Here's something many people don't know about me - Before I publicly dissected the long list of problems in the 1619 Project, I contacted the New York Times through their official channels to request a series of corrections to unambiguous factual errors in its content. The editor - Jake Silverstein - brushed me off and refused any correction - a pattern he also exhibited toward other critics from across the spectrum. Before I publicly broke the story about Kevin Kruse's plagiarism in Reason, I contacted Princeton's academic integrity officer and alerted him to the problems I had found, giving them a chance to respond and address it internally. They ignored my email and later claimed to have lost my email after I went public. Before I published my findings on Quinn Slobodian's habitual manipulation of source materials to alter its plain meaning through misquotation, I submitted an article to Contemporary European History (the journal where the worst examples appeared), highlighting the problems with the passages and asking for a correction through their official process. They desk-rejected it, brushed me off, and falsely claimed that Slobodian's piece had been thoroughly vetted in peer review. In fact, one of their own referees had flagged the same problems over a year earlier and recommended rejection of the article. Before I published an expose on Nancy MacLean & Sandy Darity's similar manipulation of W.H. Hutt quotations in their article for History of Economics Review, I (along with 2 coauthors) submitted a response comment to this journal asking for a correction through its official processes. The editor gave us a complete runaround where he imposed an arbitrary length limit requiring us to cut the content, sent the trimmed version to a referee, then rejected the piece because the referee said we didn't sufficiently address the very same things we were forced by the editor to cut. When I then asked the editor to issue a simple corrigendum to the most egregious misquotation (one that transformed Hutt's explicit attack on the racism of white Afrikaners into a defense of Apartheid), he refused and tried to pass it off as a difference of "interpretation." Before I published an expose of a leading covid masking model in the Wall Street Journal, I sent a comment to the medical journal that published it alerting them to a math error that changed their entire set of results. The journal acknowledged the error was real but refused to publish my piece on the grounds that the "next release" of the model would be updated to reflect it - even as politicians up to and including Joe Biden were trumpeting the erroneous results all over the news.

Jun 9, 2026 · 1:44 AM UTC

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If you want to know why I am doggedly persistent - and even a bit prickly - about these sorts of things, there is your answer. I almost always try to get a correction to a problem that I find in other people's research by first working behind the scenes and through the proper channels before going public with an expose. But those official channels seldom work as advertised. And more often than not, the journal or publisher just circles the wagons to protect the shoddy research, no matter the evidence. Going public then becomes the only option.
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
I've never seen a university act on fraud reports coming from outsiders – they always ignore it or cover it up. If a journal contacts them, they might act, but then we face the problem that journals almost never act on fraud except in very narrow categories. As a whole, academia strives to define fraud so narrowly that almost nothing qualifies. When I wrote about the Lewandowsky and Cook frauds, Queensland and Bristol wrote to my department chair trying to take me down or whatever. The NYT publishes lots of false claims and won't correct most of them. I have gotten NPR and the Guardian to run corrections, though they didn't credit me – it's a strangely wolfish industry.
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I've also had a number of experiences where I broke the story about a fraud that was too big to be ignored, but certain outlets conspicuously went out of their way to avoid crediting me by name.
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
The Kevin kruse thing wasn’t plagiarism just sloppy citation. Both Princeton and Cornell found it was an honest mistake not intentional plagiarism.
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Cornell and Princeton let him off the hook in closed-door investigations that directly contradicted their own published policies on plagiarism. But the evidence of plagiarism was overwhelming - including by Kruse's own definition as applied to others he had accused of plagiarism. philmagness.com/2022/10/kevi…
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
Years ago, I read Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning and found several glaring factual errors (below). I tried to contact him... nothing. I contacted several historians. They agreed with me but one said privately that Kendi was basically untouchable: shenviapologetics.com/a-long…
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
Outstanding! Followed purely because you are doing the right thing by first contacting those spreading the misinformation. Well done, that man. w.
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
Good for you! That's the scholarly way. The lack of answers shows lack of a scholar on the other end.
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
The credentialed mob never admits to their mistakes. It's dangerous because policies are enacted based on the fraud.
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
Yeah it is lies & fraud all the way down. Our corrupt & incompetent Ruling Class is not only aware, they are also happily supporting the lies & corruption. In other words, the big news in Minneapolis was the Industrial Scale Fraud in Day Care Centers was being posted on X. Governor Walz and Mayor Frey had known about this for years. As did people in the Federal government who were dumping thousands of Somali into our nation at specific locations. The curtain has been pulled back. It is not a Good System ruined by a few Bad People. It is a Bad System run by Monsters.
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
This is a brilliant history of rebuttal against a corrupt system. Wokeness is poison distributed by the media, NGO’s, and so-called experts in small quantities to anesthetize the patient.
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
I recall your analysis of the 1619 project and admired your persistence and thoroughness at that time. Thank you for all the good work you do!
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
The Woke Mind Virus 🦠 is allergic to admitting errors, issuing corrigenda, or relying on facts.
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
And they wonder why trust in experts has diminished. It's because some experts lie and refuse to correct their errors.
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When the Left has an agenda - like 1619 or masking - science and history are to be damned.
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
We appreciate you and your work
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
Truly. One man standing alone against hordes of woke insanity.
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
What you’re doing is very under-appreciated. Folks don’t realize that systems (peer review, truth seeking) require careful collaboration and calibration of critique. Most importantly, it requires a humility of spirit by everyone. So thank you for that.
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
Thank you. YOU (and others of high integrity) are Science.
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
The higher doesn't stand without the lower. The deliberate manipulation of facts is rife within city and state governments, fire departments, local food bank, feeding programs (ALL of them), local charity, school board, or any sort of entity where money is to be made from lies.
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
I have been aware of this sort of academic chicanery since at least Arming America. In retrospect, it is somewhat amazing that Columbia rescinded Bellesiles's Bancroft Prize, and that the book is now very widely acknowledged as debunked. I wonder if that would happen if it were published today.
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
Pal, if you can't understand why somebody called Silverstein is uninterested in honest and academic rigor in his Hate Whitey propaganda, that's your own fault at this point.
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I’m following you because you are prickly and doggedly persistent!
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
It's small consolation but the result is the continued decline in the once respected journals on which we used to rely for accuracy while more and more people begin to do the kind of digging that expands our understanding. Maybe the next generation will learn a lesson.
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
Almost like they are biased.
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
They're just not doing scholarship. Scholars rejoice to be corrected.
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
Maybe they really were right in 1999 that the internet was going to revolutionize everything
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
Thank you for diligently fighting The Narrative.
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Wow - so you are one of the real, live journalists with standards & scruples that most people have only heard about in stories. I’m sure modern media runs from you on sight, but thank you for upholding the integrity of a profession in sore need of it.
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
Even one of those would be impressive. The fact that you've put this effort in multiple times is amazing. Thank you.
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Replying to @PhilWMagness
As a longtime Magness stan, who's always been disappointed that his tweets didn't garner much attention (not as much as they deserved), I'm stoked to see this breakout occurring. May your follower count rocket rocket upward!
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