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Gunning for A Bad Book
Is author Michael Bellesiles trying to prove that the pen is mightier then the gun?
NEWSWEEK
May 20 issue — In a large event, much commented on, the Justice Department last week told the Supreme Court that the Second Amendment (“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed”) “broadly protects the rights of individuals,” not just the right of states to organize militias. This event was pertinent to a small event two weeks earlier, noticed by almost no one. The National Endowment for the Humanities demanded a review of “the serious charges that have been made against Michael Bellesiles’ scholarship,” which the NEH helped to finance.
HE IS THE EMORY University historian whose 2000 book “Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture” earned—well, received—critical acclaim, including the Bancroft Prize, the most distinguished prize in American history. But now, slowly but relentlessly, some responsible intellectuals are defending standards of scholarship.
Bellesiles’s thesis is startling. It is that guns were not widely owned, or reliable enough to be important, at the time the Second Amendment was written. The implication is that the amendment should be read to protect only the collective rights of states, not the rights of individuals. The book pleased partisans of a cause popular in the liberal political culture of academia—gun control. Reviews were rapturous: “exhaustive research,” “intellectual rigor,” “inescapable policy implications,” “the NRA’s worst nightmare.”
Not exactly.
What has become Bellesiles’s nightmare began when a historian, suspecting nothing and hoping to build upon Bellesiles’s data, asked for more details about the 18th- and early-19th-century probate records that Bellesiles says show that guns were infrequently listed among the estates of deceased people. He also purported to find that many of the guns that were listed were in disrepair.
When Bellesiles’s evasive response led to more tugging on the threads of his argument, it unraveled. The unraveling revealed a pattern of gross misstatements of facts and unfounded conclusions. His errors are so consistently convenient for his thesis, it is difficult to believe that the explanation is mere sloppiness or incompetence. It looks like fraud.
Responding to critics, he said some of his crucial research notes had been destroyed in a flood in his office. He said he had relied on microfilm records in the federal archive in East Point, Ga. But it has no such records. He said he had examined probate records in 30 places around the country, such as the San Francisco Superior Court. But those records were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake.
Well, then, he said he had seen them in the Contra Costa County Historical Society. But the society has no such records, and no record of Bellesiles’s visiting the society. Then he said he did the research somewhere else, but is not sure where. Researchers have found that he consistently misrepresents extant records in Providence, R.I., and Vermont. When he tried to buttress his case by posting evidence on his Web site, critics found grave errors there, too, purporting to support his thesis. He blamed the errors on a hacker. A hacker who attacked his Web site on his behalf?
This spring the William and Mary Quarterly, the pre-eminent journal of early American history, undertook to referee this rumble, publishing essays from historians on aspects of Bellesiles’s argument, and a response from him. The criticism is lacerating (“nonsense”; “boggles the mind”; “he regularly uses evidence in a partial or imprecise way”; “gives the impression that he has shaped his figures to suit his argument”; “every tally of homicides Bellesiles reports is either misleading or wrong”). Bellesiles’s limping response (which begins with a jest about a French mutineer saying to his firing squad, “I am honored by all this attention”) tries to change the subject, to the meaning of “culture.”
This academic scandal is still several chapters from a satisfactory resolution. Emory, having taken the unusual step of directing Bellesiles to respond to his critics, now is conducting its own investigation, which must weigh the patent inadequacies of his responses so far, and the proper penalty for what has already been proved. Furthermore, do those responsible for awarding him the Bancroft Prize believe the award should be revoked?
Bellesiles’s malfeasance, although startling in its sweep, brazenness and apparently political purpose, actually reveals something heartening—a considerable strength in America’s scholarly community. Its critical apparatus is working. Scholars and their journals are doing their duty, which is to hold works of scholarship up to the bright light of high standards.
As a result, when next the Supreme Court is required to rule on the controversy concerning which Bellesiles’s book was supposed to be so decisively informative, the court’s judgment will not be clouded by Bellesiles’s evident attempt to misrepresent the context in which the Framers wrote the Second Amendment.
© 2002 Newsweek, Inc.
Gunning for A Bad Book
Is author Michael Bellesiles trying to prove that the pen is mightier then the gun?
NEWSWEEK
May 20 issue — In a large event, much commented on, the Justice Department last week told the Supreme Court that the Second Amendment (“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed”) “broadly protects the rights of individuals,” not just the right of states to organize militias. This event was pertinent to a small event two weeks earlier, noticed by almost no one. The National Endowment for the Humanities demanded a review of “the serious charges that have been made against Michael Bellesiles’ scholarship,” which the NEH helped to finance.
HE IS THE EMORY University historian whose 2000 book “Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture” earned—well, received—critical acclaim, including the Bancroft Prize, the most distinguished prize in American history. But now, slowly but relentlessly, some responsible intellectuals are defending standards of scholarship.
Bellesiles’s thesis is startling. It is that guns were not widely owned, or reliable enough to be important, at the time the Second Amendment was written. The implication is that the amendment should be read to protect only the collective rights of states, not the rights of individuals. The book pleased partisans of a cause popular in the liberal political culture of academia—gun control. Reviews were rapturous: “exhaustive research,” “intellectual rigor,” “inescapable policy implications,” “the NRA’s worst nightmare.”
Not exactly.
What has become Bellesiles’s nightmare began when a historian, suspecting nothing and hoping to build upon Bellesiles’s data, asked for more details about the 18th- and early-19th-century probate records that Bellesiles says show that guns were infrequently listed among the estates of deceased people. He also purported to find that many of the guns that were listed were in disrepair.
When Bellesiles’s evasive response led to more tugging on the threads of his argument, it unraveled. The unraveling revealed a pattern of gross misstatements of facts and unfounded conclusions. His errors are so consistently convenient for his thesis, it is difficult to believe that the explanation is mere sloppiness or incompetence. It looks like fraud.
Responding to critics, he said some of his crucial research notes had been destroyed in a flood in his office. He said he had relied on microfilm records in the federal archive in East Point, Ga. But it has no such records. He said he had examined probate records in 30 places around the country, such as the San Francisco Superior Court. But those records were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake.
Well, then, he said he had seen them in the Contra Costa County Historical Society. But the society has no such records, and no record of Bellesiles’s visiting the society. Then he said he did the research somewhere else, but is not sure where. Researchers have found that he consistently misrepresents extant records in Providence, R.I., and Vermont. When he tried to buttress his case by posting evidence on his Web site, critics found grave errors there, too, purporting to support his thesis. He blamed the errors on a hacker. A hacker who attacked his Web site on his behalf?
This spring the William and Mary Quarterly, the pre-eminent journal of early American history, undertook to referee this rumble, publishing essays from historians on aspects of Bellesiles’s argument, and a response from him. The criticism is lacerating (“nonsense”; “boggles the mind”; “he regularly uses evidence in a partial or imprecise way”; “gives the impression that he has shaped his figures to suit his argument”; “every tally of homicides Bellesiles reports is either misleading or wrong”). Bellesiles’s limping response (which begins with a jest about a French mutineer saying to his firing squad, “I am honored by all this attention”) tries to change the subject, to the meaning of “culture.”
This academic scandal is still several chapters from a satisfactory resolution. Emory, having taken the unusual step of directing Bellesiles to respond to his critics, now is conducting its own investigation, which must weigh the patent inadequacies of his responses so far, and the proper penalty for what has already been proved. Furthermore, do those responsible for awarding him the Bancroft Prize believe the award should be revoked?
Bellesiles’s malfeasance, although startling in its sweep, brazenness and apparently political purpose, actually reveals something heartening—a considerable strength in America’s scholarly community. Its critical apparatus is working. Scholars and their journals are doing their duty, which is to hold works of scholarship up to the bright light of high standards.
As a result, when next the Supreme Court is required to rule on the controversy concerning which Bellesiles’s book was supposed to be so decisively informative, the court’s judgment will not be clouded by Bellesiles’s evident attempt to misrepresent the context in which the Framers wrote the Second Amendment.
© 2002 Newsweek, Inc.