Give Clemson Professor Jonathan Beecher Field credit. He wants to know why plagiarism doesn’t matter. He works hard to explain to his students that plagiarism is a serious infraction, and his job is harder now that Joe Biden is on the Democratic ticket.
The kind of wholesale plagiarism Biden evidently committed, copying chunks of a law review article into a paper with his name on it, suggests an inclination toward the kind of malfeasance present in the Kinnock incident. In every class I teach, I spend time talking about citation, and why it is so important for scholarship. As part of this conversation, I emphasize that acknowledging sources is a condition of membership in the community of scholars: if scholars do not acknowledge sources, they do not belong in this community.
So far, so good. But then Field reprises the case of Michael Bellesiles and his book Arming America.
By way of illustration, I have sometimes shared the Emory University report on the conduct of former history professor Michael Bellesiles, who undermined a provocative and compelling argument about gun ownership in early America with gross violations of scholarly norms for citation. The report demonstrated serious concerns about his scholarship and led to his resignation. If Bellesiles had chosen a less contentious subject, he would not have had legions of NRA supporters going through his footnotes, and he might well still hold his tenured position at a prestigious university. However, he presented his research in sloppy and dishonest fashion, and he lost his job.
Thank God for the ever-vigilant NRA. Field veers off course here, insisting that Bellesiles had a “compelling argument” marred only by faulty citations, as though the gun nuts discredited Bellesiles on a mere technicality. George Will said this about the incident in Newsweek:
Bellesiles’s thesis is startling. It is that guns were not widely owned, or reliable enough to be important, at the time the Second Amendment was written. The implication is that the amendment should be read to protect only the collective rights of states, not the rights of individuals. The book pleased partisans of a cause popular in the liberal political culture of academia–gun control. Reviews were rapturous: “exhaustive research,” “intellectual rigor,” “inescapable policy implications,” “the NRA’s worst nightmare.”
Then people noticed inconsistencies, and
When Bellesiles’s evasive response led to more tugging on the threads of his argument, it unraveled. The unraveling revealed a pattern of gross misstatements of facts and unfounded conclusions. His errors are so consistently convenient for his thesis, it is difficult to believe that the explanation is mere sloppiness or incompetence. It looks like fraud.
Others reached the same conclusion:
Garry Wills, who had enthusiastically reviewed Arming America for the New York Times, later said, “I was took. The book is a fraud.” He also told an interviewer for C-SPAN that Bellesiles “claimed to have consulted archives he didn’t and he misrepresented those archives,” lamenting that Bellesiles did not have to do it, since he had good evidence for many of his claims.
This last bit is sophistry. Having evidence for some of the claims in a book doesn’t make a very good book, and it’s fair to conclude that Bellesiles would not have manufactured fraudulent data if his argument could be supported without it. But Field and Wills continue to defend the result of fraudulent research because they find the argument appealing. Fields concludes:
Bellesiles cheated, and he lost his job because of it, and in spite of an argument that continues to make sense.
How can the argument make sense if the data supporting it are fraudulent? Bellesiles’ conclusion is fruit of the poisonous tree.
A plagiarist takes credit for someone else’s work – misrepresenting the source. Bellesiles, however, did his own fabricating. His conclusion was therefore as tainted as the data supporting it. It was a lie, but a pretty lie that gun control advocates wanted to believe.
Field condemns the methods but lauds the result. I suspect he will present a more compelling case against academic dishonesty if he finds an illustration without that glaring inconsistency.
August 26th, 2008
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Fitzroy |
Education, Politics |
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What do New York, California, New Jersey, Michigan, and Massachusetts have in common? They top the list of worst states to do business in, according to a survey of business executives conducted by Development Counselors International. They are facing serious budget shortfalls. And they are, by and large, the bluest of the blue states.
Steven Malanga describes these anti-business states as awash in red ink.
The DCI study, coming as it did amidst growing talk of state fiscal crises around the country, is particularly revealing. Of the approximately $48 billion in accumulated budget shortfalls that the 29 states with projected deficits are facing, $33 billion, or two-thirds of the gap, is concentrated in those five states considered by corporate executives to be the least friendly to business.
The states rated most friendly to business – Texas, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee – together account for only $4.1 billion of the total. These are all red states, although some are borderline red and the state governments of North Carolina and Tennessee are controlled by Democrats.
Malanga makes the point that the states facing the worst budget shortfalls are suffering from federal policies, but from their own. They have chased off their business base.
As the fiscal problems of some states increase, we are likely to hear more about how the federal government must bail them out. It’s the failings of the federal government (that is, the Bush administration), that are responsible for state budget woes, so the argument goes. But any look at the states with the biggest deficits reminds us that governors and legislatures are largely the authors of their own problems, and that the biggest trouble some of them seem to have is that their taxing and chronic overspending have made them toxic to the business community. Don’t ask the feds to fix that.
August 26th, 2008
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Fitzroy |
Politics |
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There are suggestions that our Olympic team has more guts than our politicians. McClatchy notes:
First came the decision by U.S. team captains to pick runner Lopez Lomong, who was a Sudanese war refugee, to lead the U.S. delegation into the Aug. 8 opening ceremony as the team’s flag bearer.
Many interpreted Lomong’s selection as a dig at the Chinese government’s support of Sudan, which has armed militias that have killed hundreds of thousands of people in the country’s Darfur region.
On Friday night, the U.S. team entered the political fray again by choosing archer Khatuna Lorig, who was born in what is now the country of Georgia, to be the U.S. flag bearer in Sunday’s closing ceremony.
Lilliputin. Eamonn Fitzgerald has this:
Had to laugh upon reading at the weekend that Mikheil Saakashvili is credited with inventing the nickname “Lilliputin” for the Russian Prime Minister. It’s “an allusion to Mr Putin’s diminutive stature, in contrast to his own towering presence.”
Botox and Xerox. Robert Fulford reviews The Kingdom of Infinite Space: A Fantastical Journey Around Your Head (Yale University Press) by Raymond Tallis.
Faces, as Tallis sees them, are like texts, crammed with information. A friend of mine used to quote an old literary cliche, “Her face was a study.” In recent times, however, faces have changed, making them harder to read. We are developing a face for our era. Botox is one reason.
Botox relaxes facial muscles and makes possible a smoothness where creases might otherwise appear, revealing the face’s age. In return, Botox exacts a harsh payment. The user becomes relatively dull-looking, more like a copy than an original. Will we eventually speak of pre-Botox faces as artifacts in a once-loved but now abandoned style, like the Victorian novel?
Death of Critics. Norman Lebrecht says newspapers are cutting back on their coverage of classical music. Critics may be an endangered species. Newspapers are undergoing a paradigm shift, and it’s not surprising that the arts are getting short shrift, but Lebrecht places the blame primarily on the orchestras.
As editor, try explaining to your chief executive why you are holding a full staff job to report on an art that never makes news, an art that plays the same old music, year after year, with the same parade of expressionless faces on the platform. An art whose audience is greying and unattractive to advertisers. An art whose music director is an absentee European and whose few glamour soloists will only agree to talk about their new record or hair makeover.
August 24th, 2008
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Music, Politics |
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The Friday martini posts continue this week with another photo from Ken Johnson’s photographic series “Ode to the Martini.” This one, “Take It from the Top,” offers a birds-eye view.
Photo © Ken Johnson. Used by permission.
August 22nd, 2008
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Leisure |
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The web site “Evil Scale.com” allows you to rate individuals on the good/evil scale. Of course, George Bush wins the evil prize going away, scoring a substantially more evil score than his closest competition, Saddam Hussein. Number 3 on the list is Ronald Reagan, so that should tell you all you need to know about who visits this site.
Honorable mentions go to Stalin, Hitler, Cheney, and Colin Powell. Powell beats out Jeffrey Dahmer, Josef Mengele, Idi Amin, and Vlad the Impaler. Charles Manson is sandwiched between Donald Rumsfeld and Mike Huckabee. Scooter Libby edges out Lee Harvey Oswald.
Obama tops out the most good list, just nudging out George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ghandi, and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Smokey the Bear beats Harriet Tubman, and Jack Kervorkian beats Santa Claus. Jesus Christ ranks a paltry 37th, scoring lower the Dwight Eisenhower and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
The Beatles beat God, Ron Paul tops JFK, and Gordon Lightfoot wins over the unfairly maligned Abominable Snowman.
Those who think our society has a problem distinguishing good and evil can find good anecdotal evidence here. Or maybe the problem is that kids need to turn off the computers and spend more time learning to play softball and musical instruments.
August 20th, 2008
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Ammo, Leisure |
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Charles Downey’s review at Ionarts of Jerry Springer: The Opera leaves me feeling just fine about missing it. Jerry Springer has famously hosted the worst of the trash talk television shows. Naturally, the opera found its share of critical acclaim.
“It’s filthy, it’s funny, it’s brilliantly original…
A THRILLING, TRULY GROUNDBREAKING SMASH.”
-The Daily Telegraph
“THERE’S NOTHING MORE ENTERTAINING TO BE SEEN ANYWHERE.”
-The Mail on Sunday
“Nothing more entertaining” is certainly a sad commentary. For Downey, the combination of debased Springer and exalted opera is “a marriage made in hell.”
Springer’s second act, which casts God, Jesus, Mary, and Satan as guests on an infernal edition of The Jerry Springer Show, has drawn protests of outrage from conservative Christian groups, something that has dogged the show in all of its subsequent openings. No doubt about it, Jerry Springer is foul-mouthed, outrageous, and blasphemous. As satire of Christianity, Springer is ham-handed, a blunt hammer instead of a scalpel. If the best satire knows its target, Springer is wide of the mark. For example, Jesus says, “Talk to the stigmata” as he shows his hand, but the stigmata are mystical wounds that other people receive in imitation of Jesus’ wounds – Jesus did not receive the stigmata. For a show that exults in deflating piety, the pious ending reconciling God and Satan with the platitude “There are no absolutes of good and evil” rang hypocritical.
No doubt, but hypocrisy seems like a flimsy stick to beat this opera with. The message that good and evil are fictitious and result merely from a misunderstanding – indeed a cosmic spat between God and Satan that man might mediate – surely deserves more robust criticism.
It is hard to satirize a bad joke like Jerry Springer, who lacks sufficient substance and seriousness to fuel a good satire. Downey argues that people should lighten up their criticism of the opera because the religious satire is lame. But I fail to see why satirizing something incompetently gives you a pass.
And his reference to protests by “conservative Christian groups” leaves me wondering where non-conservative Christians stand. Are they indifferent or supportive – or merely silent? Downey doesn’t defend the opera’s inane take on religion and gives it rather low marks musically, but he still seems to recommend it.
In the second act, the chorus and all the characters return to assist in the judgment of Jerry in hell. It would be too weighty a conclusion for such a grotesquely silly piece, except that, as noted above, it only becomes more irreverent and less actually about anything theological, philosophical, or serious. In that spirit, Jerry Springer: The Opera offers an evening of hilarity and groan-inducing one-liners (”I can’t go to hell! I’m Jewish!”). It will also certainly exceed your expectations as to how much of the book could possibly be taken up with naughty words.
If the opera is a “grotesquely silly piece” that fails as satire, fails musically, and serves merely as a vehicle for foul language, one wonders on what basis it can be summed up as “an evening of hilarity.”
August 20th, 2008
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Fitzroy |
Music |
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I have a very good friend who sends me political emails on a daily basis, apparently hoping to dissuade me from my more conservative viewpoints. Occasionally he points me to worthwhile opinions – not necessarily opinions I agree with, but reasoned arguments for a contrary point of view. He is well educated and spent many years in a sensitive position at a Fortune 100 company. He is no fool. In this election cycle, however, the quality of what he sends me has taken a noticeable downturn.
I have learned two things from his emails about the election. First, this election is all about racism. No matter what is said, no matter who appears in the ads, a large contingent of the left will perceive everything as an appeal to white racists. For example, I was told that Ann Coulter laces her columns with rap jargon in order to get this message across. (My friend thinks either Coulter’s supposedly racist audience listens to urban rap or the rappers are being converted to racism by reading Ann Coulter – I’m not sure which.)
Second, the level of discourse from some of the left is nothing short of obscene. I will concede that you can probably find some of the same on the right (and I will gladly hold it the same scrutiny). You can find just about anything on the internet. But you won’t find it here, and you would not find it in anything that I might send to a friend in an effort to persuade him to my point of view.
Last week the DailyKos posed the question “If god can give Robert Novak a brain tomour then why cant he give all of them one.” The readers were asked to vote on which right winger most deserved a brain tumor. You can’t read the post at Kos anymore, but you can read it here. And today Kos addresses the question “Why Are Our Presidential Candidates Debating in a F**king Church? And a creepy, Oprah-esque, conformity-worshiping, pop church at that.” (Are we to presume that the writer is Orthodox?)
My friend now directs me to Ezekiel K. Bush at Talking Points Memo. Bush has a predictably silly piece on why McCain is a hypocrite for receiving social security. Bush begins his posts with the gratuitous “Dear Friends in Christ.” (Religion is so often the easy target.) His bio describes him satirically as an arch conservative Whig (he must know very little about the Whigs) who had his children stoned based on a biblical mandate. Funny, huh. Blasphemy is his shtick, and he attempts to impress his readers with his ability to pack his paragraphs with ad hominem vitriol, such as this:
If we could go back to the confirmation hearings and force Michael Mukasey to admit he doesn’t have a penis, that he never had any intention of being anything but a puppet shill for this administration, and that he beats it to pictures of Rudy in drag. We could make him admit that he was being bought and paid for by these corrupt bastards, and that his entire legacy will be nothing but a footnote in history stating that he sold his Country out and should be branded a coward. If we could remind our Democratic Senators that we now had the majority, and now was the time to use that power. We needed to water-board the prospective A.G. on the Senate floor against his will and then see what his position on torture was.
All’s fair when you write from the lofty moral heights of the left. Label your opponents as promoters of torture and then advocate that they be tortured. How Old Testament. The left’s historic appeal to young voters must result from retaining the humor and logic of adolescence.
Perhaps the sheer length of this campaign has exhausted our supply of intelligent thinking and left us to hurl the few remaining scraps of discarded rhetoric. I look forward to the end (hopefully with an acceptable result), but I don’t think any outcome will assuage these very angry people.
August 19th, 2008
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Fitzroy |
Politics |
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Temple University’s sexual harassment code has been ruled unconstitutional. Inside Higher Ed explains why “The Court Got It Right.”
This month in an important victory for free speech on campus, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that Temple University’s former sexual harassment policy was unconstitutional. While free speech advocates from across the ideological spectrum cheered the Third Circuit’s ruling in DeJohn v. Temple University, some critics expressed dismay at what they deemed a “very ominous” example of “activist judging.” These critics are wrong — and it’s important for both students and university administrators to understand why.
* * *
The DeJohn opinion should come as no surprise to public universities. District courts have been striking down overbroad harassment policies for nearly 20 years. Rather than reaching unexpectedly “ominous” or “activist” legal conclusions, DeJohn simply provided a reaffirmation of clearly established law.
August 18th, 2008
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Fitzroy |
Education, Law |
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“The Russians have sized up the moral bankruptcy of the Western Left. They know that half-a-million Europeans would turn out to damn their patron the United States for removing a dictator and fostering democracy, but not more than a half-dozen would do the same to criticize their long-time enemy from bombing a constitutional state.” Victor Davis Hanson.
As Boring as St. Paul. Tim Wu reviews Michael Heller’s The Gridlock Economy (about intellectual property rights) and comes up with an interesting analogy:
It’s almost enough to make you wonder why we have property rights at all. This is where Heller’s book begins to face the problem that every counterintuitive work encounters: the fact that the intuition you are challenging has quite a bit of truth to it. The classic example of this is the New Testament, which begins with exciting counterintuitive ideas like loving your enemies and ends with a series of boring letters from Paul acknowledging the importance of at least a few rules.
Despite being boring, Heller’s book is commanding a lot of attention. I hear the New Testament is still selling well, too.
Speaking of Counterintuitive. The New Criterion takes a look back at the 1960s forty years later and deconstructs the conventional wisdom (without becoming boring).
You cannot step a foot into the literature about the 1960s without being told how “creative,” “idealistic,” and “loving” it was, especially in comparison to the 1950s. In fact, the counterculture of the Sixties represented the triumph of what the art critic Harold Rosenberg famously called the “herd of independent minds.” Its so-called creativity consisted of continually recirculating a small number of radical clichés; its idealism was little more than irresponsible utopianism; and its crusading for “love” was largely a blind for hedonistic self-indulgence. What Allan Bloom said in comparing American universities in the 1950s to those of the 1960s can easily be generalized to apply to the culture as a whole: “The fifties,” Bloom wrote, “were one of the great periods of the American university,” which had recently benefitted from an enlivening infusion of European talent and “were steeped in the general vision of humane education inspired by Kant and Goethe.” The Sixties, by contrast,
were the period of dogmatic answers and trivial tracts. Not a single book of lasting importance was produced in or around the movement. It was all Norman O. Brown and Charles Reich. This was when the real conformism hit the universities, when opinions about everything from God to the movies became absolutely predictable.
Gitmo on the Platte. Denver has built a secret jail for people protesting the Democratic National Convention.
The makeshift holding center, dubbed “Gitmo on the Platte” by activists, is located on city-owned property near Steele Street and 38th Avenue. Newly-installed security cameras guard the exterior, chain-link fences and barbed wire form cells inside.
“We feel the city should be ashamed of this secret prison they’ve set up,” said Re-create ‘68 organizer Glenn Spagnuolo.
Spagnuolo and other activists gathered outside the formerly-secret facility on Friday to protest the city’s plan to use it as a processing center for all those arrested outside the DNC.
August 17th, 2008
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Fitzroy |
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Speaking of anthropologists, I found several notable items in the February 2006 obituary of William White Howells.
Howells died at the age of 97. - “Years before DNA tests would provide confirmation, the research of William White Howells established that modern humans are one species, regardless of skin color or ethnic origin.”
- He preferred his martinis stirred, not shaken.
- During World War II he served as a Navy Lieutenant doing intelligence work.
- He was a professor of anthropology at Harvard from 1954 to 1974.
- “For his 90th birthday, Dr. Howells received a silver martini shaker from his family, engraved with the Latin phrase ‘mixtum non agitatum.’”
So here’s to Dr. Howells, an anthropologist who deigned to serve in the military, an academic who kept his job despite what Hugh Gusterson describes as the great purge of left-leaning academics by McCarthy, and a man who knew that martinis should be stirred.
Steve Sailer described him affectionately as a “princeling of the old WASP Ascendency” and noted this unfortunate development:
Not surprisingly, these products of the Old Boys Network elicited much resentment from younger anthropologists from less privileged backgrounds. Ironically, the new meritocrats turned out, on the whole, to be lousier scientists than the old aristocrats, leading to the dismal status of anthropology today.
Image by Ken30684 - Creative Commons
August 15th, 2008
Posted by
Fitzroy |
Leisure |
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