The flood is irrelevant. The work is false, whether he can find the papers or not. The real news in this is that Emory confirms that the hacking story is unsupported (ie, probably a hoax).
Clearly it shpuld only be a question of time until this slimeball is stripped of any tenured faculty position and relagated to some other profession. The need for scholarship standards is one that must be addressed at all our academic institutions. Without standards of scholarship all we have is ignorance masquerading as knowledge and knowledge is the one essential to maintaining our world.
Of course the work is of this professor is a lie and any competent historian knows this. Emory University knows this. The flood is just a very lame excuse that not even an undergraduate would seriously attempt. He also could have said "The dog ate my notes." That was the point I was attempting to make. An Historian is at minimum supposed to be able to produce replicatable work. Anything less is a betrayal of the priciples embodied by the muse Clio.
Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown