The final report that apparently caused this parting of the ways can be found at http://www.emory.edu/central/NEWS/Releases/Final_Report.pdf.
I am overall disappointed that they didn't go after what I consider the far more blatant violations, such as his altering of quotes and misrepresenting the militia statutes of the colonial period--but they do skewer him reasonably well in the limited area that they were pursuing. A couple of points worth quoting:

a. He didn't accept the opportunity to go find the San Francisco records until a friend suggested he may have found them in Contra Costa. So the idea that he had confused the origins of the records seems to have come from outside. In addition, there is some question as to whether the records he now cites could indeed be ones that he had read in 1993.

b. The records he selected and photocopied from that Contra Costa archive were hardly random, but explicitly chosen because they had the words "San Francisco" in them, even though the records themselves clearly identify them as deriving from the Contra Costa court.

c. The records he selected do not seem to provide the sort of information his project requires. They may be California records. They may bear the name "San Francisco" somewhere in the files, but they do not appear to be detailed inventories of personal property. The Welsh inventory includes only livestock and wheat, and the Crippen only livestock and a wagon. These do not seem to be appropriate sources for determining either the presence or absence of guns.

At issue as well is his claim to have read microfilms at the National Archives Record Center in East Point, Georgia. When told that the National Archives had no probate records, he responded that he read so-called "Mormon microfilm" that he brought with him to the archives. When others pointed out that those microfilms do not circulate, he responded that he got them through a friend. [AA 00136, MB 00025-27l]

Since microfilms owned by the LDS Family History Library in Salt Lake City are freely available to the public through hundreds of small branch libraries all over the United States, we found this explanation puzzling. One need not be a Mormon or even know a Mormon in order to borrow microfilm through this library, and scholars can with permission of the original archive purchase film for a small fee. Wanting to make sure we had not misunderstood his story, we raised the question again in our written queries.

He responded, "Over the time I was looking at probate microfilms, two graduate students in my department were working on
dissertations that involved economic themes. All three of us benefited from our association with a member of the Mormon Church who assisted us in getting microfilms. At the time none of us thought anything about it, but I may have endangered his job by what I thought was an innocent activity." (Since branch libraries are staffed by volunteers, however, there was no "job" to endanger.) [MB00450-00451]

When we asked Professor Bellesiles how his friend knew what microfilm to borrow on his behalf, he said that he selected them from "a binder" that listed the available records. While it is certainly possible that an unnamed friend provided Professor Bellesiles with the microfilms he needed, it would have been an extraordinary act of service and surely would have merited thanks in the acknowledgements of a book. LDS branch libraries do not in fact contain records. What they hold is a catalog (initially on microfiche and later on computer) of the vast Salt Lake holdings. No binder could possibly contain this information. Significantly, Professor Bellesiles told us on June 14 that he had never visited one of these libraries. [Transcription of Interview, AA 00731-AA 00733]

Question 4. Did Professor Bellesiles engage in "intentional fabrication or falsification of research data" in connection with probate records supporting the figures in Table One to his book, "Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture"? With respect to this question, unfamiliarity with quantitative methods or plain incompetence could explain some of the known deficiencies in the construction of Table One, such as the author's failure to include numbers of cases or explain the strange breakdown of data. For example, when asked for specific information about his geographic categories, he told the committee that he had included Ohio in the "Northern coast" and counted all data from Worcester County, Massachusetts as "urban.")

But in one respect, the failure to clearly identify his sources, does move into the realm of "falsification," which would constitute a violation of the Emory "Policies." The construction of this Table implies a consistent, comprehensive, and intelligible method of gathering data. The reality seems quite the opposite. In fact, Professor Bellesiles told the Committee that because of criticism from other scholars, he himself had begun to doubt the quality of his probate research well before he published it in the Journal of American History. [Interview, p.35-6 AA 00764-764; MB 00448]

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."

We have interviewed Professor Bellesiles and found him both cooperative and respectful of this process. Yet the best that can be said of his work with the probate and militia records is that he is guilty of unprofessional and misleading work. Every aspect of his work in the probate records is deeply flawed. Even allowing for the loss of some of his research materials, he appears not to have been systematic in selecting repositories or collections of probate records for examination and his recording methods were at best primitive and altogether unsystematic. Bellesiles seems to have been utterly unaware of the importance of the possibility of the replication of his research. Subsequent to the allegations of research misconduct, his responses have been prolix, confusing, evasive and occasionally contradictory. We are surprised and troubled that Bellesiles has not availed himself of the opportunities he has had since the notice of this investigation to examine, identify and share his remaining research materials. Even at this point, it is not clear that he fully understands the magnitude of his own probate research shortcomings.

The Committee's investigation has been seriously hampered by the absence or unavailability of Professor Bellesiles' critical and apparently lost research records and by the failures of memory and careful record keeping which Professor Bellesiles himself describes. Given his conflicting statements and accounts, it has been difficult to establish where and how Professor Bellesiles conducted his research into the probate records he cites: for example, what was read in microfilm and where and in what volume, what archives, in some cases, were actually visited and what they contained In addition to this, we note his subsequent failure to be fully forthcoming, and the implausibility of some of his defenses -- a prime example is that of the "hacking" of his website; another is his disavowal of the e-mails of Aug. 30 and Sept. 19, 2000 to Professor Lindgren which present a version of the location and reading of records substantially in conflict with Professor Bellesiles' current account. Taking all this into account, we are led to conclude that, under Question 5, Professor Bellesiles did engage in "serious deviations from accepted practices in carrying out [and] reporting results from research." As to these matters, comprehending points (a) [and?] (c) under Question 5, his scholarly integrity is seriously in question.