If the cap fits ...

Oh but this is fun. I had left a little comment on scifiheaven's web site about my search for the true source of the Who needs bird flu vaccine letter. And the poster gamely issued a retraction, which is nice. That would be the end of it, but for a rather odd remark. Chris, in the retraction, says:

Mr. Cherfas has also taken the opportunity to launch a rather harsh attack on Sci-Fi Heaven on his personal blog, suggesting that we plagiarised the work. Er… no? We've laid out the reasons for the mistake here, and I hope now you can correct your own site. Who's plagiarising whom? To be honest, no one's plagiarising anyone.
Plagiarising is defined as: To use and pass off (the ideas or writings of another) as one's own.
No one is doing that. Even if our source was incorrect, as it now appears to be, that is simply an incorrect source. There was no plagiarising involved. So please, Mr. Cherfas, do not accuse us of malicious intent for a genuine mistake.

I think, Chris, you should go back and read my original post. At no point did I suggest that scifiheaven was plagiarizing anyone. “Malicious intent”? Heaven forfend!

scifiheaven quoted the letter in full, said they found it on the internet, and that was that. But either George Zug is passing off Steve Anderson’s ideas as his own, or vice versa, or there’s something very spooky going on, something worthy indeed of scifiheaven’s interest.

So, why so sensitive?

Later ... Actually, there's a third possibility. Some other person, neither Zug nor Anderson, is taking their names in vain. I just find myself wondering how likely that is and whether I really have the stick-to-it-ness to find out. Probably not.