I have been invited to give a series of papers on psycholinguistics at a conference in Rio de Janeiro. A splendid opportunity, but it was not meant for me. Someone at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro wrote to me, saying that 'we follow your work here with interest, specially the Theory of Mind and recursion papers'. I'm very flattered; it took but a few seconds to discover a Professor Tom Roeper (note the extra e) at the University of Massachusetts who works in this field. I forwarded the message on to him, copying it to the original sender, and explaining that I was Tom Roper, not Tom Roeper, and that I thought the latter was the man they sought.
I thought no more; some thanks might have been pleasant, from either of the parties, but this is 2009. Then I received an e-mail from the distinguished professor, to me, not to the original sender, complaining that he had not had an attached brochure about the conference (yes he had). I imagined that he had not given the message from Brazil a close reading and that when he did, he would see that he needed to reply to the sender in Rio. In any case, I reasoned, surely the sender in Rio would, when she had my message explaining the mistaken identities, resend her message to the right man. So I did nothing further.
Of course neither the professor nor Rio had done any such thing. Yesterday Professor Roeper e-mailed me, without a copy to the people in Brazil, addressing me as 'Dear Aniela" not a name I have ever used, complaining once more that he had not had the attachment, and telling me that he has to plan other trips and cannot miss too many classes. I have replied once more, in polite but I hope clear terms, pointing out the error, copying to Brazil. I have offered to give them lectures on any aspect of librarianship, classical Greek or marathon running they wish. I hope they will read the message this time.
This is not the first time. DEFRA once offered me £40,000 to do some research on badgers, mistaking me for a Tim Roper who researches in animal behaviour at the University of Sussex. As in this case I sent it on to him, copying to DEFRA, but neither party bothered to thank me, What baffles me is how people can send important messages like this without checking they are sending them to the right person, and then, when their error is pointed out to them, not acknowledge it. I wonder if I could perhaps make a second income out of these misdirected messages
