Chronology of Events Involving "The Baker Affair"

(or "The Lippard Affair," depending on your point of view)

• November 16-17, 1990: I met Robert Baker at a CSICOP UFO Workshop in Tucson, Arizona, where he signed my copy of They Call It Hypnosis with the inscription:

           To Jim Lippard
  
           A wonderful and
           effective Skeptic
  
              Robert A. Baker
              17 November 1990
  

  I was fortunate to have a few brief conversations with Baker regarding hypnosis and volition, which was a topic of interest to me at the time, as I was taking a philosophy of law course which had mentioned some criminal cases involving hypnotic control. I discussed with Baker the Model Penal Code's exception for "conduct during hypnosis or resulting from hypnotic suggestion" in its definition of what constitutes a "voluntary act" (MPC Section 2.01 (2)). I thought (and still think) that Baker's book was an excellent summary of various theories of hypnosis and hypnotic behavior.

  My summary of the UFO workshop was published in Skeptical Briefs new series vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 2-3.

• July/August 1991: I published a positive review of Baker's They Call It Hypnosis in The Arizona Skeptic (vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 6-7). My review was overwhelmingly positive ("Robert Baker has written an entertaining and useful book ... despite these minor flaws, this remains one of the best books on the subject of hypnosis I have read. I recommend it highly." is how the review begins and ends). My criticisms were that the book contained many typos, did not delve as deeply as it could have into the subject of hypnosis and volition, the book fails to note disagreement on the part of David Spiegel regarding whether there are differences in the EEG patterns of hypnotized and non-hypnotized individuals, and that Baker's rejection of hypnotic susceptibility scales seemed inconsistent with his approval of work by researchers such as Spanos whose work relies on such measures.
• January/February 1992: I published a response by Baker to my review of his book ("Comments on Lippard's Review of They Call It Hypnosis," The Arizona Skeptic vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 2-4). Baker's response elaborated on his view of hypnosis and volition, his disavowal of hypnotic susceptibility scales, and on EEG measurements. I was pleased with his response and offered no counterpoint.
• January 23, 1993: I submitted a critical review of Ivan Zabilka's Scientific Malpractice to the Skeptical Inquirer. It was rejected on January 25, 1993 because Robert Baker had already submitted a review of the same book on December 19. I immediately submitted it to Skeptic magazine. It was accepted on February 2 and published in the Spring 1993 issue of Skeptic (vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 86-88). The review made no mention of Baker, since it had nothing to do with him. I had no idea at the time that Baker and Zabilka were even acquainted with each other.
• June 27, 1993: I wrote a letter to the Skeptical Inquirer regarding "some inaccuracies in Robert Baker's review of Ivan Zabilka's Scientific Malpractice." This letter was published in the Winter 1994 issue, p. 220.

  In my opinion, the letter was more of a clarification than a criticism.

• September 1993: Robert Baker writes a brief review of Skeptic magazine in KASES File, the newsletter of the Kentucky Association of Science Educators and Skeptics. In it, he writes that "Personally, I am not convinced that we need a competitor to the Skeptical Inquirer, nor that Skeptic magazine is all that good." The only evidence he cites to support his negative opinion is "a negative review of Ivan Zabilka's Scientific Malpractice. Although not too negative, it, unfairly in my opinion, accused Zabilka of neglecting the scientific issues in the debate." He falsely states that "Lippard's major complaint is that Zabilka didn't write the book that Lippard would have written."

  I found this nothing short of bizarre, and wrote a letter of response on January 3, 1994, after being sent a copy. In my letter, I note that Zabilka had written to me acknowledging his mistakes and informing me that the book had been cut by about half its original length by the publisher. I wrote in my letter that "Had I known this prior to publication, I would have changed my review to recognize it." This letter appeared in the January 1994 KASES File, pp. 2,11, and was followed by another peculiar reply from Baker. This response states that "Lippard has been upset with me ever since I wrote a favorable review of Zabilka's short but very well written book Scientific Malpractice" and that "One doesn't have to be a genius to see that Lippard is, for some unknown reason, upset with Zabilka's book--otherwise, he would not be going on and on trying to put Zabilka and me in our place."

• Fall 1993: Terence Hines submitted a review of Baker's Hidden Memories to The New York Area Skeptic, after having had it rejected without explanation by the Skeptical Inquirer. (Sources: Terence Hines, personal communication; Wayne Tytell, "A Must-have Book for Every Skeptic," The New York Area Skeptic, Spring 1995, p. 11. Tytell's title refers to Hines' book, Pseudoscience and the Paranormal, not to Baker's, which he calls "the worst he had authored ... poorly written and poorly edited.") I did not learn about this sequence of events until July 1994.
• April 15, 1994: On this fateful day I read a posting to the sci.skeptic newsgroup from Rutgers University chemist Jody Hey pointing out the similarities between portions of an article by William Grey and a book review by Robert Baker, both printed in the Spring 1994 Skeptical Inquirer. My only public comment was to quote the identical portions in more detail than Jody Hey did. I sent copies of the articles to Kendrick Frazier and to William Grey in email. Frazier responded with Baker's explanation, and was perturbed that I had posted publicly. I pointed out that I had only commented on what had already been revealed by Jody Hey, and proceeded to post Baker's explanation publicly. That was my last public comment on the matter until I released my Baker report on the Internet on June 17, 1995.

  Over the next few days I began looking at other Baker book reviews to see if there was anything else like this. There was, and as I found instances I sent them to Kendrick Frazier. I received no response, and so also sent copies to other CSICOP Executive Council members whose email addresses I had.

• April 25, 1994: By this time, the continued lack of response prompted me to send paper copies of the materials I had assembled to CSICOP Executive Council members Susan Blackmore and Béla Scheiber, both of whom I assumed would at least acknowledge that there was something to be looked into. I was wrong.
• April 28, 1994: William Grey submitted a letter to the Skeptical Inquirer regarding the Baker book review in the Spring 1994 issue. This letter was published in the Summer 1994 issue, p. 445, with a reply from Kendrick Frazier explaining how the error went unnoticed even though Grey's article had appeared in the same issue.
• May 11, 1994: I received a telephone call from Tucson Skeptics Society member James McGaha, asking me what my beef is with Robert Baker. I sent him copies of some of my evidence. After receiving it, he maintained that five Ph.D.s had examined it, and none thought that there was any plagiarism involved. I asked if he could put me in contact with any of them, but he declined.
• June 14, 1994: I learned that McGaha had told another skeptic that I had been making a major issue of the Baker affair with public postings on the Internet, that Baker had cause to sue me and that he (McGaha) was encouraging this, that I had previously been unfair to Australian skeptics Ian Plimer and Barry Price (contrary to the attitude McGaha had expressed to me at the time those events took place, when I considered him to be a friend of mine), that Michael Shermer had issued a press release to the media asking them to contact the Skeptics Society instead of CSICOP, and that I had suffered a nervous breakdown which was apparently responsible for my actions. I promptly wrote a letter to McGaha rebutting each of these claims and asking him to cease and desist from his probably actionable defamatory statements. I have not exchanged a word with McGaha since, even though I invited his rebuttal and would have expected an apology from any human being with an ounce of integrity.
• June 18, 1994: Robert Baker wrote a letter to a skeptic which claimed that "CSICOP is on my side and Jim has done himself harm" and that "if he persists I well may have to resort to legal steps." He also claimed that "I have never before been accused of plagiarism," which appears to me, in light of the Hines review, to have been a lie.
• June 22, 1994: I assembled my "Scholarly Impropriety in the Work of Robert A. Baker," which I distributed to some CSICOP Executive Council members and leaders in local and regional skeptical groups at and after the Seattle CSICOP conference.

  At about the same time, I learned of a written reply by Baker which addressed only some of the instances of unattributed copying in his book reviews (but not those in his Winter 1987-88 Skeptical Inquirer article or his books). Neither Baker nor any of his supporters ever sent me a copy, though I managed to obtain one at the CSICOP conference and found it unworthy of response.

• July 2, 1994: I wrote to some CSICOP Executive Council members and leaders in local and regional skeptical groups that I considered the matter to be more or less resolved and that "This is my final word on the subject unless something else happens to bring it up again."
• July 11, 1994: I first learned that Hines had brought up the issue of unattributed copying in Baker's work in his book review of Hidden Memories a year earlier, and wrote to Hines to obtain a copy. After receiving it, I recommended to Skeptic that it publish an edited version, and suggested to Hines that he submit it for publication there.
• [Added May 4, 2024: September 30, 1994: Paul Kurtz sends me a letter on Prometheus Books letterhead, marked "CONFIDENTIAL" and "NOT FOR QUOTATION OR PUBLICATION" which states that "The editors of Robert Baker's book, Hidden Memories were unaware of the failure to use sufficient quotation marks until you brought it to their attention. We surely regret this. We have decided to withdraw the book from publication." I reply on October 17, 1994 (the letter took some time to arrive as it was sent to an old address) that "I am surprised that the editors of Hidden Memories weren't aware of the 'failure to use sufficient quotation marks until [I] brought it to their attention,' since (a) Terence Hines reported it in a book review he submitted to Skeptical Inquirer over a year ago and (b) I only brought Hines' review to the attention of Barry Beyerstein. Ken Frazier rejected Hines' review; I am unaware of whether any explanation was given for the rejection." I went on to note that I had not reviewed that book in much detail, but that I have reviewed Baker's other book, They Call It Hypnosis, and found numerous problems and "In my opinion, that book also should be withdrawn from publication until it is revised." The letter and reply are here (PDF).]
• June 17, 1995: Upon receiving my copy of the July/August 1995 Skeptical Inquirer, I was pleased to see that Hines' review had finally seen print, but was greatly disturbed by Baker's response, which contains falsehoods that the magazine's editor should have known to be falsehoods. I collected evidence to show that, contrary to Baker's denial, his work does lift from that of Terence Hines, and posted it to skeptical Usenet newsgroups, along with information about how to obtain copies of my June 22, 1994 report on other unattributed copying in Baker's works that CSICOP and Baker have refused to publicly acknowledge.

  When I called Hines to find out why the Skeptical Inquirer suddenly decided to publish his review, he said that it was accepted after he told Kendrick Frazier that Skeptic was prepared to publish it. Apparently these are the "special circumstances" mentioned in Kendrick Frazier's introductory comment on the review, which begins "We normally don't publish reviews of three-year-old books. There are, however, special circumstances in this case."

• June 1995: Baker wrote, but apparently did not widely distribute, a "Response To James Lippard Re My Unattributed Copying."
• August 1995: "Diogenes, Jr." (Marcello Truzzi) distributed the satirical "A New Case of Scientific Serendipity?", offering the Baker affair as evidence for a hitherto undiscovered paranormal phenomenon.

  UFOlogist Jerome Clark began pressing CSICOP Executive Council member Philip Klass on the Baker issue, arguing that this proves that skeptics have a double standard regarding internal criticism--they demand it of "believers" but refuse to engage in it themselves. Those skeptics who attempt to engage in it are deemed traitors.

  At some point I learned that my name has been listed by CSICOP as a reason why CSICOP is not on friendly terms with the Skeptics Society, even though the Skeptics Society is continually open to cooperation with CSICOP.

• October 10, 1995: George Hansen commented on the Baker affair in Saucer Smear vol. 42, no. 9, pp. 6-7, in what appears to be an attempt to goad Klass into commenting on the matter.
• October 17, 1995: I finally obtained a copy, fourth hand, of Baker's June 1995 "Response To James Lippard Re My Unattributed Copying." Based on the errors in Baker's chronology of events and his bizarre remarks published in KASES File, it is my opinion that he took personally my criticism of Zabilka's book and my letter to Skeptical Inquirer in response to his review of that same book. I am very sorry that he feels this way, as neither of those writings of mine were intended to be taken personally. I believe that these precursors to my unintended discovery of unattributed copying in Baker's work has led him to see me as his persecutor. My only wish at this point is that he and CSICOP will take a more objective view of the situation and publicly acknowledge what is manifestly evident to everyone else--that Baker's copying of the words of others has gone beyond what is proper in responsible scholarship.
• August 8, 2005: Robert Baker died at his home in Lexington, KY, at the age of 84. (Lexington-Herald obituary)