A cautionary tale not unlike my previous posts:
- Purporting that a written warning was issued in 2007, when in fact you used a 2008 proforma but tippexed out the 2008, only to humiliatingly be asked to hold it up to the light in front of an employment tribunal;
- Posting how much you hate your boss on Facebook, only for him to read it and dismiss you.
Here we’re concerned with the twitter feed @gillianmckeith – after a series of spats about McKeith’s qualifications, as derided by Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Science
do you really believe this is real Twitter site for the GM?
As Goldacre puts it:
Yes, replied the geeks. The Twitter account @gillianmckeith is linked to gillianmckeith.info, explained some. Then that link was deleted. Ah, explained others: only half-deleted. If you look at the “source code” for the page, the link is there, just temporarily inactivated. And that Twitter account is still linked from gillianmckeith.tv, Gillian’s YouTube page.
Read Ben Goldacre’s article here.
So again, a gentle reminder to everyone out there: there is always someone out there with a stronger sense of smell than you, and they’ll sniff you out. Oh, and a second honourable mention for the Queen of forensic IT errors, the lady who purported that a letter was written in 1999, when it had clearly been typed in Office 2007.
I think you mean, in the words of Morrissey: “there’s always someone, somewhere
with a big nose, who knows / and who trips you up and laughs when you fall”
So there I was, baffled by why this page had 3,000 more views than the average, when I see that @bengoldacre was kind enough to link here in a tweet. I’ve never enjoyed seven seconds of fame more. Hat off to you sir.
The link to the Dallas Observer about the 1999 letter written in 2007 is dead however google cache has this summary for completeness:
“One of the world’s leading type-face designers says the letter, dated October 29, 1999, is printed in Calibri typeface, which was not introduced until 2007, through Microsoft.
“The font used is Calibri,” said Luc(as) de Groot, a Dutch type designer and founder of Berlin, Germany LucasFonts.
How can de Groot be certain it is Calibri? He designed the font in 2003 for Microsoft, though the font wasn’t available to the public until it debut on Microsoft Office 2007.
Bob Hayes died on September 18, 2002. Lucille Hester, who says she is Hayes’ half-sister, has said he signed and gave the letter to Lucille during an Oct. 1999 trip to visit her in Washington, D.C.”