, this rejoinder to my critique (Holt, 1992) is marked by a clinician's attention to the emotional and interpersonal aspects of the situation: sympathy for a young person just starting a career of scholarly writing; an indulgent tolerance for intellectual errors that are after all very common; and awareness of feelings, which I did not directly avow, of impatience, irritation, and indignation, plus my unfortunate attempt to lighten the tone of condemnation by attempts at wit which sound like pitiless ridicule. He did miss the point of my own final attempt to empathize by confessing that I had, at approximately Reisner's age, made some of the same mistakes, which of course was not intended as a bit of scholarly critique. Likewise, he completely missed my feeling about Reisner's “having dared to quote” me. Far from feeling that he was presumptuous or that only I can legitimately interpret my writings, I nevertheless believe that any author who cites another should do a better job of grasping the latter's meaning. However “creative” it may be, a misunderstanding should be labeled as such by a responsible referee.

What is lacking here is, from my vantage point, the very heart of the matter: concern for objective intellectual standards of scholarly work. To one who, like myself, feels that in the long run our discipline is ill served by tolerance for bad scholarship, however lovingly empathic, it is a regrettable necessity to label it as such.

My first encounter with the article in question was when I read it as a referee for this journal. I found it so filled with errors (several of the worst of which the author quietly corrected) that I advised that it be rejected. At the time, I believe that I did not know the embarrassing fact that the dissertatio