[guzey]

The email exchange in question is contained in the post I link itself directly following the broken link: https://yngve.hoiseth.net/articles/why-we-sleep-institutiona... - kinda incredible to not have noticed it. The person from UC Berkeley is never named because, as Yngve notes right there as well: "Because this failure is UC Berkeley's more than any individual's, I have edited the exchange slightly by removing the names of their representatives."

[a_throwaway_6]

What is listed in the post you link are exerpts of the email conversation, selected by Yngve Hoiseth. The link I mention is broken should lead to the entire, unredacted, unexcerpted email conversation, but fails to do so. This makes it impossible to determine to what extent Yngve Hoiseth edited the email exchange to force his interpretation of the exchange on a reader.

Your post and Yngve Hoiseth's post claim that the email exchange presented in Yngve Hoiseth's post is an "official response" from UC Berkeley. To determine the veracity of this claim it is necessary to know who was contacted, in UC Berkeley.

The name of the person (as in first name and family name/s) is not necessary for this, but it is necessary to name their office. For example "dean of such-and-such" or "director of so-and-so". That this information is not provided makes the claim of an "official response" impossible to verify. For example, nobody can contact the person Yngve Hoiseth claims they have contacted, or the person currently holding the same office, and ask them to verify that they or their office have, indeed, been contacted by Yngve Hoiseth.

That, together with the absence of the entire conversation makes it impossible to know whether Yngve Hoiseth really did have this email exchange, to what extent they presented it fairly and to what extent what was said by the other person was edited.

The person Yngve Hoiseth claims to have contacted allegedly said the following:

  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.

This is absolutely not what was done in Yngve Hoiseth's post and your linking to it claiming it is an "official response" to your post.

Assuming the exchange was real, it seems that the person at the other end didn't ask for their identity to be withheld for any reason. It sounds as if they fully expected for their identity to be made public instead. There seems to be no reason why Yngve Hoiseth's post ommits this detail.

Given all the above your post and Yngve Hoiseth's post are misleading and suggest an effort to misrepresent at the very least UC Berkeley's position.

[hntrader]

  "suggest an effort to misrepresent at the very least UC Berkeley's position."

This is a non-sequitur.

The decision to keep the identity of the contact anonymous and the presence of a dead link (when a slightly redacted version of the full conversation is still available) doesn't automatically suggest that they're trying to misrepresent UC Berkeley. What an unjustified stretch.

[a_throwaway_6]

You don't see any problem with someone selectively quoting from what they claim is "UC Berkeley's official position", while not pointing to an actual source of that "official position" in UC Berkeley itself, or the entire conversation?

How are we to know that Yngve Hoiseth did not make up the entire conversation, or that they didn't simply choose the passages of the email exchange that support their view, only?

If this is an "official" exchange, why the lack of transparency?

The lack of transparency "suggests an effort to misrpresent".

[hntrader]

It ideally should've been made clear that the veracity is unconfirmed, but aren't there more charitable interpretations for why it wasn't?

[a_throwaway_6]

I could perhaps see a charitable interpretation if the author of the blog post (Guzey) did not accuse the author of the book (Walker) of "deliberate data manipulation", gave the opportunity to the target of the accusation to explain himself, did not misrepresent himself as a "researcher" (pointing to his blog posts as examples of his "research"), did not link to a friend's blog post for "UC Berkeley’s official response", etc, etc.

The author of the blog post is not leaving a lot of room for charitable interpretations.

But in any case, what charitable interpretation do you propose?

[a_throwaway_6]

Also, since I have you here, can I please enquire as to what you mean when you say that you are a "researcher" in your about page?

[guzey]

It means that I do "research". e.g.

- https://guzey.com/how-life-sciences-actually-work/ - https://guzey.com/science/sleep/14-day-sleep-deprivation-sel...

[a_throwaway_6]

What you link to is not "research" but "opinion" published in your blog. It identifies you as a "blogger", but not as a "researcher".

At most I could see what you have written as "study" of others' research but presenting yourself as a "researcher" and what you do as "research" is misrepresenting yourself and comes across as an attempt to claim for yourself greater expertise than you seem to have.

You should make clear your level of experitse and your knowledge about different matters that you like to discuss in your blog.

[guzey]

How do you define "research" and "opinion"?

[a_throwaway_6]

I do not care about splitting hairs. A person legitimately calling themselves a researcher would also not need to do so. They would simply point to their research, not to blog posts. Anyone can write a blog post and publish it on their blog.

If you are the only person calling yourself a "researcher" (or it's only you and your dear friends and blog readers) then you are misrepresenting yourself.