Dr. V's Magical Putter

[cabiness42]

Is "I'm now a woman and no longer Mr. Krol" a lie? As far as I can tell...that was not a lie.

 

Yes the degree statements were lies. Is it a lie to not be up front with that personal detail and personal choice? Do the other lies mean that the person has lost all privacy?

 

Yes, when you design and sell a product, lying about your qualifications pretty much opens up your life.

 

If you want to keep your sex change private, then don't f***ing lie and commit fraud.

[Jenksismyhero]

Why does she have to?

 

Credibility?

[Balta1701]

Credibility?

There is no way in which that should possibly impact a person's actual credibility. Not in the least.

[cabiness42]

There is no way in which that should possibly impact a person's actual credibility. Not in the least.

 

The sex change didn't impact the credibility. The sex change was an incidental discovery while investigating her lies.

[Jenksismyhero]

There is no way in which that should possibly impact a person's actual credibility. Not in the least.

 

You can't lie about a part of your life and who you are. That's the definition of being credible.

[Balta1701]

You can't lie about a part of your life and who you are. That's the definition of being credible.

This is complete bull on this particular topic and at some point that will be a much more accepted standard.

[Balta1701]

The sex change didn't impact the credibility. The sex change was an incidental discovery while investigating her lies.

If that were true, then why did Caleb turn down the offer of exchanging verification of those degrees for not publishing the information about her sex change?

 

Yes, maybe you don't believe the documents, but that's a chance at a face to face meeting, to confront about the other issues, and to actually ask whether the part you believe is fraudulent is actually fraudulent.

[cabiness42]

If that were true, then why did Caleb turn down the offer of exchanging verification of those degrees for not publishing the information about her sex change?

 

Yes, maybe you don't believe the documents, but that's a chance at a face to face meeting, to confront about the other issues, and to actually ask whether the part you believe is fraudulent is actually fraudulent.

 

The information about the sex change became relevant to the story because it came in tandem with the name change which was part of what was behind all of her lies.

 

No credible journalist would accept a deal like this.

 

I don't know why you have a bug so far up your ass about this. She was a shady POS and he exposed her. You don't deserve "extra protection" because you are transgender or gay or whatever. If you are a shady f***, you should be exposed no matter what your secrets are.

[Balta1701]

The information about the sex change became relevant to the story because it came in tandem with the name change which was part of what was behind all of her lies.

 

No credible journalist would accept a deal like this.

 

I don't know why you have a bug so far up your ass about this. She was a shady POS and he exposed her. You don't deserve "extra protection" because you are transgender or gay or whatever. If you are a shady f***, you should be exposed no matter what your secrets are.

The only thing I can find in that article that actually appears to be a legitimate lie is the degrees. He couldn't verify either way on work for the DOD and the DOD would not have confirmed had she actually worked on that project, which he notes.

 

Is there another lie anywhere in her story? Because otherwise, she's offering verification on the only lie he actually had her on.

 

The entire article otherwise is personal details. He outlines a story of talking to one investor who lost money but doesn't explain how exactly that investor lost his money - there's no details given about what the projected return on investment actually was going to be or what risks were spelled out. No documents are given, nothing is established in the article. His big hit in that comment is, once again, "Did you know she was a man!"

 

The entire article outlines 1 potential fabrication - the education, and then never verifies that in fact this person didn't attend those schools. It makes a decent case but goes no where near far enough to do so.

 

Aside from the degrees, which he clearly isn't actually interested in, the entire scandal in the piece is "OMG it's a man that's the huge story".

[Buehrle>Wood]

The working for the DoD was a lie for at least the when. Her work history outside the DoD was also a lie.

Edited January 18, 2014 by Buehrle>Wood

[Jake]

I feel like if she had earned the degrees and such when she was living as a man, none of those details would have ever emerged. None of the story would have made sense if the reporter didn't "reveal" the name/gender change and sharing this information early on would have completely altered the story, as it was being told -- a largely chronological account of his research on Yar Golf. Had he know she was transgendered from the beginning, it is quite likely IMO that he would not have done the digging on her credentials in the first place. He would have simply assumed she had earned those credentials under a different name.

 

While we will never really know, it seems her gender identity was a significant explanatory part of her mental/emotional demise. Living most of her early life as a lie, which is how she would have felt as a man, could easily have led to a lifelong struggle with a fluid identity. She probably felt like Dr. V is the kind of person she could have been if only she had been able to have been born into the right body. Having yet another disappointment, the reaffirmation that she was not Dr. V, could have been too much. Maybe it was mostly unrelated. Who knows.

 

FWIW, I was not surprised at all that Dr. V was "revealed" to be a biological man as I was reading the article. We have a super-secretive person who claims to have been deeply embedded into the military, also be a Vanderbilt, was writing unintelligible gobbledygook in email correspondence, is 6'3" with a deep voice ... let's not act like it was completely outside the realm of possibility until the reporter said so outright.

[Buehrle>Wood]

I feel like if she had earned the degrees and such when she was living as a man, none of those details would have ever emerged. None of the story would have made sense if the reporter didn't "reveal" the name/gender change and sharing this information early on would have completely altered the story, as it was being told -- a largely chronological account of his research on Yar Golf. Had he know she was transgendered from the beginning, it is quite likely IMO that he would not have done the digging on her credentials in the first place. He would have simply assumed she had earned those credentials under a different name.

 

While we will never really know, it seems her gender identity was a significant explanatory part of her mental/emotional demise. Living most of her early life as a lie, which is how she would have felt as a man, could easily have led to a lifelong struggle with a fluid identity. She probably felt like Dr. V is the kind of person she could have been if only she had been able to have been born into the right body. Having yet another disappointment, the reaffirmation that she was not Dr. V, could have been too much. Maybe it was mostly unrelated. Who knows.

 

FWIW, I was not surprised at all that Dr. V was "revealed" to be a biological man as I was reading the article. We have a super-secretive person who claims to have been deeply embedded into the military, also be a Vanderbilt, was writing unintelligible gobbledygook in email correspondence, is 6'3" with a deep voice ... let's not act like it was completely outside the realm of possibility until the reporter said so outright.

If she had the degrees there would have been no story here other than the original puff piece that the author set out to write. The transgender stuff never gets found or at least mentioned.

[iamshack]

The only thing I can find in that article that actually appears to be a legitimate lie is the degrees. He couldn't verify either way on work for the DOD and the DOD would not have confirmed had she actually worked on that project, which he notes.

 

Is there another lie anywhere in her story? Because otherwise, she's offering verification on the only lie he actually had her on.

 

The entire article otherwise is personal details. He outlines a story of talking to one investor who lost money but doesn't explain how exactly that investor lost his money - there's no details given about what the projected return on investment actually was going to be or what risks were spelled out. No documents are given, nothing is established in the article. His big hit in that comment is, once again, "Did you know she was a man!"

 

The entire article outlines 1 potential fabrication - the education, and then never verifies that in fact this person didn't attend those schools. It makes a decent case but goes no where near far enough to do so.

 

Aside from the degrees, which he clearly isn't actually interested in, the entire scandal in the piece is "OMG it's a man that's the huge story".

C'mon, man!

 

She is basing the expertise and genius of the product she is seeking to sell on her experience in physics and "top secret" DoD projects...when make claims like that, people are going to want to know who you are and just what your experience and education is. However unfortunate it may be for Essay Vanderbilt that much of the vetting that occurs is done using one's name, and other personal identifying characteristics such as gender, this is the world we live in. Transgender people are still not fully accepted into cultural norms, so people tend to take notice of them when they see them. This was something that occurred here, when the author was tipped off by the municipal employee in Arizona. The author did not seem to suspect nor seek this information out until he was told by someone else of it in the course of his vetting process. Was he supposed to brush it off as nothing and leave it out of the story?

 

If Essay Vanderbilt didn't want her birth gender to be discovered or for it to be a big issue, she shouldn't have crafted tales about working on the f***ing stealth bomber to help sell her golf putter.

 

I do agree with you that the imminent publication of her story may have actually pushed her to kill herself. I do agree that perhaps the author should feel a bit remorseful for this. However, I don't think he had any idea what he was getting into when he started chasing the story, and it was only his desire to reach its conclusion that caused him to keep digging.

Edited January 18, 2014 by iamshack

[Dick Allen]

Didn't the reporter go into the initial conversation under the impression anything about Dr V. personally was off limits? Then didn't said Dr. volunteer some "facts". If you boast these claims, I don't see how you would expect any reporter worth his or her salt not to try to verify these claims.

 

She tried to kill herself 5 years previously after a fight with her girlfriend. Her investor mentioned how she would always blow up if you ever disagreed with her. Any blame on the writer for her death is really a reach IMO.

 

I think if ahe never voluntarily offered fake credentials, he never would have dug so deep.

Edited January 18, 2014 by Dick Allen

[Balta1701]

Didn't the reporter go into the initial conversation under the impression anything about Dr V. personally was off limits? Then didn't said Dr. volunteer some "facts". If you boast these claims, I don't see how you would expect any reporter worth his or her salt not to try to verify these claims.

 

She tried to kill herself 5 years previously after a fight with her girlfriend. Her investor mentioned how she would always blow up if you ever disagreed with her. Any blame on the writer for her death is really a reach IMO.

 

I think if ahe never voluntarily offered fake credentials, he never would have dug so deep.

But to my standards, he never actually established that those credentials were fake. There's decent reason to believe so, but as soon as he discovered "oh, gender change" he stopped investigating on that matter. He got a birthdate, a few family matters, found out that "maybe she had a couple of kids", but otherwise basically jumps from 1953 to 1997. There's a 44 year gap spelled out as "worked as a mechanic, had a couple of kids, and was married twice".

 

He never establishes to a solid degree that the degrees and the DOD work are lies. He never spoke to the person or verified anything about their actual education history. He never verifies that during the time a reasonalbe person would have been in college, Stephen Krol was at a different location or never could have done work under an additional identity.

 

Any researcher worth his or her salt would go farther and actually verify that this person in fact was doing something else during those years. If he wasn't going to speak to the actual person, he needed that additional step, but he had a bigger "scandal" to publish.

[Dick Allen]

But to my standards, he never actually established that those credentials were fake. There's decent reason to believe so, but as soon as he discovered "oh, gender change" he stopped investigating on that matter. He got a birthdate, a few family matters, found out that "maybe she had a couple of kids", but otherwise basically jumps from 1953 to 1997. There's a 44 year gap spelled out as "worked as a mechanic, had a couple of kids, and was married twice".

 

He never establishes to a solid degree that the degrees and the DOD work are lies. He never spoke to the person or verified anything about their actual education history. He never verifies that during the time a reasonalbe person would have been in college, Stephen Krol was at a different location or never could have done work under an additional identity.

 

Any researcher worth his or her salt would go farther and actually verify that this person in fact was doing something else during those years. If he wasn't going to speak to the actual person, he needed that additional step, but he had a bigger "scandal" to publish.

Didn't the article state there was no record of Stephen Krol earning these degrees? He wasn't going to get cooperation from the subject. And at the time she said she was working at the DoD she had that job in AZ.

Edited January 18, 2014 by Dick Allen

[iamshack]

But to my standards, he never actually established that those credentials were fake. There's decent reason to believe so, but as soon as he discovered "oh, gender change" he stopped investigating on that matter. He got a birthdate, a few family matters, found out that "maybe she had a couple of kids", but otherwise basically jumps from 1953 to 1997. There's a 44 year gap spelled out as "worked as a mechanic, had a couple of kids, and was married twice".

 

He never establishes to a solid degree that the degrees and the DOD work are lies. He never spoke to the person or verified anything about their actual education history. He never verifies that during the time a reasonalbe person would have been in college, Stephen Krol was at a different location or never could have done work under an additional identity.

 

Any researcher worth his or her salt would go farther and actually verify that this person in fact was doing something else during those years. If he wasn't going to speak to the actual person, he needed that additional step, but he had a bigger "scandal" to publish.

That's not true.

 

He went so far as to try and reach family members, dig up police reports, looked up any other official documents, etc. He even mentioned that at first he tried to give her the benefit of the doubt and that maybe she attended school under a different name.

 

At this point I was still hoping everything I’d found was all a big misunderstanding. I wanted to believe Dr. V’s story. After all, the putter worked. People who knew a lot more than me about golf swore by the club. There were even logical explanations for much of what I had uncovered: Dr. V could have gone to school under a different name; she could have mixed up the dates while telling the story of when she founded Yar; she could have taken the job in Gilbert as an extra source of income to pay her bills; and she may have filed for bankruptcy simply because the golf club business can be cutthroat, and Yar had struggled financially before catching a hot streak in the past year.

 

I was still clinging to these threads when Leland Frische came along and snipped them all.

 

When it became obvious what the truth was, he stopped investigating further.

[Balta1701]

Didn't the article state there was no record of Stephen Krol earning these degrees?

Yes, but the author also acknowledges earlier in the article " After all, Dr. V could have attended the schools under a different name. But why wouldn’t she have mentioned that?" The same could apply to Stephen Krol. If you want to publish that this person is a liar, you need to prove to me that you can verify, almost to a legal sense, that they're lying.

 

This article as it is does not do that. It might meet a "preponderance of evidence" standard because it's easy to believe that people would make such things up, but it's absolutely not a "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard. Not with failing to tell me what happened for 45 years of this person's life.

[Balta1701]

When it became obvious what the truth was, he stopped investigating further.

And that's the problem. The only thing that mattered was "oh, sex change". The rest was unimportant.

[iamshack]

And that's the problem. The only thing that mattered was "oh, sex change". The rest was unimportant.

No. Oh, sex change...that's why there is no record of any of what she said...and for all we know, the sex change is what gave her the courage (and the cover) to make up all the crazy stories in the first place.

 

He even goes on to point to the fact that despite all her lies, the putter is still actually sworn by by many in the golf industry that believe in the science...and if the science was truly legitimate, she could have marketed it successfully without all the lies and let the product stand on its own.

 

She had faked the credentials that made the science behind her club seem legitimate. But the more I talked to people in the world of club design, the more I came to understand that many believed the physics behind the Oracle putter were solid, even if the “scientist” was not. I found Kelvin Miyahira, a golf instructor in Hawaii with no ties to Yar who nonetheless had become one of its biggest fans. Miyahira had used a high-speed camera to compare the Oracle with other, more popular putters. In slow-motion videos he posted to YouTube, he showed that when he used the Oracle, it was more stable and rolled the ball more smoothly and with less sidespin than any of the other clubs he tried.

 

Champions Tour player David Frost had once received an hour-long putting lesson from Dr. V and four days later had won a tournament by tying the lowest score ever recorded on that course. The information Dr. V had imparted to him was so valuable, Frost told me, that he wasn’t even willing to share it. Maybe if I’d had the same access, the Oracle would have remained as effective for me. But positive contagion, at least in my case, only seemed to work when I believed I was still infected. When I was under the impression that Dr. V was a brilliant engineer, my putting improved dramatically. As soon as I learned she had simply been a struggling mechanic, the magic was lost. Today, Dr. V’s Oracle is collecting dust in my garage.

 

The other question to consider was if any of the lies actually mattered. Yes, Dr. V had fabricated a résumé that helped sell the Oracle putter under false pretenses. But she was far from the first clubmaker to attach questionable scientific value to a piece of equipment just to make it more marketable. Sure, her lies were more audacious than the embellishments found in late-night infomercials. But her ultimate intent — to make a few bucks, or, maybe, to be known as a genius — remained the same. Whatever the answers, Gary McCord would not be able to help me find them. The man who had once been so willing to talk stopped responding to my emails. Finally, a spokesperson at CBS told me that McCord had “nothing more to add to the story.” That left Jordan and Dr. V.

[Dick Allen]

Yes, but the author also acknowledges earlier in the article " After all, Dr. V could have attended the schools under a different name. But why wouldn’t she have mentioned that?" The same could apply to Stephen Krol. If you want to publish that this person is a liar, you need to prove to me that you can verify, almost to a legal sense, that they're lying.

 

This article as it is does not do that. It might meet a "preponderance of evidence" standard because it's easy to believe that people would make such things up, but it's absolutely not a "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard. Not with failing to tell me what happened for 45 years of this person's life.

 

You said in an earlier post the claims about degrees were lies.

[iamshack]

Yes, but the author also acknowledges earlier in the article " After all, Dr. V could have attended the schools under a different name. But why wouldn’t she have mentioned that?" The same could apply to Stephen Krol. If you want to publish that this person is a liar, you need to prove to me that you can verify, almost to a legal sense, that they're lying.

 

This article as it is does not do that. It might meet a "preponderance of evidence" standard because it's easy to believe that people would make such things up, but it's absolutely not a "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard. Not with failing to tell me what happened for 45 years of this person's life.

Well it's a piece of journalism. It's not a legal document nor is he trying a case.

[Jake]

Stephen Krol didn't earn the degrees. Dr. V didn't earn the degrees. The legal record shows when Stephen Krol changed her name to Essay Vanderbilt. His research places Stephen Krol in various unremarkable places at times when Dr. V claims she was in D.C., among other places.

 

In the end, Hannan concedes that there is unfortunately a great deal he doesn't know. While there are good reasons to doubt the Oracle product and much of anything with which Dr. V promoted herself, he can't be sure. He says that some third parties seem to think the physics argument is a good one. If non-physicists could have made all the clubs to date, it isn't insane to say a non-physicist made another good one.

 

One of the most interesting thing the story does, in my opinion, is show that trans people are out there. You may not realize they are right in front of you. However, their insecurity due to society's inability to expect or understand them makes them want to recede into the shadows. It's not insane to interpret this article to be more of that transphobia, but I'm not incredibly convinced by those arguments right now.

[farmteam]

Sorry Balta, but the only one that seems to be pushing an agenda here is you, not Caleb Hannan.

[Jenksismyhero]

 

I think Balta should just admit it has nothing to do with outing this person, and everything to do with possibly painting a gay/transgendered person in a negative light. That's the only reason this story is getting any kind of response. If she had cured cancer and still killed herself, there's no "omg! he outed her! that's so wrong!"