Abstract
I intend to describe a phenomenon. I do not intend to explain it. Perhaps others can do so. By way of background … Michael Bellesiles, a history professor at Emory University, published a variety of journal articles on gun ownership during the colonial era and post-independence period. In 2000, he published a book: Arming America. In 2001, it won the Bancroft Prize. In 2002, the prize was rescinded. It was rescinded in large part in response to scholarly criticism. Unsurprisingly, Bellesiles’ articles and book influenced public debate, scholarship, and judicial opinions in regard to gun control. Bellesiles and his publications were once cited actively, and then such citations dried up. But now, it appears that his publications are being cited again.
Perhaps we should ask why?
Seth Barrett Tillman: “A Phenomenon in Search of a Theory/Recent Citations to Michael Bellesiles’ Publications”
Looks good. Seth’s paper is here.
It’s almost an invitation to speculate about AU (artificial unintelligence). What’s a regurgitation engine to do but regurgitate?
Is 2020, however, a bit early for AU? Is the cause unartificial unintelligence or even plain dishonesty?
Arguing with liberals is always playing whack-a-mole. If you answer something patiently and fairly, giving their points credit for what they got right but ultimately defeating them, another mole pops up. You answer that one fairly, and another, and another, then see that the first argument has popped back up again, even though you smacked it on the head just a moment ago.
I should not have said “always.” That was an exaggeration on my part.
I think the key part of the Tillman paper is a footnote referencing Reynolds and Denning.
History and tradition are now suddenly important for winning cases.
That article says:
“New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen1 revolutionized
the understanding of how Second Amendment cases are to be
adjudicated. Rejecting the tiered-scrutiny analysis around which
the lower courts had coalesced since the 2008 Heller decision,2
the Court instructed courts to look to history and tradition after
it was determined that state or federal regulations limited activities that fell within the protections afforded by the Second
Amendment’s text”
History and tradition are now suddenly important for winning cases.
AI, or at least online search, is certainly one possibility. I wonder if this is the result of authors reading the secondary material that cited Bellesiles’s original work, and they are then selectively quoting those portions of it without doing any sort of comprehensive review of his scholarship. As SBT notes, the Bancroft prize was rescinded but IIRC the Arming America book was largely defended by the publisher.
His thesis was also the kind of “well akshully” counter-narrative that academics love.
It may have resurfaced as being relevant to the discussion as a certain group wants to cite it as ‘authority’ that objectively supports their contention about guns and gun control.
If it can be cited in argument, where its validity is unlikely to be checked immediately, then it will be so cited. It will become ‘accepted truth’ no matter if its premise is based on lies, damn lies, and statistics, or is based wholly upon created research with no basis in the reality most sane people experience.
Why not? If you can get away with using false information to back up your pet project, and are likely to get away with it, then why not? Only honesty and character would intervene. Having a conscience is obviously an optional condition to some sets of people.
I understand that he is only tweeting, but I think Seth is pulling his punches a bit here given that he used to clerk.
Clerks do the back-end work for their judges, especially when it comes to research. So presumably they are the ones who dug up Bellesile’s work.
I made the dig at Barrett Tillman because he would know the culture of judicial clerking and therefore given processes and phenomena involved in how they assist judges in crafting opinions.
Two things about Bellesiles stand out. First his work was very front and center in the gun control culture in the late 90s and early 2000s and won prizes for it. Second it has been (as Barrett Tillman points out) a full 20 years of not just a trough in Bellesile’ss citations but since his discrediting.
20 years? We call that a generation. None of the clerks working those cases lived through the news accounts of Bellesiles’ and it appears going through a few of the opinions cited that the arguments being made did not rely heavily on his work.
As far as Bellesiles goes, it’s curious why he has been rediscovered. As far as the judicial system it’s troubling why his work is being cited given his very public, though long ago, disgrace. Once again a question for Barrett Tillman, what does this say about the quality of work provided by clerks for something that would have gotten an undergrad essay marked up?
Media (“journalists”) like to justify their spin by having experts in their rolodex that will give them the quote they need. How much time do law clerks spend vetting their sources?
Bellesiles’s fraud was uncovered largely by James Lindgren, not by law clerks.
bellesiles, predated chat gtp by making up records that didn’t exist, and then punchline they gave him another book contract to write about 1877, but this is par for the course for the academic establishment, that gave us ward churchiill and Rigoberta Menchu,
Since the “gun control” idiots and evil organizers have NOTHING in their arguments resembling facts and/or data, they have ALWAYS used flat-out lies to support their positions.
Why would anyone be surprised that they resort back to old lies, thorougly debunked (by Clayton Cramer, among others) to lie with them again?