He means well, so this lying can be excused, right?

[redman]

From CNN.com:

Tarnished history book publication halted

Book's award rescinded, writer has resigned

NEW YORK (AP) --Publication has been halted on a disputed book about the history of guns in the United States.

Questions about Michael Bellesiles' "Arming America" had already led Columbia University to rescind the prestigious Bancroft Prize for history.

When Columbia made the announcement last month, publisher Alfred A. Knopf said the book would remain in print. But Jane Garrett, Bellesiles' editor, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the publisher would no longer sell it.

"We are in the process of ending our contractual arrangement with Michael for 'Arming America,' " Garrett said.

According to Garrett, Bellesiles (pronounced Bell-eel) had proposed some revisions, but the publisher found them inadequate. Knopf spokesman Paul Bogaards said the decision to stop printing "Arming America" was made weeks ago, although without a formal announcement.

Efforts to reach Bellesiles for comment were not immediately successful; he recently resigned as a professor at Emory University, after an independent panel of scholars commissioned by the school strongly criticized his research.

According to Garrett, the book has sold about 8,000 copies in hardcover and about 16,000 in paperback.

Bellesiles spent 10 years working on "Arming America," published by Knopf in 2000. The book challenges the idea that the United States has always been a gun-oriented culture and that well-armed militias were essential to the Revolutionary War.

"Arming America" was praised in both The New York Times and The New York Review of Books and won the Bancroft Prize, presented to works of "exceptional merit and distinction in the fields of American history and biography."

Many cited it as a devastating statement against America's alleged historical love affair with firearms. But gun advocates quickly attacked the book, and scholars and critics also became skeptical.

The Emory report, written by scholars from Harvard and Princeton universities and the University of Chicago, said Bellesiles' failure to cite sources for crucial data "does move into the realm of 'falsification.' " It also suggested he omitted other researchers' data that contradicted his arguments.

Garrett said Tuesday that she still had "great respect" for the author. "I still do not believe in any shape or form he fabricated anything," she said. "He's just a sloppy researcher."

Bellesiles has acknowledged some errors, but defends his book as fundamentally sound.

"I have never fabricated evidence of any kind nor knowingly evaded my responsibilities as a scholar," he said after announcing his resignation in October.

[Kilmer17]

shocking that the NYTimes raved about it.....really.

[Romo]

I studied history and one of my proffessors talked in depth about how many historians lately have been caught either plaguerizing others works, leaving out footnotes and making honest and not so honest mistakes that first year students shouldnt even be making.

The creator of "Band of Brothers", the late Stephen Ambrose was caught in a similar predicament as this one. One researcher found evidence that shows Martin Luther King plaguerized all or part of his doctoral thesis.

Obviously there are times when even the best of us make honest mistakes and after reading hundreds of books and articles anyone of us could be so overwhelmed with information to make a mistake or two. Its just interesting that it seems to be happening alot more frequently. It seems that even academic scholars are being influenced by this fast paced, cutting corners society.

A funny story from one of my professors. If anyone knows anything about Roman history they may have heard of the Punic Wars, which involved Rome battling Carthage (Hannibal). Well long after Hannibal was dead Rome finished off Carthage in 146BC and leveled the capital. For years many people thought Carthage was salted by the Romans.

My roman history prof was wondering where that evidence came from because he was looking into Rome at that time. When he looked through the Oxford encyclopedia history of Rome, which is updated every several years, he noticed that (im guessing on the years because i dont remember exactly) in 1960 there was no reference to Carthage being salted but in 1961's version it said Carthage had been salted. My prof got in contact with the guy in charge of the book and asked who found the new evidence that changed the story. It turns out it was changed completely by mistake. The editor-in-cheif was revising the whole text and was also doing research on Rome's salting of cities in Isreal and just somehow slipped up and added Carthage to this list of cities that were salted. So for several decades everyone thought Carthage had been salted and many still dont know that it wasnt, because of a simple mistake.

[redman]

Plagiarism is wrong. That's simply a matter of academic prinicpal. I understand that it can happen inadvertantly through sloppy editing, e.g. failing to include a footnote, but that only makes it lesser academic offense and doesn't excuse it.

Where my alarm goes off is when a writer with an agenda, in this case to undermine gun ownership by private individuals, writes a supposedly serious academic work to support his position and falsifies the "evidence". That's well beyond a failure to include footnotes as in the case of Ambrose, or even to basically copy paragraphs word for word without attribution as in the case of Doris Kearns Goodwin. Although it will lead to no physical harm of anyone, this is about as bad as a writer for a medical journal to have falsified evidence regarding a medical treatment study and its success rates.

[Romo]

I couldnt agree with your more Redman.

Anytime a scholar has a conclusion in mind and is seeking evidence to back their conclusion while disregarding the truth is scarry. Some people just dont like to admit they are wrong.

[Riggo-toni]

What's even more disturbing is that this schmuck's "research" and "facts" were actually used in several court rulings

[101_proof]

Riggo-toni is right in that even in light of this, the damage has been done. This is similar to Arthur Kellerman's 1986 NEJM study that a gun in the home was 43 times more likely to kill a family member. His work was debunked so thoroughly that eventually even Kellerman admited how he fudged it.

I cannot tell you how often that I still hear some uninformed idiot spout off about how I am 43 times more likely to kill my pet cat than a intruder. If the lie is told enough times it becomes the truth and this is a good example of it.

Compare this to Lott who set out to prove that concealed carry increases crime/death rates.. found the opposite was true and was honest enough to point out the facts that he found. So yes John Lott author of More Guns Less Crime was a gun control advocate before his research. Bet ya never heard that one before.

BTW Riggo-toni the 9nth court ruling did not use the book as a basis of opinion, only as a definition of what a machine gun is. Not that it made me feel any better.