[lbo-talk] Churchill and Thomas Brown

Chuck Grimes cgrimes at rawbw.com
Mon Mar 14 07:41:05 PST 2005


Sorry to chip in late, but it did seem to me that Thomas Brown's essay on Ward Churchill's smallpox claims was good coin. James Heartfield

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I got to thinking about this and decided Brown's article or essay was not good coin and would probably have never made it through peer review. I wouldn't pass it.

Here's the reason. Brown attacked Churchill, but offered no positive case alternative. It wasn't an academic paper. It was shit job.

The way to counter Churchill in an academic context is to write the positive case history of the small pox epidemic and let Churchill's paper die by default. Brown didn't do that.

As a limited e-list discussion outlined, it is likely the US withheld vaccinations or distributed them selectively to `friendlies' and withheld them from whoever was considered temporarily out of favor. That's a positive case alternative.

CG



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