Part 2 of the saga: Professor Michael Eysenck (and the Rest): Give Me Back My Attentional-Probe-Paradigm

by Christos Halkiopoulos

I continue the story of how my intellectual property was stolen at London University by a leading group of psychology professors. This part includes the investigations by three different colleges of London University and others. The first and third parts of my story are available here and here.

From Birkbeck to the Royal Holloway, University of London

Michael Eysenck’s role in talking to the St. George’s group about my paradigm without my permission, and the way it led to the publication of the MacLeod, Mathews and Tata (1986) paper, had a devastating effect on our relationship. I never trusted him again with, predictably, disastrous effects on my prospects of finishing my PhD. But talking to a few colleagues about my research paradigm is not all that he did.

What I would learn later is that, while I was fighting to rectify his grave mistake of giving away my paradigm, in 1985 Michael Eysenck was presenting at an international conference, in front of an influential audience, my experimental work as his own. This was research that, as a UCL undergraduate, I had designed and implemented by collecting, analysing and discussing the data, all single-handedly; experimental work, supervised by Professor Norman Dixon, that I had submitted in my BSc dissertation in 1981, years before I even met Michael Eysenck.

The conference proceedings were published as a book edited by Charles D Spielberger et al. (1991, Hemisphere – now Taylor & Francis). This book included a chapter by Eysenck (1991) which I will refer to as the ‘Hemisphere chapter’.

Eysenck was no longer just a facilitator of others, he had himself become a plagiarist, while continuing to act as my PhD supervisor.

Eysenck had earlier discussed my experimental work, linking it to my name (e.g., Eysenck et al. 1987). The way Eysenck dealt with my research before starting to explicitly plagiarise it will be the focus of a future publication. Suffice to note here that Eysenck had presented the study and the attentional paradigm as mine in several publications, albeit not always accurately but often implying he had some role in it.

At some stage, perhaps when I left for Greece, uncertain as to whether I would be able to secure funds to complete my PhD studies, Michael Eysenck changed course and started associating his name more and more with my research, research with which he had had no involvement whatsoever. This process ended in his presenting my 1981 experiment, as well as the attentional probe paradigm, in publications that did not include my name at all (e.g. Eysenck, 1997).  

As mentioned above, all this is documented in other relevant articles, which will soon be published. Let it be noted here that three investigations, from two University institutions and one publisher, have already found Michael Eysenck guilty of inappropriate conduct in the way he has repeatedly reported my research as his own in his publications. Some of these investigations, and additional ones, have also been asked to address the use of my attentional probe paradigm by the St. George’s group and Eysenck’s involvement in all this (see later).  Note that while none of the investigations could deny the glaringly obvious, namely that Eysenck plagiarised my research, they tried to take back with one hand what they delivered by the other.

How could the investigators deny it?  By 2004, as noted, Eysenck himself had admitted as much in writing to me.  It would be useful to be reminded of his exact wording:

…I admit that I gave you insufficient credit when I wrote about your experiment.  It is true that your name was always associated with the study, but it is fair comment that my [sic] implication I exaggerated my non-existent role in the research itself.  Accordingly, I am sorry and must accept the basic rightness of what you say…

Email from M Eysenck, 24/06/2004.

All but one of the claims made here by Eysenck are true. He is, in effect, admitting that he plagiarised my research. What is not true, and this will become abundantly obvious below, is that my name was always associated with the study. It was not.

With my relationship with my supervisor in serious trouble, following the St. George’s incident, I went on pursuing my PhD research on my own. Without much help, and with reduced laboratory facilities, I turned to relevant theoretical and additional paradigm developing work. This included an exploration into ways to address interpretative biases in the processing of emotional information, advancing cognitive psychodynamics by explicitly viewing defences as cognitive skills and, related to all this, trying to chart the developmental trajectories of attentional and interpretive biases. An earlier interest of mine in the philosophy of mind, and the then emerging field of cognitive science, found its expression in my attempts to explore whether such work could help us understand at least some aspects of motivated irrationality.

Accordingly, I got interested in understanding such elusive phenomena as wishful thinking, akrasia and self-deception. In fact, at some stage I was teaching a whole course on the psychology of self-deception at Birkbeck. Lest it be thought that my aspirations in these domains were unrealistic, my research was modest in its grasp and, in the view of those who came to know about it, original and successful.  Although Eysenck did not share my wider interests, he did show a strong interest in my work on interpretative biases and cognitive bias learning. I would later realise that all these topics were being systematically explored by several researchers in the field, including Eysenck and the St. George’s group.

Despite my research’s remaining unsupervised, it had progressed enough by the beginning of the 1986 academic year for me to receive an official letter from the Registry which, among other things, was informing me that I could write up and submit my PhD.  Relevant correspondence with the College during that period included the following:

You are now free to write up – either independently without further enrolment or as a Continuing Research Student from October 1986 in which case a further fee will be due.

Letter from the Registry to me, 21/11/1986.

The relationship with my supervisor was by this stage completely destroyed. Meanwhile, Professor Eysenck had left for Royal Holloway University London (RHUL). I found out about Eysenck’s transfer much later as neither he, nor anybody else from the College, informed me about this move.

Following my exchanges with the departmental head, it was not clear to me what kind of supervision I would be receiving, or which type of PhD I would be submitting. Also, it soon became evident that, despite being the departmental head, he did not intend to do anything about the fact that I had been so badly let down by my supervisor and, therefore, by the College. I return to this later. Perhaps not his intention, but I recall being made to feel badly that I even mentioned that my work had been plagiarised and that Professor Eysenck was responsible.

At some stage it emerged that, if I stayed at Birkbeck, the new departmental head would become my new supervisor. This academic informed me that it was not his choice to supervise me, but he had to. From what I recall, he presented me with a ‘double bind’, or at least that is how I perceived it: I could not use any of the empirical research that had given rise to all those ‘issues’ with Professor Eysenck. When I suggested that a lot of my work was theoretical, he expressed serious doubts that a significantly theoretical PhD thesis would be successful. He recounted his ‘sleepless nights’ worrying about a PhD candidate of his who had submitted a mostly theoretical thesis in the past. Moreover, given the circumstances, including my troubles with Professor Eysenck, he could not think of anybody else who would be prepared to supervise me.

I did eventually join Professor Eysenck at RHUL.  That I ever did, given what had happened, needs more explaining than I can provide in the present context. Suffice it to note that, following a chance encounter with Professor Eysenck at Heathrow airport, and after I attended Michael Eysenck’s inaugural lecture at RHUL during which I witnessed him mentioning my name, I wrote to him expressing the desire to go on with my research, provided some funding was made available. The following is a quote from his response to my letter:

“…So far as becoming involved in the research programme is concerned, I am afraid there are no possibilities here at present. If funds were to become available at some point in the future, then it would be a different story. However, in view of the difficult times for research funding, the chances are probably not too good…”

Letter from Professor Eysenck, 12/12/89.

It is important to note that my having completed the years needed for paid/supervised research at Birkbeck, indeed that I was given the green light to write up and submit my thesis, was not taken into account at RHUL. I still had to register and pay normal fees.  It was my distinct impression that Professor Eysenck did not want me to continue with my PhD and that he was making the whole process very difficult for me.

With very mixed feelings, I transferred to RHUL sometime in 1992. But only to be faced with one more difficult situation. It was obvious Professor Eysenck would not accept a mostly theoretical thesis. So, it was no longer a situation where I simply had to just complete my thesis and submit it. During a detailed discussion on our first real meeting after years, he gave me the impression that I should not be revisiting any of my (troublesome) work with my paradigm. It all made sense later, of course, when I found out that he had by that time presented this work as his own. 

I tried to move towards my earlier suggestions of research on interpretative biases. But, along with the St. George’s group, Professor Eysenck had by now published on this.  He had never mentioned anything about interpretative biases before I told him about this line of research, which I was intensely pursuing myself. As written records show, I was at the time doing very systematic work on interpretative biases in the processing of threatening information. 

I was left with few options. It beggars belief that I was prepared to start anew on a series of experiments, based this time on my more recent theoretical work on attentional bias learning and unlearning and further attempts to formulate a theory of defences by viewing them as cognitive skills. But I wanted that PhD so much. As I said, I was left with no choice.  I also felt strongly that Professor Eysenck should be helping me given what had happened, because of him, in the past.

I was experiencing all this as some sort of unavoidable tragedy. Here I was, the inventor of a most successful and, by then, widely accepted as innovative, ingenious, and the like, experimental paradigm. The first to have offered conclusive evidence of attentional biases in the processing of threatening information and with a full theoretical account of how all these biases come about and much else besides.

Long gone were the days when I would provide Professor Eysenck with written proposals about half a dozen experiments at a time, all based on my paradigm!

And yet, in effect, here I was as somebody starting from scratch. Was I once again to be the crucible and ‘motivator’ of my supervisor’s research projects? And that is because the person who was, and had been my supervisor, had through his actions and inactions blocked the widest possible avenue to my getting a brilliant PhD. A married man by now, with children to take care of, on a lecturer’s salary, still hoping that some help and funding for my new ventures may be coming my way. None ever did. But finances were not a substantial obstacle anymore for me to continue.

I would have continued. I was preparing all the materials I needed. Written exchanges with Professor Eysenck bear witness to my determination to continue.  In fact, during this phase I arrived at some findings about how the four Weinberger personality types were appraising emotional materials that Professor Eysenck found very important and would keep asking me to publish a paper together as he had some similar findings himself.  Not that I would have made my data available to him.

As I said, despite all, I was prepared to do most of what Eysenck expected to get my PhD. And then something happened that even this steely determination of mine was tested to its limits. I came across that volume in the series STRESS AND ANXIETY published in 1991 by Spielberger and some other academics. It was based, as written in the Preface of this book, on the Conference on Stress and Emotion held in June 2-5 (1986) in Visegrad, Hungary. Looking at the contents I came across a chapter by Eysenck; what I called earlier the ‘Hemisphere chapter’. Reading this chapter (Trait Anxiety and Cognition) shocked me. Perhaps even more so than, when on my way back home that September afternoon in 1985, I had discovered the manuscript of the St. George’s group paper that was presenting my attentional probe paradigm as somebody else’s invention.

This time round, Professor Eysenck was basing a whole chapter on my own experimental work. As already mentioned, this work had been completed and submitted as part of my BSc dissertation in 1981.  He was presenting my 1981 experiment as his own, with me getting a parenthetical reference (as the originator of the paradigm), and the reader getting the impression of his massive contribution to the research detailed in that chapter.

Professor Eysenck was preparing and delivering this paper, which was done in June 1986, while I was around as his PhD student at Birkbeck. In fact, during a period, I was fighting to resolve the issues raised by his earlier failing, the way he had facilitated the plagiarism by the St. George’s group. I could no longer go on working with this person. The level of disregard he was showing for my work and my well-being, and his total lack of academic integrity could not but place a full stop to anything I would ever have wished to have to do with him.

When exactly did I leave this PhD? I have no specific date. All I know is that I paid RHUL for a couple of years. Although I left RHUL, it would be several years, indeed decades, before it dawned on me that I would not be returning to this type of research. Whatever doors seemed to be opening (some enthusiastically) after I left RHUL would shut abruptly, as soon as potential supervisors, or research collaborators, became aware of the problems I had had with Eysenck and the St. George’s group. It was around then that I recalled what an academic who had been my tutor during my UCL undergraduate years had advised me when I told him what was happening with Eysenck. He had said: “If you still want a PhD Christos go to the USA”!

One wonders why nobody tried to help me with the problems I had at Birkbeck. Were they all under the ‘spell’ of a persuasive narrative, articulated by a very well-known academic operating at the highest levels of professional and personal integrity? And, on the other hand, who was I, a mere underling in the hierarchy?  I am not in a position to answer such questions. What I do know is that two academics, both UK psychology professors and both close to Professor Eysenck (one of them, still a psychology professor at Birkbeck, in an email I have) have told me that I was not the only one who had ideas and work plagiarised by Professor Eysenck.

Investigations

To date, three investigations have been completed by University of London institutions, the Royal Holloway, Birkbeck and St. George’s. In 2005, some years after I had abandoned my PhD, I finally lodged a complaint against Eysenck at both Birkbeck College and the Royal Holloway.

On the 5^th of June 2005 I wrote identical letters to Professor David Latchman (Master of Birkbeck) (see here) and Professor Stephen Hill (Principal of the Royal Holloway).

I numbered two complaints that I wanted them to investigate:

1.  Professor Eysenck is responsible for the stealing of my work by Professor Mathews and his colleagues.

Professor Eysenck helped a group of researchers led by Professor Andrew Mathews (then at St George’s Psychology Department) to steal what was at that stage by far the most important part of my research (I am well aware of several euphemistic expressions for the verb ‘to steal’ and I have used them all without much success in the past).

2. Professor Eysenck in numerous publications and conferences misappropriated my work and grossly misled his readers and audiences about his (non-existent) contribution to it.

As if being responsible for Prof Mathews’s stealing my work were not enough, Professor Eysenck in numerous publications and conference presentations explicitly and without any justification whatsoever associated himself with my work.  That is, work completed years before I ever met him or before he ever knew anything about [it] was presented in such a way as to intentionally create the impression that he had played a very significant part in it.”

(Quoted from the letter addressed to Professors David Latchman and Stephen Hill,5/6/2005).

The first response by both colleges was to refuse to investigate. Birkbeck refused on the grounds that Eysenck had moved to the Royal Holloway, and the Royal Holloway refused on the grounds that a long time had passed since the events had taken place. Eventually, RHUL agreed to carry out a limited investigation. Birkbeck would carry out theirs many years after that. I resubmitted my complaint to Birkbeck (in its original 2005 form) in 2021, this time under the auspices of the United Kingdom Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) having belatedly realised that such historical complaints could indeed be launched.

Royal Holloway University of London Investigation

Findings of this investigation included the following:

There is insufficient attribution of credit within the 1991 Hemisphere article: STRESS & EMOTION: Anxiety, Anger & Curiosity…The College apologises to you for any distress or offence resulting from the failure fully to attribute credit to you within the Hemisphere article…While I am not able to disclose details, I can confirm that, following this conclusion, the College has taken appropriate action in accordance with the College Statutes and Regulations.

Letter from RHUL, 20/3/2007.

Ignoring that this investigation took so long to report (nearly two years), and that it refused to investigate both complaints, there is plenty to welcome in its findings. Apologising for ‘insufficient attribution of credit’ may sound relatively anodyne, but it is an admission that plagiarism had taken place. Eysenck presents in the Hemisphere chapter in great detail my 1981 experiment as his. As already discussed above, he describes fully my procedure, reports my findings and my statistical analysis and uses throughout much from my theoretical framework. This it is an example of blatant and massive plagiarism. 

I want to make two additional points here:

First, responding to my request that Eysenck comments on the way he presented my research in the Hemisphere article, Eysenck refused to do so on the grounds that he did not have the relevant book in his bookcase! I had sent them a copy, but that should not have been necessary as Eysenck was the author. I was at loss as I did not know how to view his response; cynical or pathetic?

My second point: In the Hemisphere article I do get a mention, a brief parenthetical one but it is there to identify me as the originator of the paradigm (the attentional probe paradigm) used in ‘his’ study. Perhaps, because of this mentioning of my name, this is the place to report that whereas this article carries a most serious case of plagiarism it is not even the worst. A worse one appears in a publication I have already mentioned, his 1997 book Anxiety and Cognition: A Unified Theory. In this publication there is no mentioning of my name at all. If one wanted to touch ground with a publication that does somehow mention my name, albeit a publication that still does not tell the whole truth, one would have to first be alerted that plagiarism was taking place and then follow through some of the publications cited.

In fact, I was not aware of the 1997 publication when I lodged my complaint. Eysenck, and therefore Royal Holloway, obviously knew about it but they said nothing. This 1997 book was republished in paperback form in 2014. Having been found by his own employer guilty of misappropriating my experimental work in his 1991 Hemisphere chapter, the paperback edition offered Michael Eysenck an excellent opportunity to put the record straight. He did not change a single word.

The Royal Holloway investigation suffers from additional shortcomings. They did apologise, but what about? About any “distress or offense” resulting from Eysenck’s failure fully to attribute credit to me. That the discovery of that chapter, where Eysenck was plagiarising my work while being my PhD supervisor, resulted in my decision to finally give up pursuing a pioneering PhD, seems to have been judged as unimportant. And, as mentioned above, the investigation right from the beginning refused to even touch Complaint 1, as what had happened with the St. George’s group, they argued, predated Eysenck’s arrival at their institution.

Moreover, they claimed that “The insufficient attribution of credit does not amount to grossly misleading others” (from the same RHUL letter; 20 March 2007).  I could not possibly accept this. I challenge Professor Eysenck to indicate what is his and what is mine in the conference paper he presented and the Hemisphere chapter that followed.

I have since asked several colleagues and friends to read the relevant chapter and one after the other they all were misled. Grossly so, as they thought that Professor Eysenck was discussing his ideas, which he had tested by carrying out his experiment, had himself analysed the findings from this experiment of his, and had drawn his own conclusions.

And to think I was a fee-paying student. I requested that they donate the money they got from me to a charity. They did not.

Setting my misgivings with the RHUL investigation aside, we can conclude that this investigation confirmed that Professor Michael Eysenck had plagiarised my research while acting as my PhD supervisor.

Birkbeck, University of London Investigation

In 2021, the investigation by Birkbeck, University of London reached a similar conclusion. Its investigating panel, found that

 …misconduct did occur because Eysenck initially associated himself more with your work than he should have done and he did not act in a way to reduce the impact of this on you at that time.

Letter from Birkbeck College, 19/11/2021.

Moreover, Birkbeck reported that this finding of theirs was:

 Fully in line with the previous investigation into this case undertaken by RHUL in 2005.

Additionally, the investigation found that:

the College failed in its duty of care to you as a student by not picking up this failing either through the complaints processes you initiated at the College in 1986 or at the point of the RHUL investigation”.

Letter from Birkbeck College, 19/11/2021.

Again, a lot that is welcome in this investigation. But it also suffers from serious shortcomings.  Importantly, the entire report does not contain a single word relevant to complaint 1. This is really mystifying and disturbing in equal measures. While at Birkbeck I did not even know that Eysenck himself was plagiarising my research. That is something that emerged later when I had joined him at the Royal Holloway.  So, they did not address at all the major complaint relevant to them and, as they knew very well, what was crucial for me if I ever were to claim my paradigm back.

I read their report in disbelief. How could the College not even respond to the first part of my complaint? Namely that Professor Eysenck was responsible for the stealing of my work by Professor Mathews and his colleagues. It must simply appear too inflammatory for Birkbeck to admit that one of their own misappropriated, in multiple ways, a student’s work.

I challenged the College on this. They simply responded, and kept repeating, that their investigating panel had addressed all my complaints and had looked at all the relevant evidence. Interestingly, they had asked for several documents relevant to investigating precisely that first complaint.

I also wrote to Birkbeck’s Vice-Principal (Master), Professor Latchman, to complain about this omission. Even though I accompanied my message to him with all the relevant evidence, he responded to claim he had full confidence that all my complaints had been fully investigated and that there was nothing wrong with, or missing from, the investigation.

It was painfully frustrating to see all these intelligent people trying to gaslight me into accepting the blatantly untrue. I was making a simple logical point. I was not disagreeing with any specific findings regarding complaint 1; only that there was no single word about it in their report. Actually, they prevented me from complaining any further by officially writing in their report that, in the absence of new evidence, such complaining will be viewed as ‘vexatious’.  One of the excuses was that the report was not more detailed as it had to be brief. I don’t see why it should and not addressing at all the main complaint was not the most acceptable way to shorten it.

I have additional problems with this report.

They called Eysenck’s misconduct ‘minor’. That is, repeatedly publicising as your own your PhD student’s research; in general behaving towards him in ways that make it virtually impossible for him to ever finish his PhD; and merely observing him suffer intensely as a result, can be described as a ‘minor misconduct’.  I asked them to send me their ‘seriousness of misconduct scale’.

Moreover, he quote above, relating to their failure in their duty of care, is preceded by the following expression:

“Whilst acknowledging that times have changed the panel also found that, by today’s standards…” (Birkbeck’s report, as above).

So, when it was all happening it was apparently normal practice at Birkbeck, an institution that traditionally has most prided itself on its service to students, for supervisors to blatantly plagiarise their students pioneering work (not to mention the totally ignored complaint 1). Incredible and shocking!

Are all these logically flawed statements the outcome of feeling cornered because the simplest route, carrying out a genuine investigation and reporting it objectively, had blatantly been bypassed?

One would imagine that I would, by now, have run out of objections to the way Birkbeck investigated my complaints. Not so.  They unilaterally proclaimed their report to be “confidential”. I am pursuing a campaign for years to claim back misappropriated research; misappropriated in the most public of ways, by Eysenck and the St. George’s group. And what do they do? They declare the report of their investigation “confidential”.

When I challenged them about this, they responded by claiming that was to protect both parties. The confidentiality solely protects Eysenck’s and Birkbeck’s reputation and attempts to fully nullify any attempts on my part to claim my work back. Hasn’t this been the raison d’être of my endeavours throughout? When I explained to them that it is logically required for it to be public, otherwise it is useless to me, they claimed that this was not something in the public interest. I informed them that I do not intend to keep it confidential.

Finally, the report is inaccurate in another respect as well.  They write that misconduct had occurred because Eysenck “initially” associated himself more with my work than he should have done.  Plagiarism, such as it took place initially, was minimal. It flourished later, starting (to my knowledge) with the Hemisphere article. Are they aware of publications I do not know about, or is this just one more example of the lack of logical coherence and erroneous statements, so characteristic of their entire report?

Again, my objections to the Birkbeck investigation’s report notwithstanding, they at the very least confirmed the Royal Holloway’s finding that Eysenck had indeed plagiarised my work.

Francis and Taylor Investigation

Francis and Taylor, Michael Eysenck’s publishers, have also carried out a similar investigation. Here are their findings and their proposed action plan:

“In line with the decision made by Royal Holloway in 2007, we would like to add the following correction notices to Anxiety the Cognitive Perspective and Stress and Emotion Volume 14. 

For Anxiety the Cognitive Perspective: 

Correction notice: In chapter 4, on pages 70-71, Christos Halkiopoulos should have been credited for his role in the design and execution of the experiment discussed in Eysenck, M. W. (1991 a). Trait anxiety and cognition. In C. D. Spielberger, I. G. Sarason, Z. Kulczar, and J. Van Heck (Eds.), Stress and Emotion, Vol. 14. London: Hemisphere. 

For Stress and Emotion Volume 14: 

Correction notice: In chapter 6, on pages 78-83, Christos Halkiopoulos should have been credited for his role in the design and execution of the experiment discussed. 

The correction notices will be included in the preliminary pages of each book (for future printings and electronic copies) and also on each book’s individual product page on our website”.

(Email to me from Taylor and Francis, dated 15/4/2021)

So, Francis and Taylor have accepted RHUL’s findings and decided to add those correction notes in their publications. The correction note would indicate my role “in the design and execution of the experiment discussed” by Eysenck in a couple of publications.

But precisely what was my role?  Or, for that matter, Eysenck’s role? Let’s be absolutely clear here. My role in the design and execution of that experiment was to contribute 100% to all aspects of it. Eysenck’s contribution was 0%. As I wrote to Francis and Taylor, he did not just exaggerate his contribution. Recall here, Eysenck’s own use of this word – exaggeration – in the email above, where he admitted to me his own guilt.  But is it not the case that whatever you multiply 0 by you still, and forever, end up with 0? You cannot exaggerate non-existence. You can only imaginatively create the false impression of something that does not exist. That is called fraud.

Moreover, who is the audience of this note? Generations of students and researchers have read all those papers and books by Eysenck and have formed their views. Who is going to alert them to search on Amazon and the like, for such a note? And while there, exactly what are they told? Remember Eysenck’s most extreme example of plagiarism of my experiment is not even in the two publications addressed by Taylor and Francis but, as noted earlier, in his 1997 book Anxiety and Cognition: A Unified Theory, also published by them.

I challenge everybody to read the relevant pages (Eysenck, 1997; pp. 15-16), indeed the whole book, and tell me whether they can guess that the experiment described there was designed and caried out by me. Or, that I had any involvement with it whatsoever. Please also look at the diagram and compare it to the one I have in my BSc dissertation. If you have access to Eysenck (1991), which is addressed by the Francis and Taylor investigation, also have a look at the results table on page 79 and compare them with the results in my BSc dissertation. Now remind yourself, that this was submitted to UCL in 1981 and that Eysenck first heard of my research in 1983. Finally, re-read the proposed action plan by Francis and Taylor.

So, Francis and Taylor provide Michael Eysenck with a publication platform on which to repeatedly resort to plagiarism.  In fact, it is their publications that have provided most of the evidence for the RHUL and the Birkbeck investigations.

I am not finished with them.  In an email which summarises for my benefit their final position they write:

Although in our view these references clearly outline your role in this work, as detailed in my previous emails, we have offered to add correction notices explicitly crediting you on our website product pages of all three books, as well as adding this notice to future print and electronic copies. After you declined this resolution, Professor Eysenck agreed to rework the text in all three publications to exclude all reference to, or discussion of, the experiment and paradigm that you claim is your copyright. You also declined this resolution. These are the mechanisms available to us to ensure the scholarly record is accurate, and they still stand should you wish to pursue either option.

Email from Francis and Taylor to me, 27/6/2021.

So, Eysenck’s publishers think that those correction notes (see above) are not only enough but also generous as, according to them, the original publications themselves “clearly outline [my] role”. So, for them, and in a self-contradictory manner, there has never been an issue.  For them, the matter is closed. I also asked them to tell me what good would it do to me for Eysenck to just rewrite his publications and omit any reference to my work. Anyway, why massacre your creation if all is fine about it?

How about just attaching my name to my work instead?

To be continued.

© Christos Halkiopoulos, 2022

c.halkiopoulos@gmail.com