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Bellesiles An Academic Undead?

An interesting paper by Prof. Seth Barrett Tillman. Background: In 2000 alleged historian Michael Bellesiles published a book, "Arming America," which claimed that Americans were rarely armed in the framing period and, in fact, until after the Civil War. In 2001 the book was awarded the Bancroft Prize, historical writing's top award.

Clayton Cramer read the book and noticed its claims were contrary to his own extensive research, and began checking the footnotes and found they were often simply invented. Bellesiles claimed he was the victim of a right-wing witch-hunt and was getting death threats, etc. Initially the professional historical community rallied around him, but then some started checking things out and found that Cramer was 100% right. Further checking showed shocking problems -- he claimed to have found critical records in a library where you have to sign in, and his name was not to be found on their logs, he claimed to have examined probate records that hadn't existed in nearly a century (burned up in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906), he claimed he'd lost many records in a huge building flood of which there was no record, etc. In the end the Bancroft Prize was revoked (first time that every happened), his publisher recalled the book, and he resigned his professorship.

Prof. Tillman tracks an interesting phenomenon. After Bellesile's disgrace, courts stopped citing him. (In fact the 9th Cir., which had just cited him, issued a new opinion leaving him out. From 2003 to 2020, not a single opinion, state or federal, cited him. But since 2020, he has crept back into judicial citations (although they avoid citing his book, instead citing his earlier articles. This suggests that the authors of the opinions are aware of his lack of credibility).