Interesting. Two days in a row, once on the old blog and once on the new, my post on the Jorge Cortell situation has attracted comments by individuals claiming that he has been discredited as some sort of fraud who faked his credentials. Of course, the comments have exactly the same text as their lead, making me think “astroturf” first, and “invalid argument” second.
Here’s the text of the comments: you decide…
This Jorge Cortell guy has lost all creditability in Spain after spanish bloggers found out that his entire CV is fake. He doesn’t even have a bachelor’s degree.
http://www.acam.es/noticias_detalle.php?id=858
Comment by jasmin@yahoo.com — 06.14.2005 @ 10:22 amThis Jorge Cortell guy has lost all creditability in Spain after spanish bloggers found out that his entire CV is fake. He doesn’t even have a bachelor’s degree.
Use Babelfish to translate the spanish websites.
http://www.acam.es/noticias_detalle.php?id=858
http://fraude-cortell.blogspot.com
Here is a collection of websites on him since May 2005, basically everything since May 22 have been saying that he is a fraud.
http://piezas.bandaancha.st/docs/cortell.html
The spanish edition of wikipedia is preparing to kill Cortell’s entry because of his fake CV fiasco.
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Cortell
Comment by tony320@ibm.com 06.15.05 @ 7:15 am | Edit This
This seems like a concentrated campaign to me. The comments come a day apart, and my referrer logs indicate that they cme from people just googling “Jorge Cortell” … Plus, both comments come from the exact same IP address hooked to an ISP in Toronto, Canada. So, Jasmin and Tony, what’s in it for you?
All of the arguments I see in these articles basically say that he went to a community college and left the word “community” off his CV, just like (I imagine) millions of job-seekers in the US. In my opinion, UPV hired Cortell to teach there, thus approving his credentials. Any serious University administrator/hiring committee with any dignity at all makes a phone call or two to check out an aspiring lecturer. (Stop laughing, faculty…)
Even if Cortell had faked his whole resume and UPV hadn’t caught it before the hired him, he taught there for years. Not once or twice, but years. And so regardless of the man’s resume, the University censored an instructor and forced him to resign. The story has not changed.
Here’s Jorge’s CV as he’s posted it with visual evidence in an attempt to confirm his history, although it obviously falls short of proving he’s earned any degrees.
Here’s the barrapunto entry (Spanish Slashdot) on the topic.
And here’s Jorge’s side of the story, in English.
If this entry attracts more astroturf comments with the same lead text, I will let the comments stand as proof that there’s something funny going on…
[UPDATE: Thanks to Jorge Cortell for the link. I’ll need to wait for my Spanish-speaking wife to confirm my translation, but it seems like the good professor Cortell has his tinfoil hat fitted rather tightly at the moment. Yo tambien. But seriously, I think there’s a large gulf between a calculated campaign to discredit someone and a prevalence of idiots. Some might argue that the vast number of idiots in the world in itself is a conspiracy brewed up by some gnarly evolutionary twist, which is why I encourage intelligent people to reproduce early and often.]
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Comments
8 responses to “Jorge Cortell Redux”
The university shares a lot of blame as well. Offically, Jorge Cortell “taught” under this “professional” program at UPV.
http://www.mag.upv.es/infoepp.html
It is a program designed for people already working to study on weekends or in the summer — the university gives you a “certificate of attendence” that does not have much academic meaning.
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=es_en&trurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.mag.upv.es%2ftitepp.html
The sad part is that the university probably knows about his CV problems, but he is “famous” in Spain (if you kept on saying P2P is legal — you will get famous) — and his fame attracts these weekend course attendees (which brings in good money).
So it’s a not “real” course that is taught by not a “real” professor — all ok’ed by the university because it brings in money.
[Ed.: Note that this comment is the third from the same IP address under a different name – take this concentrated effort with a grain of salt. – Ryan]
[…] es que esto lo hagan a nivel internacional, en una campaña organizada, como denuncia este blogger: ——————— Here’s the text of the comments: you decide… Th […]
me parece una vergüenza que la sgae, la riia y los gibiernos y entidades corruptas hagan esto a este hombre.
[Ed.: This roughly translates as “It seems to me a shame that the SGAE, RIAA, and other government agencies and corrput entities have done this to this man.” Of course, the link from the commenter’s name went straight to porn, the IP is anonymized, and a few things are misspelled, making it look like comment spam. Pero que se yo? – Ryan]
ok, lets have a look at some facts, the reality, about the posts from the same ip, probably they come from telefonica, that uses hidden-cache, some areas come out from the same ip. I dont think you can “fully understand” the replies that Cortell did about his CV. And you are falling for the “he is laying” kind of argument. I just hope that the rest of your ideas arent like this. I´ve been online for quite a while, and the manipulation of the media in spain is a disease in our everyday life, but in us is even worst. You just need to watch some local news. So dont take everything “as is comes” barrapunto is known to be a place where bullshit get together and they love flaming.
gnd / Journalist 😀
gnd –
I’m trying not to make any judgments about Cortell’s CV – I’m not buying everything he says about it – my crap detector works just as well in Spanish as it does in English.
Regarding the comments coming from the same IP address with identical text – I usually find that ISPs with dynamic IPs don’t use the same one twice for anything in particular, and it seems the odds of this ISP using the same one twice in 24 hours to comment on the same blog…well frankly, I don’t buy it.
I am fully aware of the nature of Barrapunto, having read the English-language Slashdot for a while now. I cite it here as a source precisely because it offers all sorts of opinions.
I will take your advice and look into what some of the local papers in Valencia y Madrid have to say about Cortell.
Thanks – Ryan
Ya hubo un conocido caso de la misma índole (seguro que más, unos no los se, otros no se han conocido y otros no me acuerdo), creo que muchos lo conocerán:
Bertrand Russell
El motivo, decir lo que pensaba, con los años se ha visto quienes estaban equivados.
Como siempre los necios jodiendo la marrana.
Some time ago there was a similar issue with a university professor (there’s been more cases in history, some I’dont know about, some weren’t know at all, and some I do not remeber), I’m sure that many people has heard of Bertrand Russell.
Injured and fired from NY University for saying what he thought, time has put everyone in its place.
Today, as always, stupid fools pissing off the brilliant minds.
No, the dinamic, ip thing its that some areas of spain, mainly telefonica-net come out, even if they look dinamic, from the same host, do some research on that.
Acoso y derribo? Conspiración? Ni lo se ni me importa
Hace 15 días alguien publicó un comentario en una entrada anterior, Jorge Cortell, crónica de una persecución, que contenía un simple link a http://www.acam.es/noticias_detalle.php?id=858, una página de la ACAM donde se explica que Jorge Cortell no tie…