Andrew Brown accuses the Archbishop of Oxford of knowingly repeating an ugly lie:
I told Dawkins at the beginning of our interview that I had just come from reading the piece, he said, straight into my tape recorder, that Midgley had confessed to Ullica Segerstråle, a distinguished sociologist of science, that she had not in fact read the book before reviewing it.
Given that her review contains 11 extended quotes from the book, this could not possibly be true; given that he spent some time writing a closely argued reply, and thus poring over every quote she used, he must have known it could not possibly be true. None the less he said it with such conviction that I took the trouble to track down Dr Segerstråle and – after she had failed to respond to emails – to ring her up in Illinois. She said that of course it was nonsense….
I felt this was rather a difficult story to deal with; however, while I was wondering what to do, I had an unexpected email from Dawkins himself, in Chicago, where he had just had supper with Ullica Segerstråle. They had discussed the matter and come to the happy conclusion that it was all a misunderstanding. He also, I believe, wrote to Mary Midgley apologising for telling me this rather unpleasant lie about her….
Then, blow me if three weeks ago he did not repeat the claim, in writing, on his own website: “Mrs Midgley confessed to Ullica that she had not in fact read The Selfish Gene when she wrote that article. She has since backtracked from that confession, and I was inclined to believe her.”
What makes it almost literally incredible that he should write this is that he links in that post to her original review, so that anyone who bothers to click through can check the evidence for his claim.
This doesn’t surprise me in the least considering the number of easily provable falsehoods in his books, including but not limited to The God Delusion. In those cases, I believe he’s simply ignorant, but this isn’t exactly the first time Dawkins has been accused of attempting to retroactively modify past events in his favor.