Thomson-Scientific admits wrongdoing

Well, almost but not quite. I received the following very suspicious-looking email from the general counsel of Thomson-Scientific (background info on this matter is here, here, here, and here). Don't anyone try charging that this email is a forgery -- there is no way I could forge this email because the header is provided by my ISP:
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Dear Mr Fafarman
I am the General Counsel for Thomson Scientific.
I understand from Allison Hagan, our Director of PR and Communications, that you have raised a complaint relating to our inclusion of the 'Panda's Thumb' website in the index of the Web of Knowledge. We have carefully reviewed your complaint but, for the reasons explained to you by Kathleen O'Donnell, we will not be removing the website from that index.
We regard this as the end of this matter. We have instructed Allison and the members of our customer support team neither to take your calls nor respond to your emails.
If you continue to harrass Allison, the Customer Support team or any other employees of Thomson Scientific, we will have recourse to all legal remedies available to us.
Yours sincerely
Jane Reeves
General Counsel Thomson Scientific

As for your statement, "We regard this as the end of this matter," my answer is that "it ain't over until the fat lady sings," you blustering shyster.

The threat to sue me is of course an idle threat -- I can't be sued just for exercising my legal right of protesting the company's practices. The email's defensiveness and attempt at intimidation does raise some very big suspicions, though. I of course cannot compel any Thomson-Scientific employee to respond to my communications, but why would the company deny its employees the discretion to respond to my communications? That is very fishy -- it implies that the company is afraid that the employees might expose some wrongdoing.

Anyway, one thing I want is information about any government funding that the ISI Web of Knowledge may have received. This is something I have a right to know, and if Thomson-Scientific won't tell me, I hope to get this information by means of a Freedom of Information Act request. Our tax dollars should not support Thomson-Scientific's condoning of arbitrary censorship of our views, and particularly not the condoning of the abominable practice of IP address blocking, which is hardly even censorship because it often blocks comments from a large number of people who share the same ISP proxy IP address.

As for other points in the email:

. . . you have raised a complaint relating to our inclusion of the 'Panda's Thumb' website in the index of the Web of Knowledge.

That was only part of my complaint -- my complaint was much broader than that.

We have carefully reviewed your complaint but, for the reasons explained to you by Kathleen O'Donnell . . .

Kathleen O'Donnell did not explain any reasons at all -- she did not answer any of the points that I raised. Also, O'Donnell edits the index only in the areas of agriculture, biology, and environmental science, and there was no evidence that she was also speaking for the editors in other areas of science.

. . . we will not be removing the website from that index.

I did not expressly request that Panda's Thumb be removed from the ISI Web of Knowledge index.

If you continue to harrass Allison, the Customer Support team or any other employees of Thomson Scientific, we will have recourse to all legal remedies available to us.

One must start doing something before one can continue doing it. I did not "harass" those people -- I did not telephone them with any great frequency, and in many cases they did not respond to my telephone messages.

Also, I asked that this matter be brought to the attention of Thomson law affiliates Thomson-West et al., who sponsor the Law Professors Blogs network, but there is no evidence that this was done.

In a way I am glad that Thomson-Scientific brought this matter to a head quickly rather than string me along for a long time.

Anyway, folks, please keep those protest emails coming -- they are obviously having an effect.
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