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Bellesiles
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Posted on 04/22/2002 11:05:51 AM PDT by white trash redneck
Fate of history professor remains uncertain two months after launch of investigation
More than two months after the University launched its first-ever inquiry into possible research misconduct by a College professor, Emory remains silent on the investigation while the academic concensus has shifted largely against Professor of History Michael Bellesiles' book on guns in early America.
The University launched a 30-day inquiry in February into Bellesiles' work in researching his book Arming America: Origins of a National Gun Culture. The book argues that until the mid-19th Century, guns were more rare in early America than previously thought.
According to guidelines on Emory's Web site, the University's refusal to discuss the details of its inquiry may mean that it has moved on to the second stage of a two-tiered process. It may also indicate that the University has cleared Bellesiles of possible wrongdoing.
In an e-mail to the Wheel this week, Bellesiles implied that the investigation into his book was over.
"I am not being investigated by Emory," he wrote.
But University administrators, including interim Dean of the College Robert Paul, declined to comment on the investigation.
Arming America was initially greeted with praise when it was first published in late 2000, and it won a prestigious prize in history from Columbia University (N.Y.) last year. Academics were impressed with Bellesiles' innovative use of probate records, militia roles and a collection of anecdotal evidence to base his claim.
Bellesiles has said that he spent a decade examining over 11,000 probate records from approximately 1,200 counties, recording the number and conditions of guns listed in estate inventories.
He found that between 1765 and 1821, approximately 17 percent of estate inventories listed guns, which led him to conclude that approximately 17 percent of the population owned a gun. That rate was lower between 1760 and 1795, at about 14 percent.
James Lindgren, a law professor at Northwestern University (Ill.), has been critical of these results, calling them "mathematically impossible."
A number of other academics have attempted to replicate Bellesiles' research, but none say they have been able to do so. Lindgren has said gun ownership figures hover closer to 40 percent.
The history journal William and Mary Quarterly invited four academics to critique Bellesiles' book. Three of the four harshly criticized the book, stopping short of calling it an outright fraud.
Randolph Roth, one of the reviewers in the Quarterly, focused on Bellesiles' usage of homicide records. A historian at Ohio State University, Roth wrote that Bellesiles may have deliberately lowered his tally of homicides in early America to promote his thesis.
"These are not isolated problems: Every tally of homicides Bellesiles reports is either misleading or wrong," Roth wrote.
Roth later said that the number and scope of Bellesiles' errors were "extraordinary."
In some instances, the historical records Bellesiles cited were nonexistent. When confronted, he gave explanations that may have only intensified suspicions surrounding his work.
For example, Bellesiles reportedly sent Lindgren an e-mail in September 2000, in which he wrote that he did most of his probate research from microfilms at the National Archives at East Point in southwest Atlanta and that the records were readily available to anybody willing to use them.
But according to an article he penned for the History News Network (www.historynetworknews.org), Lindgren called reference librarians at the East Point library archives and learned that no such state probate records were available.
He told Bellesiles, who, at the time, admitted that he could not recall where the records were.
Yet on a WBEZ-Chicago radio program two months later, Bellesiles contended that the records were available at the archive. According to a transcript of the Jan. 16, 2001 show provided by Lindgren, Bellesiles said the following:
"As for, um, [the East Point] microfilms, yes, those microfilms are available, the inventory lists, not the complete files, but the inventory lists are all available on microfilm, um, and I e-mailed you the addresses."
Last month, Bellesiles altered his story a second time. He wrote in an e-mail to History News Network that he never told Lindgren he used probate records found at the East Point archive.
"There are no probate records at the East Point National Archive [and] I have never said that there were," Bellesiles wrote in an e-mail to the Wheel. "I did read probate records on microfilm using microfilm readers at the National Archive."
Bellesiles wrote to the History News Network that most of his critics focus primarily on his usage of probate records, which he has said do not comprise the core of his book. He said just four paragraphs in Arming America address probate data.
"Critics have shifted their focus entirely to those records, well aware that I could not possibly defend myself by producing the materials." Bellesiles wrote on History News Network. "Therefore, accusations that my material is 'mathematically impossible' is, well, mathematically impossible."
"I will not lie or falsify historical information."
Write this on a blackboard 1,000,000 times.
Repeat.
Does anyone know if NRA or anyone else has posted these crtiques on the web?
A simple error . . . anyone can make a mistake . . . especially someone with a learning disability . . . Yeah, that's it! A learning disability. . . . Get my lawyer on phone.
Does anyone know where the money to pay for this character's research came from? I know that if I'd written a check for someone to do some historical research for me,and the results of the research were obviously fraudulent(or,to be charitable,so dubious as to be unusable),I'd be seeking redress in court.
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