> > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Robert Seeberger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Sent: Friday, November 08, 2002 7:35 PM > > Subject: Re: Michael Bellesiles Resigns from Emory Faculty > > Dan M. wrote
> > I am not defending his integrity. I am musing on what drives people. If > he > > was honor driven, the problem was tangling with the NRA. If he was > > integrity driven, he wouldn't have lied in the first place. > > I cant see where this is a binary question. Because, with honor, the whole thing is how you look. A man of honor can do what he wants and keep his honor, so long as he doesn't get caught. He loses his honor when falsely accused, as long as other people don't know its false. My point is that if you want to lie about something, then picking a topic that the NRA can throw a lot of manpower and money to chase things down to prove you wrong is really stupid. Now, I think that lying in scholastic research is abhorant, and it undercuts the reputation of anyone else who does that research. So, the question of honor vs. integrety. He may have also been deluding himself, caught up in his beliefs to the point where he justified making up data that he knew was there, but had been destroyed. >I dont see where in this case honor or integrity would be the driving forces. I think its likely >to be ego driven to the point that his personal prejudices over rode his sense of > honor and integrity. That's probably true, because he picked the wrong opponent. However, if he got away with it, his honor would be intact. His integrity would not have been. > > It does not surprise me at all that he was forced to resign. I smelled BS > the first time I heard about him (here on Brin-L). The entire premise was > preposterous to begin with, the stuff conspiracy theories are made of. Well, it was proven wrong, but other ideas that have been just as counterintuitive have been well documented. What he has done was make the job of anyone who wants to show something counterintuitive is historically correct that much harder. An example of this is the arguement that the movie cowboy had little to do with reality; or that the Civil War was really fought over slavery. We have the president's wife, who is not uneducated, arguing against that view as thought it was some nasty postmodern reconstruction of history, instead of what really happened. Now, he has given people like that more ammunition to fight against true research. For undermining the assumption that peer reviewed research can be truested, he does deserve to be fired. I'm against it even if he got away with it, but I believe in integrety, not honor. > > > > Its an interesting state of affairs. People can lie through their teeth, > > get caught at it, and have the people who catch them look bad. Others, > > can't get away with being called a liar, even if they were later proven to > > be telling the truth on the subject. > > > I agree with the above, but dont think it has much to do with Bellesiles or > his resignation. Well, if he had falsified an area where there wasn't a massive "army" opposing him, do you think it would have appeared on the radar of the school? Would there have been any investigation? Also, it would be interesting to see if other tenured professors caught in this type of shoddy work were fired. But, others didn't do as much damage to the institutions they supposedly supported, so if his penalty was higher than that for others, it would still be justified. Having said that, I am personally strongly opposed to any falsification of any academic research, especially in support of a valid supposition. (Not saying his was by this.) His actions would be especially wrong if he was providing false data for a valid premise. I guess what I was thinking of is how men of honor were known to lie about substantial things, and kept their honor. This was true, even if a man of integrity would not have lied under those circumstances. (For example, a man of integrity would be happy to lie to a potential murderer to save a life.) So, if he picked another subject to lie about, he would keep his honor, he just wouldn't have integrity. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
