The Granville incident

Earlier this morning, there was some commotion on the allstat mailing list (if you don’t know what it is, that’s a UK-based discussion list specifically focussed on statistics; it’s been active for quite some time and usually you get useful information on mostly, but not exclusively academic vacancies, conferences, etc).

Vincent Granville is a self-described “visionary data scientist” who often sends emails to the list $-$ most of which the list does not seem to receive with pleasure… [NB I believe that for today, Granville has sought and received more than his fair share of publicity, so I won’t link to his webpage $-$ you can google him if you’re interested] _ _Anyway, in his email today, Granville has openly offered a 250 dollars reward to write a review of his book on the Amazon page. In fact, he said he would reward the four “best” reviews (it is not clear what “best” means in this case $-$ I suspect it’s to do with how enthusiastic they are…).

This has of course unleashed a reaction of anger and indignation among the users of the list (although Michael Bretscher from Imperial College noticed that _“ironically, if all corrupt activities were communicated so transparently, the world might be a better place…__“_).

I agree with the general sentiment and I think that Granville is coming from a very, very different place than basically everybody else who’s active on the list. Some people has suggested banning him altogether, which I can sympathise with. But even more simply, is this not a classic situation in which your spam filter becomes your best friend?…