He has me dead to rights: I misspelled “hydatidiform mole.” Obviously this means that anything I write in connection with the subject is worthless. Can we infer that when he misspells my name, as he has done in the past, his comments about me can safely be ignored? If they are worthless, surely it’s not because he has misspelled.

Sullivan doesn’t have a good handle on the subject; his choice of reference works include wikipedia rather than any embrology textbook, and he doesn’t even understand one of the quotes he uses in his latest post. But his confusions are rather beside the point. He has uncovered a mistake on my part more serious than any spelling error. In my first post I assumed, out of charity, that Sullivan was making a good-faith effort to understand his subject and opposing points of view. My bad.