October 26, 2002
From the desk of Jane Galt:Now . . . big
Now . . . big Live from the WTC kudoes will go out to the first reader who notes and instance of a journalist or academic making reference to, without irony, Bellesiles work "proving" that early Americans didn't have a lot of guns.
Update Reader Dave F. emails this link, from the Violence Policy Center. It'll be interesting to watch if they change this, now that the work has been about as thoroughly discredited as is possible without an extended John Edwards session with the Founding Fathers, but we're looking for works that are
a) Unironic: the writer is unaware that Bellesiles has been discredited.
b) Written after Emory's findings.
Although if you'll keep emailing me links that show people who are knowingly continuing to use a tainted source -- as we must assume that the VPC, which has been heavily involved in this case, is. Or at least, we can so assume if they continue using it, as they've hardly had time to find every link to him on their site yet. Anyway, if you keep sending me the links, I'll put them up. I think it's worthwhile to expose these things. I also think it would be worthwhile, at this juncture, to write the Nation and let them know that you expect them to notify their readers that a non-partisan group of highly respected historians has given Bellesiles the thumbs-down.
Posted by Jane Galt at October 26, 2002 9:56 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links