Posted: 9/17/2001 1:36:55 PM EDT
[#4]
Lindgren, a specialist in probate law and statistical analysis (and a believer, he says, in gun control), became suspicious of Bellesiles's findings early on and began posting his objections on history discussion sites. He looked over some of Bellesiles's sources, and eventually wrote the academic paper, ''Counting Guns in Early America,'' which he will present today at Harvard and later at other institutions. The paper argues, among other things, that Bellesiles's data are grossly in error and that some of his conclusions are mathematically impossible. Lindgren also says that when he contacted Bellesiles, trying to get him to produce the details of his research, Bellesiles was unable to do so.
''In virtually every part of the book examined in detail,'' Lindgren told the Globe, ''there are problems ... An enormous number of people have become cautious. It's clear that this book is impressive to legal and social historians who do not check the background. Law professors and quantitative historians have been suspicious about the book since its release.''
Bellesiles says that he kept all his probate findings on yellow legal pads and that they were destroyed when a water pipe broke and flooded the history department offices at Emory last April, while he was in England. (There was a flood, an Emory spokeswoman says, and many history faculty lost books and papers. The spokesman could not say whether Bellesiles papers were among those lost.)
Lindgren also charges that Bellesiles could not have reviewed probate records in San Francisco for the 1840s and 1850s, as he claims to have done in his book and on his Web site, because all such records were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire. Bellesiles's Web-site article, ''Probate Records as an Historical Source,'' lists the San Francisco Superior Court as the site where he did his research.
According to Ida Wong, deputy clerk of the San Francisco Superior Court, contacted by the Globe yesterday, ''All that we have here is 1907 and after. Everything before that was destroyed.'' Asked where surviving records might be, Wong said, ''I would not know where to refer you.''
In an interview, Bellesiles said he can't remember exactly where he did the California research, that he remembers going to the courthouse, but might have done it at the Bancroft Library at the University of California. He said he recalls finding 12 such probate files. Anthony Bliss, curator of rare manuscripts at the Bancroft, says it is possible there might be some lists in its collections, but could not say for certain. Certainly, he said, the great preponderance of such records were lost to the fire.
View Quote
|
|