Value Investing World

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Nassim Taleb withdraws endorsement of Rolf Dobelli

Withdrawal of endorsements/testimonials and apologies to my readers: I owe my readers an apology for endorsing a man based on limited information. I have known Dobelli for a while and never read him as his work was in German. I was under the impression that he was writing a book on cognitive biases from a novelist's point of view... I trusted what he said I gave him an endorsement thinking he would do a good job as a novelist (I was careful to endorse the person, not the book). I also introduced him to my agent and pushed for his book to be published. But I was completely shocked when, after I got a copy of the book at his New York book party, I opened the English version of the book. I saw passages from my work transcribed, examples rapidly copied, with small modifications... not a novelist's approach. Sadly, it took a decade to discover the nature of a man whose works I had never read.

Then I googled "via negativa" and saw he rewrote sections of my manuscript in Zeit without attribution. So I withdraw all comments made about him, his work, and, of course, his ethics. And I resign from Zurich Minds, Berlin Minds, and all other think tanks Dobelli asked me to join.

This seems to be the beginning. It appears that there are 5 unreferenced passages from Chabris and Simon's The Invisible Gorilla.

Joe at 9/12/2013
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