Professor Don Foster's "Forensic Linguistics"

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

   This is a story from the BBC (put on today's Drudge Report site) about
"forensic linguistics."  We haven't discussed this, but ADS-L had one person
use "forensic linguistics" as his user-id.
   The BBC calls him "Professor Don Foster," but this story never mentions
where he teaches!  Rather than "Dr. Foster" or "Mr. Foster," he's "the
professor."  Foster's most recent and widely publicized failure with
Shakespeare is never mentioned by the BBC.  (DOES ANYONE, ANYWHERE EDIT COPY
ANYMORE?)
   Based in part on a misspelling of "penicillin," the professor (that would
be Don Foster, of Vassar) concludes that the suspect is not going to kill
again?
   FWIW, another Don Foster chapter:


An FBI forensic linguistics expert believes the US anthrax attacks were
carried out by a senior scientist from within America's biological-defence
community. Professor Don Foster - who helped convict Unabomber Ted Kaczynski
and unveiled Joe Klein as the author of the novel Primary Colors - says the
evidence points to someone with high-ranking military and intelligence
connections.
(...)
Speaking about the investigation for the first time, Prof Foster told the BBC
he had identified two suspects who had both worked for the CIA, the US Army
Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) and other
classified military operations. Controversially, Prof Foster says the killer
is likely to be highly patriotic individual who wanted to demonstrate that
the US was badly prepared for an act of biological terrorism.The
weapons-grade anthrax was posted in letters just days after the 11 September
terror attacks, leaving five people dead, 18 injured and 35,000 forced to
take precautionary antibiotics. The professor says he does not believe the
killer will strike again as he has achieved his goal. He explained: "To that
end his misplaced patriotism has worked. Today millions of government dollars
have gone into research and anthrax antibiotics are now available to the
public."
(...)
Deliberate mistakes The professor also identified a number of mistakes and
misspellings in the letters which he suspects are a deliberate ploy to
confuse investigators. The author of the anthrax letters tells his victims to
take penicillin. Not only is penicillin the wrong antibiotic to take, the
killer also misspells the word. Prof Foster says: "You mean to tell me this
guy is dealing with anthrax, a trillion spores a gram, and he thinks
penicillin is going to be the antibiotic of choice? "There's something very
fishy about that misspelling there, that this particular word should be
misspelled and it should be misspelled in such an unconvincing way. "It looks
like an attempt on the offender to say 'Hey, don't think I'm a scientist,
don't think I know anything about antibiotics'."
(...)