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Oxford Professor Is Accused of Selling Ancient Texts

nytimes.com

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Re: Oxford Professor Is Accused of Selling Ancient Texts

#61

Post by keoeoOeo8 »

ReggieJJJ wrote: post #46
skywhopper wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are suggesting here that when purchasing such artifacts for a major museum collection, that the Hobby Lobby/Bible Museum owners have zero responsibility to verify the provenance of the artifacts and the legality of their sale. All they have to do is just not ask any probing questions, and they should be able to claim that "we didn't know they were stolen!" Sorry, but that's outrageous.

[flagged]

You do realize the legal perspective on this idea is hundreds of years old and influenced by Biblical views of right & wrong, yes?

Someone all warmed up by contemporary political headlines raging about how reality works in a vacuum ignoring society has never really felt beholden to such views.

Pretty good argument for not pretending it ever can be, despite your obvious emotional addiction to thinking it must.

Re: Oxford Professor Is Accused of Selling Ancient Texts

#62

Post by rayiner »

mannykannot wrote: post #48
rayiner wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your post is extremely misleading with respect to the Iraqi antiquities case. Here is the Government's complaint in that case: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/press-release/file/978096/... . And here is the stipulation of settlement entered into by the Government and Hobby lobby: http://www.artcrimeresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/3... . First, "they" did not "intentionally forg[e] documents" or "fak[e] the…

The law rightly sets a high bar for accusations of intent, but when someone who is knowledgeable about the antiquities market turns up as the recipient of misappropriated property in multiple cases, it raises questions of both intent and ethics. Your post persuasively refutes some of the claims in the post you are replying to. As you present it, however, neither party seems to have had much reason to raise the issue…

> The law rightly sets a high bar for accusations of intent

It doesn't. The bar for making an accusation is merely having a good faith belief that you will be able to prove the existence of intent. You don't even need evidence in order to make the allegation. It is therefore critical to note that the government didn't accuse Hobby Lobby of knowingly or intentionally buying looted artifacts. While intent isn't an element of the civil forfeiture claim, if there was a good faith basis for asserting intent or knowledge, it would have been added for "color."

Re: Oxford Professor Is Accused of Selling Ancient Texts

#63

Post by zamadatix »

dahart wrote: post #42
zamadatix wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guidelines specifically call out linkbait titles: "please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait" so in the parent comments argument that the title is clickbait it certainly isn't "according to HN guidelines". I'd be interested in what the ratio of users that only know portions of the guidelines that are often repeated in comments vs those that have actually read through the guidelines.

> The guidelines specifically call out linkbait titles: That's true, they do. And the parent comment here claimed linkbait. The suggested guideline is to default to the original title first, and avoid editorializing by default , that's the spirit of the rule, and then if the title is egregious, try to fix the wording to be less misleading. There are lots of possibilities, one of them is that the submitter doesn't kno…

Speaking of reading a comment and using assumptions to jump to a hard conclusion: The "ratio of users" comment wasn't directed at you personally it was directed at wondering how many are voting your comment up in the discussion assuming "The submitter who used the NYT title verbatim, according to HN guidelines?" is all the guidelines had to say since you made no allusion this was simply your interpretation and not all the guidelines say about titles.

I don't even agree with LegitShady I just find it disingenuous to disagree purely by stating your interpretation of the guidelines as if that's all the guidelines had to say about clickbait. It's tautological that if you disagree your interpretation is that the guidelines disagree and it just masks the minority opinion rather than discussion the opinion.

Personally I my interpretation is a bit stronger on changing linkbait titles (though really you should just try to find a less linkbaity source) but banning is a definitely overkill (even if likely to be simply exaggeration instead of a recommendation). I probably should have included this in my original comment to make my intent clearer.

Re: Oxford Professor Is Accused of Selling Ancient Texts

#64

Post by SkyBelow »

js2 wrote: post #27
romaaeterna wrote: post #22

The Obbink stuff has been on slow boil for a few years now. Part of the problem is that even ancient papyri texts aren't actually worth anything, unless they are really famous, but they are getting caught up by all the export regulations for gold and jewels (sometimes under new interpretations of law). Obbink has made some poor decisions, but I feel that the rules have changed on his watch. Also, while "Hobby Lobby"…

The headline is factually correct. The contract was made in 2013 between Dr. Obbink and Hobby Lobby Stores, not between him and the museum, which didn't yet exist. The first sentence of the third paragraph reads: "Thirteen fragments from the collection were found in the Museum of the Bible, a Washington institution founded by Hobby Lobby’s evangelical Christian owners, the Green family." So the headline is correct an…

>The headline is factually correct.

Factual correctness is not a defense against being misleading. It is quite easy to make factually correct statements that are also misleading.

"$Person has never denied $HorribleAct."

"$Person has never apologized for $HorribleAct."

"$Person has never presented any evidence showing they didn't do $HorribleAct."

You can effectively mad lib these with almost any combinations and it result in a technically true statement. But put a specific case in a news headline, and it would still be considered misleading. Why? Because we know when people read those sentences in a news headline, they will assume that there is an underlying accusation with enough credibility to be denied. Such an accusation doesn't exist. Factually, such a headline never stated such an accusation exists. But we know that is how people will read it, and thus to run such a headline knowing well the way it will be read would, at least to me, qualify as being misleading.

Did that happen in this case? I don't know enough to be sure. I just want to point out that factual correctness is not, by itself, enough to disqualify a charge of a headline being misleading.

Re: Oxford Professor Is Accused of Selling Ancient Texts

#65

Post by mmanfrin »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #59
light_hue_1 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you can't read the article shows. You are totally misrepresenting what is happening now and what happened in the past to push a particular political agenda. This has nothing to do with export laws. The documents were the property of Oxford in a collection that he oversaw. Now Oxford discovered that he sold the documents. Also, ancient artifacts are protected regardless of their value. That is what keeps…

> They're a hate-filled group That's quite a claim - by the definition of "hate", you're saying that the individuals who run Hobby Lobby "feel intense or passionate dislike for (someone)". You may not like certain specifics of their employee healthcare policy, but having such a policy does not imply hate on their part -- such a conclusion doesn't follow logically. Or is there another fact that would imply hatred on t…

> You may not like certain specifics of their employee healthcare policy, but having such a policy does not imply hate on their part

I personally disagree, and I disagree strongly.

Re: Oxford Professor Is Accused of Selling Ancient Texts

#66

Post by JAlexoid »

ReggieJJJ wrote: post #32

It seems extremely prejudicial and even driven by a bigoted and hateful motivation to emphasize the purchaser of the fragment when the story is really about the person who is accused of illegally taking and selling the fragments. It would be like writing the headline like this "Oxford is Officially and International Illegal Historical Artifacts Dealing Organized Criminal Enterprise." if one were to have a bigoted bia…

Are you sure that you're not prejudiced on the side of Hobby Lobby? Because you're defending Hobby Lobby over something that they are not even accused of. It's a matter of fact that they bought it, without due diligence.

Re: Oxford Professor Is Accused of Selling Ancient Texts

#67

Post by dang »

ReggieJJJ wrote: post #46
skywhopper wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are suggesting here that when purchasing such artifacts for a major museum collection, that the Hobby Lobby/Bible Museum owners have zero responsibility to verify the provenance of the artifacts and the legality of their sale. All they have to do is just not ask any probing questions, and they should be able to claim that "we didn't know they were stolen!" Sorry, but that's outrageous.

[flagged]

Since after repeatedly violating the site guidelines and ignoring our explanations and requests to stop, you keep bringing personal attacks and ideological flamewar into the threads, we've banned this account. Please don't create accounts to break the HN guidelines with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Oxford Professor Is Accused of Selling Ancient Texts

#68

Post by dang »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #28
romaaeterna wrote: post #22

The Obbink stuff has been on slow boil for a few years now. Part of the problem is that even ancient papyri texts aren't actually worth anything, unless they are really famous, but they are getting caught up by all the export regulations for gold and jewels (sometimes under new interpretations of law). Obbink has made some poor decisions, but I feel that the rules have changed on his watch. Also, while "Hobby Lobby"…

The fact that you can't read the article shows. You are totally misrepresenting what is happening now and what happened in the past to push a particular political agenda. This has nothing to do with export laws. The documents were the property of Oxford in a collection that he oversaw. Now Oxford discovered that he sold the documents. Also, ancient artifacts are protected regardless of their value. That is what keeps…

Your comment crosses into personal attack. That breaks the site guidelines and we ban accounts that do that, regardless of how wrong or annoying another comment is.

You also can't take HN threads into religious flamewar, and we ban accounts that do that as well, so please don't do that either.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: I should add that there's a fine factual comment struggling to get out of what you wrote there; had you edited out the personal and flamey bits, the comment would be a good contribution to the thread. Unfortunately the guidelines violations cause more harm than the factual information adds value.

Re: Oxford Professor Is Accused of Selling Ancient Texts

#69

Post by JAlexoid »

SkyBelow wrote: post #64
js2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The headline is factually correct. The contract was made in 2013 between Dr. Obbink and Hobby Lobby Stores, not between him and the museum, which didn't yet exist. The first sentence of the third paragraph reads: "Thirteen fragments from the collection were found in the Museum of the Bible, a Washington institution founded by Hobby Lobby’s evangelical Christian owners, the Green family." So the headline is correct an…

>The headline is factually correct. Factual correctness is not a defense against being misleading. It is quite easy to make factually correct statements that are also misleading. "$Person has never denied $HorribleAct." "$Person has never apologized for $HorribleAct." "$Person has never presented any evidence showing they didn't do $HorribleAct." You can effectively mad lib these with almost any combinations and it r…

The title is neither misleading, nor incorrect.

The professor got accused of illegally selling the documents to Hobby Lobby.

Re: Oxford Professor Is Accused of Selling Ancient Texts

#70

Post by nkurz »

driverdan wrote: post #60
driverdan wrote: post #26

> a big part of it is that they have "Bible" in their museum name, and that gets all the bigots out in arms. This is laughable considering Hobby Lobby is run by religious bigots.

To add to my comment, I know this is walking a fine line and I understand if the mods delete it. My point was that the Hobby Lobby owners have their own bias against non-Christians and implying that those who oppose them are bigots is wrong.

It's not a "fine line": it's unnecessarily offensive. Your overall point is fine, but the wording is not. Even if it's eventually delated, comments like this tear down the community that lots of us care about. Excuses that you are only doing harm because someone else caused harm first don't reduce the damage. Please continue to share your opinion, but start with the less offensive version.
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