Bellesiles revisited

David Hardy notes that ”the abstract of Prof. James Lindgren’s paper on Bellesiles is online.” You may remember the name from the early days of this blog...I was talking about his fraud way back when.

Bellesiles authored “Arming America,” which claimed that Americans were poorly armed and had no real gun culture until after the Civil War.

Which of course turned out to be completely false.

Posted by JimK at 10:57 PM on April 07, 2005
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Categories: Guns - 2nd Amendment,  Michael_Bellesiles

Ha, ha-ha-ha, hA, HA!  Bellesiles SUCKS.  WE RULE.

I’m linking to the Google search of his name because there are dozens of stories all over the country all saying the same thing:

In case you’ve not read my site before, I have a whole category dedicated to this moron.  Like I’ve said many a time, this couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.  When your publisher pulls your book, WHICH IS STILL SELLING (!), it might be time to give up the ghost and just admit defeat.

This guy’s ego won’t allow him to admit his deception, take responsibility for it and apologize.  I hope he ends up teaching Special Ed in the Black Hills...he’s not qualified to teach anything else.

Except Gym.  :)

Posted by JimK at 05:46 AM on January 08, 2003
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Categories: Guns - 2nd Amendment,  Michael_Bellesiles

Prize rescinded for ‘Arming America’ book

I’m a few days late, this seems to have come out on the 13th, but I’ve been REALLY sick the past week, and blogging has suffered.  However, I’m not so sick as to let this slide by:

Ha. Ha.

It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.  Oh, but there’s more:

That would be due to the fact that he’s a liar.

Posted by JimK at 10:32 AM on December 19, 2002
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Categories: Guns - 2nd Amendment,  Michael_Bellesiles

Well here’s a horrifying thought: Bellesiles teaching high-schoolers?

This story was apparently first in the Chicago Tribune, but has expired.  I received it in email from someone on the mailing list of the Million Mom March.

Needless to say, the thought that Michael Bellesiles is teaching *anyone* makes me question the judgment of those who would hire him.  Emory essentially confirmed his research was at best sloppy and irresponsible and in part may have been fraudulent.  And yet here we have the reward for lying about guns in America: Lose your university job?  No problem, we’ll take care of you somehow, fellow lying gun-phobic!  We’ll sneak you in under the radar teaching high-school kids all about how guns’r bad, mmm’kay?

Grr.

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November 25, 2002

Gun Book Author Defends Research

Michael Bellesiles, who faced a wave of criticism for his book, “Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture,” said he will continue to defend what he wrote, the Chicago Tribune reported Nov. 21.

Last year, Bellesiles’ book won the Bancroft Prize, a prestigious award in the field of American history. But when critics of his assertion that gun ownership was rare in early America began checking his research, Bellesiles was accused of making up sources and data.

The criticisms led to an investigation by Emory University, where Bellesiles was a professor. The investigation concluded that he was “guilty of unprofessional and misleading work.” He resigned from Emory in October rather than face a demotion.

Through it all, Bellesiles has maintained that his research is sound. He said he plans to continue his fight to vindicate his theory about guns.

Bellesiles said he is a victim of intellectual lynching and that his book was drawn into America’s heated debate over gun control.

Bellesiles said he was attacked by the National Rifle Association (NRA) and accused the NRA and its supporters of death threats, which forced his family to move from Atlanta, Ga., to an undisclosed location. Bellesiles said his teenage daughter had to legally change her name because of personal-security concerns.

For the next academic year, Bellesiles has scheduled visiting professorships in England. After that, he plans to teach at the high-school level.

Now he claims that the NRA *and* it’s supporters are threatening his life.

Ladies & gentlemen, I call bullshit.

I have no doubt that some lunatic has indeed threatened him.  There are bad people in the world.  I do not believe for one tiny micro-fraction of a millisecond that the NRA itself threatened his life, or the lives of anyone in his family.  That kind of accusation goes to show the kind of man Bellesiles is, one who will take a statistically insignificant number and attribute it to the majority.

Michael, dear Michael, like the ad campaign said, I *am* the NRA.  When you say “The NRA threatened my life” you are saying that *I* threatened your life, and buddy, if you believe that, you’re not just a liar, but you’re stupid.  The focus of my concern and support of the Second Amendment is about PROTECTING lives, even yours.  If you were in my home (and the roof didn’t fall in or a Greek deity didn’t smite you for heresy) and someone broke in and threatened our lives, I would protect yours with my firearm.  That’s the kind of people who belong to the NRA, Bellesiles, not intellectually dishonest cowards and liars.

I hope your high school bears a striking resemblance to Winslow High on Boston Public.  The stress would serve you right.

UPDATE - Lee (Right-Thinking from the Left Coast) sent me a link with this story that led me here.

“I was absolutely shocked!” he said of the committee’s report in what may have been his first interview since leaving Emory. “Obviously, they were very angry at me.”

He was sitting in a coffee shop across town from Emory. Since resigning his professorship last month, Bellesiles has avoided the university’s Atlanta campus. He doesn’t want to present former colleagues with the embarrassing choice of either lowering their eyes or saying hello to a pariah, he explained. He has also avoided the media.

Bellesiles said he decided to resign after hearing rumblings the university planned to demote him in rank.

“That would have been an affront to my honor,” said Bellesiles, 48.

Honor?

This guy has brass balls.  In fact, he seems almost delusionally defiant.  Anyone else think the trip to England is in the hopes that the furor will die down?  I foresee him trying to downplay the Emory report upon his return, hoping that the stigma will be gone by then.

Michael, there is no damned way we’re going to let you slide, pal.  One year, two years, ten years in England...when you come back, we’ll be here.

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Posted by JimK at 05:04 PM on December 02, 2002
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Categories: Guns - 2nd Amendment,  Michael_Bellesiles

The Bellesiles Saga…

Chris over at The Insecure Egotist has some enlightening information about Our Boy Bellesiles.  The National Coordinating Committee for the Promotion of History (that’s a mouthful) has issued some sort of pseudo-announcement about Michael Bellesiles.

It’s an apologetic piece of drivel that does nothing to restore the idea that historians are supposed to be presenting *actual* history, not history as they would have liked it.

I was especially nauseated by this passage:

“...and eventually several historical scholars?” Oh please.  They really spun this one to make it look like gun nuts ganged up on poor Mikey, who succumbed to the pressure.  What a crock.

You know, I am still waiting for Playboy to admit that they backed a loser.  I’m waiting, but not holding my breath.

Posted by JimK at 06:40 AM on November 11, 2002
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Categories: Guns - 2nd Amendment,  Michael_Bellesiles

Our Boy Bellesiles

Eugene Volokh has an interesting post about a magazine that at one point had a favorable review of Michael Bellesiles’ “Arming America.” It’s definitely worth a read.

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I read the retraction (Volokh has a link) and was struck by this paragraph:

History, like law, is a search for the truth. Evidence must be interpreted and evaluated. When evidence is found to be faulty, it should be discarded. Here the evidence shows that everyone did not own a gun (thus disproving the NRA�s position), but it does shows that a significant percentage of the population did own guns, somewhere around two-thirds or three-fourths of the population, varying from colony to colony.

That’s right, an anti-gunner fessed up and admitted that up to 3/4ths of American Colonists owned guns.

He goes on to say how this is important because it directly impacts our interpretation of the Second Amendment as an individual, versus a state, right.  On the one hand, I’m glad there is a direct path to arguing the Second Amendment as an individual right.  On the other hand, I think it;s obvious it always was an individual right, since the entire Bill of Rights deals with individual rights, and it’s commonly held in law that when a phrase is defined in a contract or document, it holds that definition unless specifically and explicitly altered.  “The people” is always defined in the first ten Amendments as the individuals that make up the citizenry.  Given this, the Second Amendment can ONLY apply to Thar rights of an individual.

It seems blatantly obvious to me, and I’m not even a lawyer *or* a Constitutional scholar.

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Posted by JimK at 04:44 PM on October 31, 2002
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Categories: Guns - 2nd Amendment,  Michael_Bellesiles

The Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin’

The Emory Wheel has two great pieces on my least favorite author and “historian,” Michael Bellesiles.  The first is a detailed story on the saga. I think I might have actually laughed out loud when I read this part:

Hey Mikey?  Your ethics called, and they said to tell you they’re doing well with other people, so stop worrying, they won’t be coming back.

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Another thing that jumped out at me, and I went so far as to touch upon briefly in the past, is that Emory essentially called Bellesiles a liar.  I’m not alone in this belief, apparently.

Jerome Sternstein, professor emeritus of history at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, said the committee essentially called Bellesiles a liar. Sternstein said he thought Bellesiles was pushed to resign from the University. “Nobody resigns a tenured spot, in my 40 years of teaching, without having another appointment or another job available unless they’re filthy rich,” Sternstein said. “So he was forced out.”

To quote the great Hank Hill..."Yep."

The second article is an opinion piece flagged as an editorial.

Good for them.  The piece ends with a line that Bellisiles ought to have tatooed on his forehead backwards, so it greets him in the mirror each morning:

The investigation, and Bellesiles’ subsequent resignation, should be a reminder to the Emory community that academic research is, above all, about searching for the absolute truth. That’s what our professors teach students every day. We should expect the same from them.

Right on, Emory.  I dig your vibe, man. (Links via Instapundit)

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Posted by JimK at 08:45 PM on October 29, 2002
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Categories: Guns - 2nd Amendment,  Michael_Bellesiles

One word: HA!

I could not be happier.  Bellesiles’ book has caused a tremendous amount of controversy due to his terrible research methods, and in some cases outright lies, in an effort to assert that Colonial America was NOT armed, that the common man in early America did not own a firearm.

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Emory published a press release with their side of the story.  I fully expect Bellesiles to have a completely different account, since his version of reality is filtered through whatever agenda he is operating under currently.

Emory has provided a link to their investigative committee’s final report (Adobe PDF), as well as Bellesiles’ response. I particularly enjoyed this passage:

The most egregious misrepresentation has to do with his handling of the more than 900 cases reported by Alice Hanson Jones. When critics pointed out that Jones� data disagreed with his, Bellesiles responded by explaining that he did NOT include Jones�s data in his computations because her inventories, taken during the build-up to the American revolution, showed a disproportionately high number of guns! Here is a clear admission of misrepresentation, since the label on column one in Table One clearly says “1765-1790.” If Professor Bellesiles silently excluded data from the years 1774-1776, as he asserts, precisely because they failed to show low numbers of guns, he has willingly misrepresented the evidence. This, compounded with all the other inconsistencies in his description of his method and sources and the fact that neither he nor anyone else has been able to replicate any part of his data, suggest that there is a real discrepancy between the research Professor Bellesiles did and his presentation of that research in Table One. Question 5. Did professor Bellesiles engage in “other serious deviations ‘from accepted practices in carrying out or reporting results from research’” with respect to probate records or militia census records by: (a) Failing to carefully document his findings; (b) Failing to make available to others his sources, evidence, and data; or (c) Misrepresenting evidence or the sources of evidence.” We have reached the conclusion with reference to clauses �a� through �c,� that Professor Bellesiles contravened these professional norms, both as expressed in the Committee charge and in the American Historical Association�s definition of scholarly �integrity,� which includes �an awareness of one�s own bias and a readiness to follow sound method and analysis wherever they may lead,� �disclosure of all significant qualifications of one�s arguments,� careful documentation of findings and the responsibility to �thereafter be prepared to make available to others their sources, evidence, and data,� and the injunction that �historians must not misrepresent evidence or the sources of evidence.�

“Contravened these professional norms” is academia’s way of saying “Yes, he not only kept sloppy records, he faked some of his data.”

It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

*UPDATED*

Clayton Cramer has quite a few pieces on this topic, and has spent many hours debunking Bellesiles.

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Posted by JimK at 10:05 PM on October 25, 2002
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Categories: Guns - 2nd Amendment,  Michael_Bellesiles