Timothy Noah cares deeply about intellectual honesty

Slate's Timothy Noah asks if John Lott is "the Bellesiles of the Right." But Slate readers may be puzzled about what this means given that the magazine published no articles about Bellesiles' notorious academic fraud and disgrace until…Timothy Noah decided to mention it in today's attack on Lott.

Bellesiles distorts and invents historical records like a Minitrue clerk and Slate yawns. Emory forces him to resign and Slate shrugs. Columbia yanks the Bancroft prize and Slate looks the other way. But John Lott is suspected of making up a single survey and Slate's editors instantly decide the Bellesiles scandal deserves mention, if only as a hammer to apply to Lott's reputation.

Couldn't Slate run a single article where, say, Bellesiles gets to be the "Bellesiles of the Left" before they slime someone else with his name?

Read Clayton Cramer for details on Bellesiles' career as a fabulist.