This open letter to the Springer Editors has been emailed to the editors in response to a chapter that included offensive language and highly problematic claims about deaf communities and signed languages
https://t.co/2r9GEez5Ic

cc: @SpringerEng @SpringerNature

Thank you to all who contributed, gave feedback and signed, which are too many to be tagged 😳! About 200 signatures. AND over the weekend AND during these apocarevolutiondemic days?!? Wow it’s things like these that keep me working...
Along with sharing the open letter which I hope can be the start of a template of a more general letter that can be re-used in similar cases, which hopefully are few and far between, and thanking everyone who co-signed, I also wanted to highlight a few things…
Work w the signed language communities must be done by or w the communities themselves. I invite the authors to reach out to their local communities, such as work spearheaded by @alimchandani, https://t.co/jkTED650jx, an accessible Resource & Innovation Centre of the Deaf, India
There are tons of resources about doing work with signed language communities as well as discussion about how such work should be led by the communities themselves. To start with @SLLS ethics statement (https://t.co/S0qaWCeOwJ). (ASL sign "community" from https://t.co/LaJSCNWSPr)
Harris, Holmes & Mertens’ 2009 Research Ethics in Sign Language Communities (ASL version https://t.co/kWJhT5FJ7h) among other chapters and articles, & Manual for Sign Language Work within Development Cooperation (https://t.co/yS8NxXPShd) ... everyone add your preferred ref here!
One of my favorite researchers @BenBraithwaite recently tweeted... “structural inequalities of North-South academia, extractive research methods, inaccessible publication practices, etc are part of the problem, and perhaps part of the solution…
Deaf researchers from the South should be able to forge careers in their own countries, informing research discourses, training, and calling out this crap. The barriers to this are huge & deeply connected to the ways in which academic money and power are hoarded in the North”
That pretty much caps up the very reason why I make sure my work is accessible (online, captioned, alt-text, not overly technical, etc)
As @ThomasPeachLib eloquently said, this is not cancel culture but members of the communities & allies protesting work that shouldn't have gotten past peer-review & “doesn't deserve the time of a published refutation which would elevate it to a category of acceptable discourse”
Thanks everyone for rallying to the cause and I look forward to continued dialogue with you all.
@threadreaderapp please unroll

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@bellingcat's attempt in their new book, published by
@BloomsburyBooks, to coverup the @OPCW #Douma controversy, promote US and UK gov. war narratives, and whitewash fraudulent conduct within the OPCW, is an exercise in deception through omission. @BloomsburyPub @Tim_Hayward_


1) 2000 words are devoted to the OPCW controversy regarding the alleged chemical weapon attack in #Douma, Syria in 2018 but critical material is omitted from the book. Reading it, one would never know the following:

2) That the controversy started when the original interim report, drafted and agreed by Douma inspection team members, was secretly modified by an unknown OPCW person who had manipulated the findings to suggest an attack had occurred. https://t.co/QtAAyH9WyX… @RobertF40396660


3) This act of attempted deception was only derailed because an inspector discovered the secret changes. The manipulations were reported by @ClarkeMicah
and can be readily observed in documents now available https://t.co/2BUNlD8ZUv….

4) @bellingcat's book also makes no mention of the @couragefoundation panel, attended by the @opcw's first Director General, Jose Bustani, at which an OPCW official detailed key procedural irregularities and scientific flaws with the Final Douma Report:

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