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My first instinct when hearing of accusations of academic misconduct is to ask who is making those accusations: is it someone whose opinions I can trust?

The author of the blog above has an About page where they introduce themselves as "a researcher with a background in Economics, Mathematics, and Cognitive Science". Instead of a list of academic achievements: publications, grants, chairs, awards, etc, as we would expect to see in a researcher's "about" page, the author continues their introduction with a few words on what they're "thinking about" at the moment and what their long-term goals are, then makes a peculiar plea:

  If you’re reading this and you do anything biology-related at all, I would
  love to talk to you and would especially appreciate you getting in touch.

Then the author lists their favourite TV shows, personal essays, interviews etc. All this does not make the author of the article sound like a trustworthy source, but rather as someone desperate for attention.

The next thing I usually look for in cases like this is whether the person accusing someone else of academic fraud has given an opportunity to the party they accuse to defend themselves. The author of this blog has not only not done that but is engaging in misleading tactics. The following text is in TFA:

  Also see UC Berkeley’s official response regarding this essay – all problems
  with the book I discovered are “minor”.

The sentence "UC Berkeley’s official response" links to the following URL:

https://yngve.hoiseth.net/articles/why-we-sleep-institutiona...

However, the linked resource is not "UC Berkeley's official response" at all, but rather a blog by a different blogger, Yngve Hoiseth, who claims they contacted someone -who is never named- at UC Berkeley about Alexey Guzey's post we are reading above. Yngve Hoiseth's blog itself claims to have uploaded "the entire exchange here", linking to the following URL:

https://yngve.hoiseth.net/why-we-sleep-institutional-failure...

Which is dead and has not been archived by archive.org.

All this makes the article above sound very difficult to take seriously. In all honesty, it sounds entirely like an attempt to kick shit up for the author's personal gratification. Or perhaps there is some strange ???-PROFIT scheme hidden somewhere in there, but even that is not particularlly interesting.

Posting under a throwaway because the article's author sounds desperate enough to engage in all sorts of internet attacks to deter critics.

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My understanding is that my university email communication is a matter of public record, and I try always to communicate with that standard in mind. There is no prohibition that I know of against publication of my emails with you, in other words. I would just ask that you contextualize my communications in a transparent and accurate way.

"Academics criticise each other's work constantly but this is acceptable because the purpose is to improve one another's work, not to tarnish each other's reputation and drag their name through the mud."