This is the first time I’ve read anything you’ve written, and I am monumentally confused by your piece. It has an scathingly sarcastic tone that seems to convey your feeling that you’ve been wronged. Indeed, one of the comments here refers to you having been “attacked.”

But the only action that’s been taken, according to what you’ve written, is that someone just made an inquiry into the financial details of your activities. You say yourself, “Please don’t fault Mr. Manning,” but it seems that you do. You acknowledge that you do the exact same thing he did, on many occasions. I’m confused as to why you seem to feel that this is a reasonable thing to do, but you’re so upset that someone’s done it to you that you wrote this piece.

I have social disabilities, and so it’s entirely possible that I’m missing something, and I’m hoping you’ll be so kind as to explain. In my experience, especially these days, the vast majority of people who suspected wrongdoing on your part would immediately claim that you were doing it, and make public statements to that effect. That this person is asking questions rather than making false accusations seems to my scientifically-oriented mind to be laudable, as much as I may disagree with his thinking and agenda.

I can completely understand how you might feel intense frustration in a scenario where you have to go to extreme lengths to provide a quality education to students who are theoretically already supposed to have it. And I know firsthand the grueling toil of trying to promote basic factual information that’s important for society and endlessly getting hate from what seems to be an inexhaustible hate well. It truly sucks to want to help people who punish you for it.

So I could understand if you just needed to vent that frustration. As someone who’s had innumerable tantrums and meltdowns throughout my life, I completely understand how challenging intense feelings can be, and the critical importance of letting them out — I was told so often to bottle mine up or shut them down that I tried for years, and it’s a spectacularly bad idea for everyone.

On the other hand, going on a public snit is (again, based on my EXTENSIVE experience doing so) generally a bad idea in that it’s counterproductive to your goals, and shapes others’ perceptions of you in unflattering ways that usually can’t be undone with any number of meritorious deeds and calm, patient discernment. This post could be considered doxxing, which undermines your firm hold on the “good guy” position in this dispute. It also seems, based only on the information you’ve shared, that you’ve jumped to a lot of conclusions based on a simple FOIA request devoid of intent (though it sounds like maybe there’s more of a backstory that wasn’t included). To my eye, with no beforehand knowledge about your or your project, this didn’t convey the best impression nor leave me feeling motivated to donate to your cause.

To be clear, I’m not in any way trying to disparage you or your intentions, nor shame you about having done something wrong. I don’t think you did. I think you genuinely care about your students and want to serve them as best possible, and beyond that you want to foster a greater acceptance of science in society. That’s awesome, as I too desperately wish that we based more of our policy opinions and decisions on facts instead of outright nonsense and misconceptions. So it only makes sense that you’d want to act in ways that are most productive for achieving those ends, and it was in the spirit of furthering your noble quest that I made this comment. I realize it might come across as something else, but again, human socializing norms are pretty much inexplicable to me. If only there was a scientific method for that!

Good luck with your projects, and my best wishes for the difficult task in staying strong in the face of endlessly baffling attacks on good science.