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Yo, I just broke my record tagging Amazon shill book reviews.
On September 30, I reported Katz out of the bag: Did prominent Yale doc/prof/columnist shill review a book he wrote under a pseudonym? I've asked Amazon to take a look.
At the time I took this screenshot of the Amazon reviews page for David L. Katz MD, Yale department head, author, and columnist for the Huffington Post and New Haven Register, which included a gushing five-star review for a self-published novel he wrote using the pseudonym Samhu L. Iyyam:
(Peter Heimlich) has sent a formal complaint to Amazon asking that Katz’s product review be taken down.As I explained to a helpful Amazon employee (known to me only by the mysterious moniker "Mahesh V") with whom I've corresponded over the past couple of months:
Mahesh: Not a big deal, but I'd characterize my correspondence with you as an "inquiry" rather than a "complaint."Somebody cue the theme from Rocky.
...(When) your company's Reviews team takes care of this, I'll break my record of tagging five-star shill book reviews on Amazon. Per my (unsigned) June 10, 2010 item in the Cincinnati Beacon, shortly after I brought the information to former Amazon employee Mary Osako, 72 five-star shill book reviews were deleted. And per my May 6, 2014 item on my own blog, shorty after I brought the information to Ms. Osako, eight more five-star shill book reviews were scrubbed: making a total of 80.
I'm not sure why Amazon is taking so long to wrap this up, but I'm looking forward to bumping my score to the Big Eight-One!
Or better yet, The 81 by Candy and The Kisses, one of the greatest-ever girl group records.
As of this morning, here's what Dr. Katz's Amazon reviews page looks like:
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