Chicago Tribune on Bellesiles, Ruggiero: Wormy apples from the groves of Academe

Chicago Tribune ^ | Jan. 23, 2002 | Ron Grossman, Tribune

[Hagrid]

This is a tale of two professors.

It is a cautionary tale, for in the heady days before their respective pedestals in the ivory tower crumbled, their careers were on superstar trajectory.

The University of Texas recently lured the more junior of the two, Karen Ruggiero, away from Harvard, part of the bait being $100,000 to set up her own psychology lab. The other, Michael Bellesiles, won the coveted Bancroft Prize, the most prestigious honor in the field of American history. His employer, Emory University, was anticipating a bidding war to keep him on its Atlanta campus.

[Hagrid]

Includes the latest:

Bellesiles is claiming to have found the long-lost San Francisco county inventories, but, according to the Chicago Tribune, they are from another county, not San Francisco County, yet another embarrassing error for Bellesiles.

[Hagrid]

B

[egarvue]

Bellesiles continues to have supporters. Yet their defense sometimes seems more of a left-handed compliment. Paul Finkleman, a law professor at the University of Tulsa, says Bellesiles' book remains an important contribution, despite its critics.

"In the end," Finkleman said, "I don't think it matters if he cooked the data."

Why am I not surprised at this statement? This is soooooo typical of the left.

[FairWitness]

"Bellesiles is claiming to have found the long-lost San Francisco county inventories, but, according to the Chicago Tribune, they are from another county, not San Francisco County, yet another embarrassing error for Bellesiles."

Not only are they from another county, but apparently they do not support his thesis!

"Kathleen Mero, a longtime archivist there (Contra Costa County Historical Society), says she and other staff members are quite familiar with the controversy surrounding Bellesiles' book. She says she doesn't remember Bellesiles doing research at the group's storefront archives.
"If he had examined our records," Mero said, "he would have found guns all over the place."

[steve-b]

Bellesiles' critics are also put off by a certain "the-dog-ate-my-homework" quality to his responses when others ask to see the raw data of his research.

LOL! They really tore him a new one!

[Big Bunyip]

bookmark

[thucydides]

The comments of Professor Finkleman should be referred to the authorities at the University of Tulsa to see if it is their position that "cooking the data" in academic research "really doesn't matter."

[KC_Conspirator]

"Ruggiero was an up-and-coming star," he said. "Why do some professors cheat? Maybe they think: `I'm too smart. I don't need to collect data.'"

Its also because they are liberal and 20 years ago the challenges to their work (fraud) would have gone unchallenged and touted far and wide by the media. College libraries are full of liberal books by liberal professors with cooked or fraudulent data. Well, conservative academics (all in think tanks since universities won't hire them) have gone to the mat with these people and proven them frauds. I am glad to see that some leftist academics are having their fraudulent careers ruined.

[harpseal]

These two supposed scholars have committed fraud and gotten financial consideration for that fraud. Since their salaried positions pay more than the minimum for grand theft in the states where they are employed they should be prosecuted for these larcenies. Further, ruggerio defrauded the US government ofhher research grant. five year suspension from getting grants is hardly sufficient punishment.

Bellesiles should never again be allowed an Academic position. He was caught cheating and as such all other academic awards he may have recieved are at best in question.

Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown

[RippleFire]

From http://www.comms.dcu.ie/sheehanh/lysenko.htm:

Lysenko's fame as the sort of man who would achieve results continued to spread.  With it came a sympathetic hearing for whatever theoretical views he chose to express, no matter how vague or how unsubstantiated. Lysenko's practical achievements were extremely difficult to assess.  His methods were seriously lacking in rigour, to put it mildly.  His habit was to report only successes.  His results were based on extremely small samples, inaccurate records, and the almost total absence of control groups.  An early mistake in calculation, which caused comment among other specialists, made him extremely negative toward the use of mathematics in science.

But Lysenko was the man of the hour, suited as he was to step into the role of the man of the people, the man of the soil, who had come up from humble origins under the revolution and who directed all of his energies into the great tasks of socialist construction.  He knew well how to whip up massive peasant support, how to woo journalists, and how to enlist the enthusiasm of party and government officials.  He began to be pictured as the model scientist for the new era.  He was credited with conscientiously bringing a massive increase in grain yield to the Soviet state, while geneticists idly speculated on eye colour in fruit flies.

Lysenko made the most of this image and became more and more virulent in attacking geneticists and contrasting their "useless scholasticism" with his own great "practical successes."  He began to speak of class struggle in science and declared in his speech at the 2nd all-union congress of shock collective farmers in 1935 that "a class enemy is always an enemy whether he is a scientist or not."  Stalin, who was present, exclaimed at the end of his speech "Bravo, Comrade Lysenko, bravo."

[Jay W]

Recently it was in the news that Doris Kearns "LBJ's 'Monica'" Goodwin also plagiarized her "historical" research. And then there's the environmentalists who planted that lynx fur. Add this to the fakery of the feminist and the gun control professor nuts in this article, not to mention Ambrose, and a pattern begins to emerge: There's a lot more faking and theft of human knowledge out there than we're aware of. How much of it is fabricated just for social action, or one might say, socialist, purposes?

[tom paine 2]

I think that this is just the tip of the iceberg. It would be good to look at any previous research by other "scholars" on such things as global warming, endangered species, race relations and other of the left's favorite crying towels.

[Jay W]

"In the end," Finkleman said, "I don't think it matters if he cooked the data."

What do you think Finkleman's (fink? as in 'rat-fink'? what a perfect moniker for his unashamed support of deceit!) reaction would be if he found out that his bank "cooked" his bank account data, reducing his savings by, oh say, several thousand dollars? He'd be right out there saying "I don't think it matters," right? Yeah, right.

[Travis McGee]

It's great to watch BeLies story coming apart week by week!

[frogandtoad]

The Bancroft prize committee should demand that Bellesiles return the prize, and, if he refuses, should rescind it.

[Redbob]

Dean Martin Belsky of the Univ. of Tulsa Law School can be reached at:
martin-belsky@utulsa.edu
or by phone at (918)631-2400
or by fax at (918)631-3126
His assistant is at sherry-walkabout@utulsa.edu

[Dan from Michigan]

"Bellesiles' book," Roth said, "is an essay for gun control and from a political viewpoint."

Roth is right 100%. Whose going to defend Bellesilles? Carl Bogus?

[Dan from Michigan]

This is huge. Really is. The third judge in the Emerson case used Bellesille as a source is his dissent in the court case.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Finkelman seems to be even worse. Th validity of the research procedures is all there is in this type of investigation. If the procedures are wrong, no conclusions follow at all.

[KC_Conspirator]

The third judge in the Emerson case used Bellesille as a source is his dissent in the court case.

Really? I am not that familiar with the Emerson case, but know it is a 2nd amendment case (please feel free to elaborate for me DFM). However, citing a newly published book that turns out to be a pile of $hit and nothing short of a fraud and a lie in ones conclusion points out that the judges ability to do his job ought to be in question.

Either way, I could have told you that these two books were lies and propaganda without even reading them the whole way through. The premises of them are just too contrary to common historical knowledge and the human experience. I am especially glad to see Ruggiero lose her career and have a ban for 5 years of accepting money from the government. HAHAHA! The funny thing is that UT has a bunch of student articles still out on their website praising her work.