Scranton overreaches in trying to depict our work as unscholarly and as violating professional standards. Throughout his discussion he characterizes us as “violating professional standards central to the historian’s profession”: we, he argues, “developed the conclusions supporting [our] advocacy position through inappropriately selective research, partial and distorted uses of sources, overvaluing sources’ evidentiary weight, the rejection of contradictory evidence, rhetorical excesses, and an overarching rejection of the integrity necessary for professional expertise” (Scranton p. 40). Further, he asserts that we are unethical: “two serious ethical issues are entwined in Markowitz’ use of sources and route to publication.” First, he argues, that we “did not work through the documentary base accumulated by Plaintiff’s counsel but rather that [we] asked for the ‘types of documents [we] were interested in’ which firm staffers selected and sent to [us].” (Scranton, p.39).
His accusation implies that we were “fed” documents by plaintiffs’ attorneys. In fact, however, we spent more than three years sorting through primary materials. We spent several days in Lake Charles, Louisiana in the offices of the attorney then handling the case [34] where we were given unrestricted access to documents. In the course of our time there, we identified committees, technical task forces, executive files and minutes along with many other types of documents that we wanted to study. These committee minutes and other materials were sent to us en masse, as we requested. In the following months and years we continued to request specific sets of files and, in addition, the industry was required by the court to produce documents that it had withheld in whole or in part from plaintiffs’ attorneys. Thus, the industry did not provide all of its documents at one time, but had to be compelled by the court to produce more documents as it became apparent that the industry was excising and redacting relevant materials. Throughout this whole process we continued to work through the original materials and to add to our timeline materials that came available to us. This was an extensive and rich archive that we sorted through. Just as in any research project of such a massive scale we may have missed some relevant documents. But, no documents have been presented to us that in any way alter the history we tell in Deceit and Denial. Furthermore, we have been open with the industry about our findings, providing them with the timeline in order to obtain their feedback. We received no objections from industry with regard to the accuracy of the timeline or the quotations from materials in the documents that we present in the timeline. Finally, Dr. Markowitz has willingly appeared for five days of deposition in which he was questioned by industry lawyers. [35]
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