Why should Juan Cole do research when he can just make facts up?

A classic example of how third-rate academics do their work:

One of the few contemporary examples of settler colonialism is that of Israelis in the Palestinian West Bank. The number of Palestinians who have died from infant mortality, poor health conditions and lack of sanitation, loss of farms and other property and attendant penury, and other ill effects of the Israeli expulsion of their families in 1948 and 1967 and then occupation and colonization since 1967 is surely in the hundreds of thousands at least, though this toll is seldom considered.

Cole could have taken the time to look up population statistics, infant mortality rates, population growth rates, life expectancy figures and so forth to prove his thesis. You know...research.

But actual research is so tedious and time consuming. Worse yet, it might prove the opposite to what this pseudo-intellectual wants to convey. That won't do at all! Honesty is only a virtue when it supports Dr. Cole's bias, dontcha know.

Much better for this joke of a professor to just make up fake statistics. After all, it isn't as if his cheerleading anti-Zionist fans would actually call him on making up numbers out of thin air, would they?

By the way, I once estimated that there might be as many as 1.6 million more Palestinian Arabs alive today because of Israeli policies than there would be otherwise. While my numbers are fuzzy, I at least gave sources as to where I got them from, and anyone who wants can check my work or improve on it.

Which just goes to show what a sucker I am. I should have acted like Juan Cole and just make up facts instead of actually looking up hard data. Maybe I can get tenure somewhere!

Obviously, requiring professors to do actual research before they spout their half-baked opinions as fact is way over the line. They have inherent knowledge that doesn't require something as messy as data.

Then again, this isn't the first time Cole made up facts. Nor is it the first time that he accused Zionists of indirect mass murder by making up "facts" out of thin air.

Apparently, the normal rules of scholarship can be suspended - for certain "scholars."

(h/t Dan)