This isn't a case like David Abraham's, the Princeton historian who was run out of the profession on a rail for making a few ordinary mistakes of the sort almost any scholar but the fanatical perfectionists do. This is the case of a writer -- he can't be called a scholar -- who committed every crime against scientific scholarship that it is possible to commit,a did so systematically, repeatedly, willfully, and over a long period of time.
The tragedy is that he has partly discredited the truth, as Doug says. Good intentions here in the sense of loyalty to Native Americans or justice for the oppressed are beside the point. A historical scholar's first duty is to speak the truth as dictated, insofar as it is dictated, by the evidence, and to do so honestly and transparently. And let the chips fall where they may -- it does not serve us to lie, misrepresent, exaggerate, cheat, and steal, and then get huffy when caught.
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> On May 25, 2006, at 5:05 PM, Charles Brown wrote:
>
> > To try to say it quickly, the investigative
> committee is
> > unwarranted in
> > reaching such a _definite_ conclusion that
> Churchill's conclusion
> > is not
> > supported by the evidence.
>
> I think the point is that the sources he cited
> didn't say what he
> said they'd said, a problem he seems to have had
> more than once. Like
> I've said before, this is really sad & tragic, since
> the truth is
> terrible enough, and he's now indirectly discredited
> the truth.
>
> Doug
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