The final report that apparently caused this parting of the ways
can be found here.
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:
.
If Professor Bellesiles did indeed read Contra Costa records
believing they were from San Francisco, then the issue could again
be one of extremely sloppy documentation rather than fraud. There
are three aspects of this story, however, that raise doubts about
his veracity.
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) – (c) under Question 5, his scholarly
integrity is seriously in question.