Hmm, seems to open fine in Adobe for me.
It's long (40 page report, 7 page retort) but here are a couple of highlights:
Question 1. Did Professor Bellesiles engage in "intentional fabrication or falsification of research data" in connection with probate records from Rutland County, Vermont? Our conclusion is that Bellesisles' account of the Vermont probate records contain extensive errors in part because they were not in fact collected with the purpose of counting guns.
Question 2. Did Professor Bellesiles engage in "intentional fabrication or falsification of research data" in connection with probate records from Providence, Rhode Island? Our conclusion is that Professor Bellesiles' work on the Providence, Rhode Island records does not raise serious problems of fabrication or falsification of research data .. errors ... appear to be a consequence of his conflation of wills and inventories ... imprecision in the use of technical terms ... exaggeration of data.
Question 3. Did Professor Bellesiles engage in "intentional fabrication or falsification of research data" in connection with probate records from the San Francisco Bay area? Our conclusion is that we cannot prove that (he) simply invented his California research, but neither do we have confidence that the Contra Costa inventories resolve the problem. The discovery of the Contra Costa data appears to have been fortuitous ... some question as to whether he could have read these documents at the time he claims to have done so.
Question 4. Did Professor Bellesiles engage in "intentional fabrication or falsification of research data" in connection with probate records supporting the figures in Table One ... ? ... unfamiliarity with quantitative methods or plain incompetence could explain some of the known deficiencies in the construction of Table.18 ... But in one respect, the failure to clearly identify his sources, does move into the realm of "falsification," which would constitute a violation of the Emory "Policies." The construction of this Table implies a consistent, comprehensive, and intelligible method of gathering data. The reality seems quite the opposite. In fact, Professor Bellesiles told the Committee that because of criticism from other scholars, he himself had begun to doubt the quality of his probate research well before he published it in the Journal of American History. [Interview, p.35-6 AA 00764-764; MB 00448]]. The most egregious misrepresentation has to do with his handling of the more than 900 cases reported by Alice Hanson Jones. When critics pointed out that Jones' data disagreed with his, Bellesiles responded by explaining that he did NOT include Jones's data in his computations because her inventories, taken during the build-up to the American revolution, showed a disproportionately high number of guns! Here is a clear admission of misrepresentation, since the label on column one in Table One clearly says "1765-1790."
Question 5. Did professor Bellesiles engage in "other serious deviations 'from accepted practices in carrying out or reporting results from research'" with respect to probate records or militia census records by: a)
Failing to carefully document his findings; (b) Failing to make available to others his sources, evidence, and data; or (c) Misrepresenting evidence or the sources of evidence." We have reached the conclusion with reference to clauses "a" through "c," that Professor Bellesiles contravened these professional norms, both as expressed in the Committee charge and in the American Historical Association's definition of scholarly "integrity," .... (goes on to spell these out)
We have interviewed Professor Bellesiles and found him both cooperative and respectful of this process. Yet the best that can be said of his work with the probate and militia records is that he is guilty of unprofessional and misleading work. Every aspect of his work in the probate records is deeply flawed. Even allowing for the loss of some of his research materials, he appears not to have been systematic in selecting repositories or collections of probate records for examination and his recording methods were at best primitive and altogether unsystematic.
That was unexpected. I never thought Emory would relent. Happy day for the truth.