Academic Hornswoggling

Jim Lindgren is talking about Michael Bellesiles over at the Volokh Conspiracy.

Bellesiles published a book entitled Arming American several years ago. It was greeted with a lot of acclaim mostly because it questioned long held beliefs about the American gun culture. Bellesiles basically stated that firearm ownership culture never had broad popular roots. Instead he claimed that the gun culture has always been a niche phenomenon.

The book won at least one major award in its field because academics these days love books that completely rewrite history especially in the favor of more liberal modern (in both the temporaly and philosophical sense of the word) ideology. The only problem is that much of the work was a complete fraud. Many of the records Bellesiles sited had been destroyed in a fire over a hundred years ago. The records were a complete fabrication. Unfortunately for Bellesiles, several people knew this and brought it to light. His awards were revoked and I believe he may have been asked to step down from his position at Emory. Of course, some liberal think tank is still publishing his book for political reasons because "its need to be read" lies or not.

Long story short, I expect to see this sort of thing happen much more. There is a lot of pressure in academia for groundbreaking scholarship thanks to the prevailing liberal "give me something new" mindset. It is how you make your reputation as a young professor. This is especially a problem in history and the classical fields, where the subjects for new study are somewhat more limited than the hard sciences.

The real problem is that at the rate new scholarship is coming out, no one is bothering to check it anymore. I've written in a scholarly journal or two, but I doubt anyone ever bothered to read my sources. Granted I worked in a hard science and the principles cited are well known, but you see my point. Comments on journal publications tend to be of the "you need more references" type, not the "I checked your references and they don't exist." Checking references and reanalysing data is fairly rare and in some fields asking for raw data is considered an insult.

Incidentally this is why I don't think I could ever turn off trackbacks on this blog. I want other people to be able to check my work.