Read resorts to attacking Lynley Hood personally, rather than criticising what she has written	Comments on each paragraph
The Herald August 12, 2003 Ellis Case by John Read
Three days after reading that Otago University awarded Lynley Hood an honorary doctorate, Jeffrey Masson and Emma Davies publish the first balanced analysis of the many biases in Hood's book.	John Read does not identify any of the supposedly "many" biases that he refers to.
How could Otago University's examiners have missed all the misrepresentations and omissions identified by Drs Masson and Davies? Fortunately it was a doctorate for literature not science. A good story does not need to fit the facts.	John Read does not hesitate to make direct personal attacks. He has no critique of the substance of the book, but tries to dismiss it sarcastically as "a good story" implying that it does not fit the facts.
Those of us who research the incidence and effects of child abuse, or work with those subjected to abuse, have watched nervously while this blatantly one-sided book generated a mass hysteria sucking in all sorts of usually sensible people.	John Read does not detail what the "one side" he refers to.
Our major anxiety has been that the publicity given to the Colman-Hood campaign to discredit children's testimony will make it harder for abused children to tell anyone what happened to them and to be believed.	John Read misrepresents the motivations for publication of the children's testimonies. He does not explain how simply making the testimonies public somehow "discredits them"
Now we learn that, for Barry Colman at least, this is a goal of the campaign. It was reported that he sincerely hopes children will be put off. Signatories to the understandable but misguided Colman-Hood petition may want to make their personal positions clear. Do they, too, want children to suffer in silence?	John Read, characteristically, provides no details of where he has supposedly "learned" the smear he perpetrates.