After all the brouhaha about the Katherine Wilson/Keith Windschuttle hoax dies down, I suspect the most lasting insight to be derived from all the kerfuffle is that Wilson’s target had already disappeared into a long twilight of irrelevance. For mine, John Quiggin’s point about the saga is among the most telling – Windschuttle’s own credibility on the issue which has been central to the recent stages of his career – Indigenous history – lies in tatters because of his own inability to substantiate the claims he made many years ago now with further research. The biggest hoax, Quiggin argues, is Windschuttle’s own contribution to “the history wars”.

After a number of folks actually had a look at what’s published on Quadrant’s website these days, it’s painfully obvious that there’s very little credibility there to be undermined. Egregious grammatical errors, bizarre rants with scant evidence of an elementary ability to construct a coherent argument, to be sure.

So the other motto we might draw from the hoax affair is that it’s drawn attention to the absence of both standards and relevance in most of what Quadrant has to offer. Now that the mag, and its writers, no longer have their great patron John Howard sitting in Kirribilli, the phrase “paper tiger” comes to mind. Certainly that appears to be evident from this truly bizarre piece just posted on the magazine’s website by Michael Connor, referencing a comment made here at LP by Pavlov’s Cat – “the Left totalitarianism”, “the Left establishment”, “Hatred blows in from the Left”… etc. Perhaps Connor was rankled by his writing being described as “half crazed”. But what can all this hyperbole and nonsense mean, and does anyone bar Connor and his ilk really care? I think he and the rest of Windy’s wingnut stable’s response to the hoax contains an element of schadenfreude. They’ve been rescued – I strongly suspect temporarily – from their own feelings of relevance deprivation. It might have been better, I think, if the windmills had been allowed to fall over of their own accord, without the need for any tilting at them.

Update: Margaret Simons wraps up the reaction to the hoax at Crikey, and Graham Young provides a publisher’s perspective at On Line Opinion.

But I wanted to clarify something – in comments at Troppo, mel wrote:

I wonder if Wilson tipped Mark Bahnisch off about the hoax …..? AFAIK he was the first blogger to flag the issue.

Aside from – as appears to be his wont – making false and self-serving statements regarding moderation on this blog and throwing in a bit of personal abuse for good measure – never a good start – mel is committing a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, which abounds these days. I posted about the Crikey story because I happened to be online when I received the Crikey email. That’s all. That was the first I’d heard of it. I don’t read Quadrant as a rule, and I’m actually not all that exercised about this whole affair.

My post is pretty neutral about the issue, and really just explains what occurred, and points people to Margaret Simons’ story. Since then, because there’s been a fair bit of interest, I’ve been updating it regularly with new links as they come to hand.

In any event, Kath Wilson and LP didn’t part on excellent terms, to put it gracefully – as is well known, she requested that all posts and comments she’d made here be removed, something we weren’t at all happy with. I don’t believe I’ve had any contact with her since early in 2007. In any case, we don’t know Wilson was the hoaxer.

I apologise for bothering folks with this, but since I have a new computer, my Troppo password hasn’t stuck, and the new password feature isn’t working for me, and I can’t register a new commenting account with the same email. But I did want to set the record straight on this one.

Incidentally, I think this whole affair has brought out both the best and the worst of the blogosphere. But I might wait until some more water has passed under the bridge to expand on that comment.

Update: Katherine Wilson has been revealed to be the hoaxer, and Margaret Simons examines the sequence of events, with something of a focus on the journos v. bloggers angle.

Update: There’s more from Simons at her blog Content Makers.

Update: Windschuttle responds.

Update: Robert Corr on Windschuttle and footnotes.

Update: Tim Lambert posts at Deltoid and links to a range of other commentary and discussion.

Update: John Quiggin is interested in Windschuttle’s own hoax:

Just before this, I was thinking about another hoax, namely the repeated promise of a Volume 2 of The Fabrication of Australian History. When Volume 1 came out back in 2002, Windschuttle promised further volumes on an annual schedule, covering Queensland and WA. Since Queensland in particular was the focus of Henry Reynolds’ main work, and since the evidence of numerous massacres seems incontrovertible, this promised volume was central to Windschuttle’s claims of fabrication. The promise was repeated year after year, but no Volume 2 ever appeared, and the “research” supposedly already undertaken has stayed out of sight.

Then in February 2008, Windschuttle published extracts from a Volume 2, promised for publication “later this year”, but now on a totally different topic, that of the Stolen Generation. His target this time was Peter Read, an eminent historian who’s done a lot of practical work reuniting Aboriginal children with their birth families. It’s 2009, the promised volume hasn’t appeared, and there hasn’t been any reference to it on Windschuttle’s site for some time.

The real hoax victims here have been those on the political right, who’ve repeatedly swallowed Windschuttle’s promises to refute well-established facts about Australian history “later this year” and who are now getting their “science” from his discredited magazine.

Update: Counterknowledge, Skepticlawyer and Andrew Norton.

Update: Some more links in a post at Overland.

Update: I think some of the point of the hoax – that it was specifically directed against Keith Windschuttle because of his obsession with damning others for errors in footnotes – has been lost in all the wash up. Jeff Sparrow in Crikey refocuses discussion on the central point.

Update: At Club Troppo, Don Arthur thinks he may have an answer to the question – “Who is Sharon Gould?”

Update: A quick post responding to some misconceptions in the Troppo comments thread.

Update: Katherine Wilson has been revealed to be the hoaxer, and Margaret Simons examines the sequence of events, with something of a focus on the journos v. bloggers angle.

Update: I’m having a bit of a debate at Simons’ blog Content Makers with her on some of the inferences she’s drawn about blogging and journalism from all this.