What Clayton Cramer Saw and (Nearly) Everyone Else Missed [Bellesiles]

History News Network ^ | 1-6-03 | Clayton Cramer

[beckett]

What Clayton Cramer Saw and (Nearly) Everyone Else Missed
By Clayton E. Cramer
Mr. Cramer is a software engineer and historian. His last book was Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic: Dueling, Southern Violence, and Moral Reform (Praeger Press, 1999). His web site is http://www.claytoncramer.com.

Michael A. Bellesiles’s Bancroft Prize for Arming America has been revoked—the first time that a Bancroft Prize has ever been taken away from an author.[1] He has also resigned from Emory University after a blistering criticism by a blue-ribbon panel.[2] Is this embarrassing moment for the history profession a fluke, or indicative of deeper problems?

I fear that it isn’t a fluke. Arming America reveals that there are some very serious problems in the history professorate, and they are not confined to just one history professor’s demonstration of hubris. Before I launch into a discussion of these problems, let me tell you why I am writing this article.

My Involvement With the Bellesiles Scandal

I have been described in some articles covering this scandal as Michael Bellesiles’s most persistent critic, and I suppose that this is a fair statement. Bellesiles first presented his rather astonishing claims about gun scarcity in early America in a 1996 Journal of American History paper. At the time, I was a history graduate student, working on my MA thesis at Sonoma State University in California. My thesis examined the development of concealed weapon laws in the early Republic, and what I found completely contradicted Bellesiles’s claim that the early Republic had few guns, and few hunters.

[Atlas Sneezed]

Bang

[SES1066]

It is interesting that in reading this full article, one can see both the advantages and deficiencies of peer review. The advantage comes that from the first articles, Bellesiles was on notice that his work had flaws. The disadvantages came from the fact that it was published and awarded the Bancroft Prize long before the criticisms caught up to the lies. One thing that this helps establigh, Bellesiles is an out-right fraud and liar.

[Drango]

bump for later read

[anobjectivist]

Speaking of inaccuracies... Forbes had a list of things that were inaccurate in the movie Bowling for Columbine. I thought that was interesting.

[EBUCK]

One thing that this helps establigh, Bellesiles is an out-right fraud and liar.

Who was only exposed when an amature historian called him on it. If it wasn't for that unendorsed (by the state) little creep he would have walked away with a Nobel Prize!!

I think that is a really interesting side issue...That the state has a monopoly on credentials. If even one credentialed historian had brought up such reservations Bellesiles would have never gotten off the ground. It took an amature thousands of man hours to do what one credentialed historian could have done in a week.

EBUCK

[copycat]

Speaking of inaccuracies... Forbes had a list of things that were inaccurate in the movie Bowling for Columbine. I thought that was interesting.

That's because Michael Moore learns everything he knows about government in the same place Babs Striesand learns about the environment...Democratic fund-raising letters.

[Only1choice____Freedom]

I love this quote from the article:
"At this point, some of readers (perhaps many) may be saying to themselves, “That’s ridiculous! Our department is very diverse politically!” I am a little skeptical. To paraphrase the barkeep in the movie The Blues Brothers, “We’ve got both kinds of politics here! Liberal and progressive!” My experience in college—and that of most history majors that I have ever talked to—was that the range of political opinions in history departments is astonishingly narrow. Even liberal history majors usually recognized that this was the case."

[elbucko]

Why do law reviews fact check articles? To quote Don Kates, a civil rights attorney who did much of the early work in the legal history of gun control, “Law reviews check facts because lawyers lie.”

No, you don't say!

Excellent read at the link. I'm glad Cramer is on the RKBA side. The exposure of the tendency Bellesiles has toward error makes the likelihood of his ever finding a reloading partner, doubtful.

[beckett]

Speaking of inaccuracies... Forbes had a list of things that were inaccurate in the movie Bowling for Columbine. I thought that was interesting.

I'd like to see that if you have a link. I wonder if the list is the same as this one from Tim Blair.

[elbucko]

That the state has a monopoly on credentials.

You make a good point and the start of a worthy discussion at a later time. I have always felt, all things being equal, that the the NRA or GOA should have the final say on whether I am qualified to own firearms, not the states DOJ.

[Cuttnhorse]

Good post beckett, what an interesting man is Cramer.

[mvpel]

Clayton will be a featured speaker at the Northbridge CounterAttack Conference coming up in Dallas Texas on February 8-9.

[EBUCK]

Good call...since the NRA and GOA have a more vested interest in bestowing AN INALIENABLE RIGHT upon worthy yet still lowly peasants in need of permission.

If I had to choose I would choose your option, thankfully the gubment has chosen for me....

EBUCK

[Djarum]

The Bancroft award should have been transferred to Clayton Cramer.

[RKV]

Cramer is an ace. Too bad that no one with his political views will ever get a tenured chair of history at a major university.

[elbucko]

...since the NRA and GOA have a more vested interest in bestowing....

Yes. And as part of the subject of the article involves "Peer Review". I would rather be judged fit or unfit by my fellow hunters and shooters than by a DOJ full of Gloria Allreds.

[anobjectivist]

No that wasn't the link but that link actually contains more information that Forbes does from what I remember.

[Southack]

Diversity of opinions in the media?!

Oh please.

Surely you didn't think that Time was going to award their Person of the Year award to a whistleblower like Clayton Cramer, did you?!

Conservative good deeds are simply NOT to be discussed in any positive light by liberals...

[beckett]

Good catch. That's right! Why wasn't Cramer on the cover of Time?