All academics love to be cited. In fact, the best way to offend an academic is not to cite her. Not being cited is even worse than being criticized.
But you know what’s even better than being cited? Creating truth by not being cited. Here’s how I learned this:
A few weeks ago I was talking to a reporter writing a magazine story about the successes of Cheryl Chase and the Intersex Society of North America, a group I co-led for about nine years. While the reporter was working on the story, she happened to read a New York Times review of Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert’s new book, Stumbling on Happiness.
She came upon this line in the review: “Most people would find the idea of being a conjoined twin to be a horrible fate. You couldn’t possibly be happy in that condition, right? Then how come conjoined twins rate themselves as happy as nonconjoined people, Gilbert asks.”
The reporter wrote to say to me that this fact seemed like it would be of interest to people like me in the intersex rights movement—heck, if conjoined twins can be happy, why not people with intersex who haven’t had surgery?
“Huh!” I thought to myself. “I wonder where Gilbert got that fact about conjoined twins?” After all, it’s something I’ve been saying for several years, so I was curious to know who else was saying this (besides me and now Gilbert).
Then I remembered—wait a minute! I talked to a psychologist from Harvard about this years ago, when I published a New York Times opinion piece that mentioned this historical finding of mine, i.e., that conjoined twins were generally happy with their states. I remember he asked me for my research article on this subject, and that I sent him an offprint of it.
So I went to my local bookstore, bought a copy of Gilbert’s book, and looked up “conjoined twins” in the index. (OK, I admit that first I looked for myself in the index, but I wasn’t there.)
And there, on p. 30, Gilbert quotes “a prominent medical historian” as saying this—that conjoined twins are generally happy with their states. He doesn’t name in the text who this mysterious “prominent medical historian” might be, but he does provide an endnote. And there, buried in the fine print in the back, a few pages (after the first endnote that essentially says, “you, Dear Reader, don’t need to worry your pretty little head reading all these tiresome endnotes”) is the reference to my work. Dig me, I’m a prominent medical historian. Though not anywhere near prominent enough to name in the text.
So, here’s what cracks me up about this. I do a bunch of research and write a journal article. I write a New York Times editorial summing up what I’ve found in my research. Gilbert reads this, uses it in his book, but doesn’t use my name in the text. What’s handy about that is that the emphasis remains on the “fact,” not on the source. The New York Times book reviewer is struck by the “fact” in question, and simply states it as a fact; no meaningful citation. The reporter working on the new story reads this essentially source-less claim as a fact, and relays it to me as a fact. Voila! Truth created.
This reminds me of all the times I’ve told one friend a rumor, had the rumor passed on to another friend, and had the second person repeat it back to me, such that I then think, “Oh, it must be true! That person has heard it too!”
Which isn’t to say I don’t believe the fact about conjoined twins that was relayed back to me. I do. But it also makes me feel good that I’m teaching my five-year-old son to give me his sources whenever he comes up with something a little whacky. Otherwise you never know where he got it from. It’s working, too. He’s the only kindergartener I know who automatically provides sources for his more unusual claims. Granted, sometimes his source is something like the Monty Python Galaxy song. But I’m cool with that.
My work changing medical practice would be so much easier if everyone understood that complex “facts” come from sources. Imagine how hard it is to change medical practice when you’re presented with the “fact” that “no one could live like this” (where “this” is with intersex genitals or conjoinment or whatever). I ask, “What’s your evidence?” and they look at me like I’m nuts. To them, it’s a fact, like gravity. To me, it’s a rumor—‘cause I’ve done the research and I know what we really know and don’t know.
By the way, if you’d like to read about the evidence that people with intersex genitals can do OK without surgery, check out the FAQ I wrote for ISNA on this. Uncredited FAQ’s are a great way to create—I mean relay—truth.