Battle of the Bailey reviewers

One of the more intriguing footnotes to this whole J. Michael Bailey mess regarding his defamatory book The Man Who Would Be Queen has been the Battle of the Amazon Reviews.

Censorship at Amazon

Reviews of Bailey's book have exposed numerous problems and practices at Amazon, most notably censorship of negative reviews and promotion of shill reviews.

Good reviews get a pass, but many reviewers submitting negative reviews have written to say they were censored by Amazon, thus driving up the rating on this book.

A reader writes:

I spent over a month of fighting with Amazon to get them to post my review.

Amazon is systematically censoring negative reviews. You have to follow their rules precisely to get things posted and even then people may have to fight. I advise anyone trying to post a review to followup with an e-mail if it is not posted within a week. And then if it is not posted, it is key to ask for the supervisor in charge of book reviews and demand that it be posted (lest they be acused of censoring, which they are definitely definitely doing)

This reader's review was one of the 34 suppressed in the purge described below.

Amazon purges 34 negative reviews

In early March 2004, Amazon listed 80 customer reviews of Bailey's book.

See a screen shot of the page indicating 80 reviews.

Overnight, Amazon purged 33 reviews and the book moved up to a 3-star rating:

By March 10, Amazon had removed 34 customer reviews from the review section, including several from famous transsexual writers and scholars, and even a Top 500 Amazon reviewer (Geoff Puterbaugh). All but one of these reviews gave the book the worst numerical rating possible. I have marked censored reviews in red in the table below.

The net effect of this raised the book's average rating a full point and left readers with the impression that the debate about this book is evenly divided.

Because they are in the business of selling books, it is in Amazon's interest to minimize negative reviews.

What we are seeing is a new phenomenon called “Amazon-bombing,” where shill reviewers try to manipulate ratings, followed by surgical strikes by Amazon itself against negative reviews.

Why this matters

Book publishers and authors are learning more and more about how to improve sales by manipulating Amazon. In fact, it is something Amazon encourages. Right below an author's Amazon Sales Rank is an invitation: "(Publishers and authors: improve your sales)"

Publishers increasingly use these unconfirmed reviews edited by an unnamed editor as evidence about a book's reception. Joseph Henry Press Executive Editor Stephen Mautner cites Amazon reviews in his 24 June 2003 open letter about Bailey's book:

"As of June 13, 2003 there were 27 1-star (lowest) ratings, and 11 5-star (highest) ratings, with only 5 in-between."

Since Amazon has rewritten history by removing 18 of the reviews he cites, Mautner needs to revise his letter:

"As of June 13, 2003 there were 9 1-star (lowest) ratings, and 11 5-star (highest) ratings, with only 5 in-between."

This new statistic suggests that the world is evenly split on this book. That does not reflect the 1300+ signatures gathered in a few days from people who protested the book, or the consensus of almost every professional organization that deals with gender variance.

Clearly, Amazon needs to be more transparent in the process, as do publishing trade groups like Lambda Literary Foundation. These organizations are covering book promotion with a façade of objectivity and editorial rigor that simply does not exist.

As I have said all along, this is being waged as a war of propaganda and not a science fight. Once again, we have more evidence.

Amazon reviews:

http://tinyurl.com/2js8p

Hundreds of negative Bailey reviews in the form of signatures:

http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Bailey/Signatures/Signature%20List.htm

The Science of "Amazon-Bombing" and Shill Reviews

Abstract

We rated Amazon reviews for Shill Factor (SF), which was determined based on:

1. association with author
2. excessively high ranking in comparion to average (over two-thirds gave worst review possible)
3. gushing prose two orders or more of magnitude beyond standard review

Background

Soon after the book came out, Professor Lynn Conway posted an unfavorable review, after which Bailey recruited several friends/colleagues to write shill reviews to shore up his ever-shrinking rating.

These shill reviewers barely got his rating up out of the worst rated category. Removing only the eight blatant shill reviews brings the book well under a 2.0 rating and back into the worst rating territory.

The shill reviewers include:

Seth Roberts: UC Berkeley psychologist who has done seminar series with Bailey in the past.

Bradley M. Cooke: another UC Berkeley psychologist who works on brain sexual dimorphism. Apparently now at Oregon National Primate Research Center

S. Marc Breedlove (breedsm): yet another UC Berkeley psychologist who works on brain sexual dimorphism. Teacher of Cooke's.

Anne Lawrence (uncredited): the most vocal self-identified proponent of "autogynephilia."

Ray Blanchard: Made up the word "autogynephilia."

Khytam Dawood: Studied under Bailey and does genetics work. Coauthor with Bailey.

Steven J Gaulin: Orthographically-challenged anthropologist at the University of Pittsburgh and a co-investigator and co-author with Bailey several years ago.

Bailey, J. Michael; Gaulin, Steven; Agyei, Yvonne; 1994. Effects of gender and sexual orientation on evolutionarily relevant aspects of human mating psychology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 1081-89. Northwestern press release

Several other anonymous reviews gave the highest rating possible. We'll give these the benefit of the doubt, though see the notes below the table.

Table 1. Reviews

blue = review by friend/coworker or with high Shill Factor (SF).

purple = possible shill review/additional data

red = removed by Amazon March 2004

* A reader writes: "I really believe, but have no way to prove it, that the April 24 rave review from Austin Texas was by David Buss, psychology prof at UT Austin and a shill reviewer for the Academies Press. Not surprisingly, Cooke's Amazon review cites 'many other well-respected scientists (including Simon LeVay, Bill Byne, Marc Breedlove, David Buss, Ken Zucker and Ray Blanchard).' Now there's a group of guys for you."

** Please see my correspondence with Kendra Blewitt for more on this high rating

*** Please see my correspondence with Kathleen Becker for more on this high rating

Conclusions

We determined excessive SF ratings in blue reviews. Removal of these shill review ratings bring the Bailey book back down near the worst rating possible, rather than the second-worst rating possible.

Unfortunately, Bailey was also able to get shill reviews in professional publications, which will be discussed in an upcoming article.

Conclusion: Amazon is easily manipulated in favor of authors and sales.