But what to make of Prof Wiener's imputations about the intellectual honesty of HNN's own frequent contributor, Professor Sternstein?
Wiener wrote: "The lengths that critics will go to discredit Bellesiles are at least creative: Professor Jerome Sternstein of Brooklyn College put a dozen legal pads in his own shower for thirty minutes and reported to the world that they survived "intact and virtually unscathed"!" (Mental image of Sternstein as a mad scientist, pouring torrents of water over helpless yellow legal pads!)
Now if Professor Sternstein accurately reported the results of his simple experiment, it is quite likely that Prof Bellesiles' claim to having had his notes turned into unreadable pulp by a burst pipe will - pardon the expression - "not hold water". So one of these two is not exactly telling the truth. And not just about a peripheral issue -- it goes to the heart of Prof Bellesiles' inability to produce original data for other researchers to examine.
by Andrew Frechtling on October 18, 2002 at 2:27 PM