Monday, July 03, 2006

Historian Wants to Reexamine Bellesiles

Seriously, does this really need to be reviewed again? Yet another defender of Bellesiles points out that the commission that led to his resignation (prior to removal) only "found" the "one table" to be false. I'm sure that the fact that they only investigated Bellesiles use of probate records, and not the rest of the book, may have had something to do with it.
The thing that makes this singularly irksome is the implication that Bellesiles (and Churchill) actually didn't do anything wrong, but were poor victims of a witch hunt. This despite the fact that their peers reviewed their work and found it wanting. Oh those pesky facts, they do get in the way don't they.

1 comment:

Ravenwood said...

I'm not sure what all Bellesiles did, other than just make shit up outta thin air.

What Churchill did seemed be a little bit more clever. He published things under a different name, then cited himself as corroboration.