Ad Hominem Criticism and Editorial Policy

The June issue of Clio’s Psyche carried an ambiguous, somewhat tolerant policy statement on ad hominem criticism without defining it. Such criticism is directed at the identity or personality of an author. It serves to discredit an author’s work, and may be done without analyzing the work’s data or logic. Often it is more effective in discrediting a work than is painstaking analysis. A derivative meaning of ad hominem criticism is that it appeals to passion and prejudice rather than to fact or reason. To argue against an ad hominem criticism in ad hominem fashion, one might say that it is “a Nazi technique.”