The Nation has published an editorial that provides a brief summary of the Emory Report but gives greater weight to Bellesiles’ response, reinforced by additional comments from Jon Wiener. (Link via History New Network)
According to Wiener,
historians have to deal with the messy confusion of things, and they offer interpretations of it. Historical knowledge advances by the testing of interpretations, not by stifling interpreters, and not by indicting the interpreter’s character for flaws in a table.
Wiener, busy tilting with imaginary stifling, ignores the fact that Bellesiles’ “interpretations” have probably been tested more thoroughly than any in recent, well, history, and found so seriously flawed that Emory’s three distinguished reviewers, plus a host of others, could not rule out fraud.
