I thought your presentation of the “Jellinek is a fraud” and Ron Roizen comments thereon did a great service. One of your members frequently comments about my work by disparaging it in terms of “letters from California” (where I no longer reside), the work of a “hobbyist.” and his on the sly comments to the history lovers moderator (now deceased) that my work lacked integrity. I thought Roizen’s carefully worded comments about Jellink presented a perspicacious thought or two about those who labor in the vineyard and stir up some knowledge and activity. And probably a good deal of jealousy. I’m not ashamed of my Stanford AB and JD degrees or of my Phi Beta Kappa key or my editorship of the Stanford Law Review. My qualifications in researching and writing on A.A. history have far more to do with 16 years of hard work and a great deal of personal experience in A.A. itself. But I would add  that, after many years of ad hominem attacks on my work and diligent efforts to exclude me from shining fields of scholarly conferences, your sharp-tongued member finally conceded that he had really failed to look into the whole Akron A.A. fellowship scene “because of the cost of traveling from the East Coast to Akron” or words to that effect. Hardly an adequate justification for twenty-five years of distorted history. I was very pleased that I was invited to join ADHS after my cv and works were reviewed; but I’d like to think my contributions—often posted on your site—are recognized for what they have unearthed and enabled others to learn rather than having been being rejected as “hobby” work because they emanated from an old alcoholic lawyer than from a slightly younger alcoholic Ivy League Ph.D. I don’t think Thomas Alva Edison, George Washington Carver, or Fulton and his Steamboats were ignored or ridiculed for lack of an Ivy League degree. Or for their failure to study engineering or agriculture at an esteemed university.  In fact, with my limited knowledge of Stanford, I could verify that it was much more what Sandra Day O’Connor did on the Supreme Court and what David Packard did at HP than what either studied at Stanford that won them a modicum of respect.  Why all this palaver? Just to suggest that judgments about research and scholarship ought to be based on their veracity, thoroughness, documentation, and value as building blocks rather than on what laboratory was involved at the outset when the researcher acquired his or her thinking abilities. Cheers. Richard Gordon Burns, J.D. (otherwise known as Dick B.)

 

 

I wonder if I might respond to this post briefly.  It was (I believe) sometime in 1996 or 1997 (I could check my files and give the more or less exact date) that I took the opportunity, provided by the ease of communication of email, to send a note to the registrar of Leipzig University to ask about E.M. Jellinek’s transcript and degrees received there.  As I noted in Ranes Report’s issue number 11 (http://www.roizen.com/ron/rr11.htm), wherein I later reported the results of this inquiry, there was talk around the watercooler in my old days at the Alcohol Research Group regarding E.M.J.’s “uncertain academic background and certification.”  The result of my inquiry was a seeming confirmation that Jellinek probably took no degree from Leipzig U. and may have possessed no earned doctorate or even any college degree at all.  I never intended that publishing this finding on the web would have the effect of encouraging some readers to wholly dismiss any of E.M.J.’s contributions to alcohol science.  Indeed, I took some pains to emphasize that E.M.J. contributions to the emergent alcohol science field in the U.S. were significant.  I wrote, for example, in the piece:  “From his alcohol-related work's commencement in 1939 (at offices in the New York Academy of Medicine) to his death in 1963 (at Stanford University), Jellinek played a crucial role in the ascendancy of modern science's claim to cultural "ownership"³ of the American alcohol problems social arena.”  My main conclusion regarding this excursion into Jellinek’s academic past was that his iffy certification might be regarded as a telling indirect indicator of the very marginal status of alcohol science in its early post-Repeal days.  In due course, however, I leaned that in some quarters the misstatement of one’s academic credentials has a sort of “this invalidates everything he did” consequence.  On another list and a year or two ago, one lay (if I may term it such) listmember explained to me that possessing a doctorate by itself created much of the authority behind someone’s pronouncements or contributions to a field of research or study.  I think the situation is significantly different in the academic community.  E.M.J. might have lost an academic job if it were discovered that his c.v. had been embellished (he might not have, too – it depends), but his journal articles would not, by that fact alone, have been withdrawn or lost whatever research and scholarly value they possessed.  That value, instead, would have to be judged on the merits of the contribution, not the author’s troubled c.v. alone.  Perhaps one or two of my colleagues grimaced a little when I published the Jellinek web article, I’m not sure.  Maybe Jellinek’s iffy credentials should have remained inside the protected province of alcohol researchers, as a kind of “insider knowledge” that is not allowed to sully a revered scientist in a field still struggling for scientific legitimacy.  Some might say I’ve never been much good at scholarly etiquette.  But, and to repeat, I never saw this little article as an excuse to trash and disregard any and all of Jellinek’s work.

Thanks.

Ron Roizen