Those who live in glass houses, pt. 13

(Part thirteen of a series.)

Of all of Jonathan Neville’s trite expressions, perhaps his favorite is the term “M2C citation cartel.”

He continually employs this phrase to describe those who are affiliated with “FARMS, BYU Studies, the Interpreter, FairMormon/FairLDS, Meridian Magazine, and Book of Mormon Central [who] promote and reinforce M2C,” the theory that the Book of Mormon took place in Mesoamerica and that the hill Cumorah in the Book of Mormon is not the same hill in New York where Joseph Smith received the plates of Mormon. He calls these people “fine scholars, faithful Church members, nice people, etc.,” while simultaneously accusing these fine, faithful, nice people of destroying faith in the Book of Mormon, modern prophets, and the gospel and being complicit in the loss of testimonies among the youth of the Church.

From time to time, Neville feels compelled to defend his use of the term “citation cartel.” In his latest apologia, he tells us:

Here’s one way to identify a citation cartel:

In our experience, a citation cartel differs from the ordinary in that it usually involves one or more or all of the following:

i) a small number, often just two or three, journals are involved;

ii) similarly, the diversity of authors involved is small, i.e., smaller as one would expect for a healthy research community;

iii) often there is a large overlap of editors in the journals that sustain a particular cartel.

The M2C citation cartel easily satisfies these criteria.

Dear Brother Neville: If that three-point criteria “easily” describes the “M2C citation cartel,” what does it say about the incestuous group of pseudoscholars, self-taught amateurs, self-published authors, doomsday preppers, energy healers, and other cranks that make up the Heartland citation cartel?

—Peter Pan