Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently posted in the discussion thread for one of my columns at the Value Walk site:
Tempted to lie???? You lie constantly. Look at your latest post. You repeat the lie that you authored a study with Wade Pfau. That is a lie. You are merely mentioned in the credits along with other people and you are not listed as an author.
Your retirement plan was a well documented failure. You now try to cover that up by blaming other people and also lying. In fact, all people need to do is google your name and the word “lies” and they will see plenty.
Wade acknowledged me in the credits as having provided “inspiration” for the study because he based it all on my ideas. He followed my posts at the Bogleheads Forum, was fascinated by what I was saying and wrote to me asking if I would be willing to work with him to produce a study on Valuation-Informed Indexing. We worked together for 16 months, exchanging hundreds of e-mails.
Wade wrote all the words that appear in the study. He performed all the statistical tests. But I think it would be fair to say that the harder job BY FAR was to come up with the ideas that were tested. Wade deserves credit as co-author of the study. But I certainly deserve credit as co-author as well.
I have no problem with him only crediting me in the acknowledgments. I do not hold a Ph.D. in Economics. So I am not qualified to be officially listed as co-author. But now that Wade has agreed (in response to your threats to destroy his career) not to continue to promote the study or Valuation-Informed Indexing, I need to tell the story of how the study was produced. We need to have that study on the front page of the New York Times and the named co-author is no longer doing what it takes. As I promote the study and the Valuation-Informed Indexing concept that it tests, I need to be honest with people about how the study came to be produced.
I developed the ideas. Wade did great work testing them and proving their legitimacy. We are co-authors. He had no qualms whatsoever saying that in the days before you Goons threatened to send defamatory e-mails to employer. Wade credited me as the primary author in numerous e-mails. He never tried to hog full credit for the study. He said many times that he considered me the lead person behind the development of Valuation-Informed Indexing and that he believed that the shift from Buy-and-Hold to Valuation-Informed Indexing is the biggest advance that we have seen in the investing field in many, many years.
I look forward to working with Wade again. I believe that I will be working closely with both Wade AND with Jack Bogle following the next price crash.
We’ll see.
Rob
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