Third Week

Before commenting on the "Statement on Standards" as per instructions, I quickly want to note a way in which Historians in Trouble ties into a theme from the previous week/text, namely the construction of reality by language. It occurred to me during our class discussion about the way that certain of the accused in the book--namely Fox-Genovese and Thernstrom--spun their cases as examples of standing up to the left, as opposed to serious violations of ethical and professional standards, that this is a great example of a change in language totally changing the 'reality' of the past. And that's all I really wanted to say about that.

As for the "Statement on Standards," I didn't find the text particularly interesting. Meaning, it reads exactly as you would expect it to read and doesn't say anything we don't all already know. Sure, you can use it to indict many of the accused in the Wiener book: for example, Weinstein clearly acted in violation of the standard that "historians favor free, open, equal, and nondiscriminatory access to archival...collections wherever possible," and the Statement's claim that "the plagiarist's standard defense--that he or she was misled by hastily taken and imperfect notes--is plausible only in the context of a wider tolerance of shoddy work" is applicable to several of Wiener's case studies. But we didn't need the Statement to tell us these things. The real question is, what is the function of the Statement? Given that it's basically a formalized version of fundamental principles all historians are already aware of, what do we gain by approving this formal document?

The obvious answer would be that a governing body can refer to the statement when judging cases of supposed fraud or plagiarism (or whatever), but as there is no longer a body empowered to take action against violations of the standards, this function is questionable. It's also doubtful that anyone really expects university administrators who actually do have this power to make reference to the document. It seems to me like the Statement really just exists to make us all feel better about ourselves and our profession.

That said, there is one claim in the document that I found interesting: "the real penalty for plagiarism is the abhorrence of the community of scholars." Is this an accurate description of reality? Do the folks who've got away with plagiarism or fraud really suffer from a permanently damaged reputation within the field? This isn't a rhetorical question, as I'm genuinely curious about the fates of some of the individuals whose faults are described in the book. What do Pearson's colleagues at Franklin and Marshall think of him? Has his relationship with the rest of his department suffered? What about that asshole Feldman who tried to prevent David Abraham from getting a job--does he suffer from working in a community of historians who all think he's a shithead, or is life basically the same for him as it always was?