Scholarship

I've seen other examples of this, but none quite so lazy.

Starting with this webpage from "Medieval Britain," no date (though I'd guess in the last 5 years):

"Inn-keeping was formalized around the 14th and 15th centuries, when traveling was much more common than we normally imagine. The roads were bad, sometimes even impassable for loaded wagons (and not to mention, frequently visited by outlaws and robbers).  Between the villages, there were long stretches of forest."

Then this from The Laws of Innkeepers, by John E.H. Sherry, 1972, 1981, 1993 (published by Cornell University):

"There was a surprising amount of travel in England in the Middle Ages.  The roads, to be sure, were very bad and in general were impassable for loaded wagons, and the transportation of goods from place to place was therefore almost impossible ... the roads were not only bad, but they were infested with outlaws and robbers of all sorts.  Between the villages there were long stretches of forest, and these forests were the refuge of the outlaws who formed a considerable proportion of the population of the country.

Here's a little bit from Cases and Materials on the Laws of Innkeepers, by John Harold Sherry in 1956 (a snippet is all that's available online):

"... apparently peculiar doctrine of the law regulating the rights and liabilities of innkeepers, in order that we may learn the extent of their responsibilities and understand their limitations, we must examine briefly, the early history of innkeeping in England; the character and nature of inns, and the functions which they performed in the social life of the English people at the time when the law of innkeepers was forming, that is, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries."

And now, The Medieval Innkeeper and His Responsibility, by Joseph H. Beale, Jr., in 1906:

"... apparently peculiar doctrine of the law regulating the rights and liabilities of innkeepers, in order that we may learn the extent of their responsibilities and understand their limitations, we must examine briefly, as has just been said, the early history of innkeeping in England; the character and nature of inns, and the functions which they performed in the social life of the English people at the time when the law of innkeepers was forming, that is, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries."

Now, lest you think the above is merely a quote of the below (and what a strange quote it would be, since it's an introduction to the topic, and not fact-based), Beale's account also includes this:

 "There was a surprising amount of travelling in England in the Middle Ages.  The roads, to be sure, were very bad, and in general were impassable for loaded wagons, and the transportation of goods from place to place was therefore almost impossible ... The roads were not only bad, but they were infested with outlaws and robbers of all sorts.  Between the villages there were long stretches of forest, and these forests were the refuge of the outlaws who formed a considerable portion of the population of the country."

The Copyright Act passed by Theodore Roosevelt was signed into law in 1909; the law only granted protection  if the published work gave proper notice.  Likely, as Beale was writing for a magazine in 1906 called The Green Bag, the effort to follow up and make sure the material was properly protected was likely never done.  As such, Sherry was most likely legally free to copy Beale word-for-word, but consider:

Is this "scholarship"?  Beale is writing for a law magazine; there's no corraborating evidence for any of his statements; and he's talking about a time many centuries before his own.  What are Beale's credentials for writing history?

From my own readings and history education, there are multiple points in which Beale's wrong.  Yes, there were bandits, but they weren't hanging from the trees.  They had no reason to attack people without money, while numerous peoples travelled in multi-family groups and were therefore largely safe.  Bandits were much more interested in charging for passage than causing harm ... but then Beale is writing post 19th-century, a very different time, when bandits were much more dangerous and desperate, and more numerous, despite there being less long stretches of forest.  Imagine being a bandit sitting around waiting for an absence of travellers, week after week ... wouldn't they, you know, haul their ass to where the people were, like on the fringes of the rural districts, and sometimes within them?  As, we know, they did?

 And while places were impassable for wagons, they weren't for carts and mules, which is how most material was delivered at the time.  Donkeys deliver munitions throughout Afghanistan, a country ten times a mountainous as Europe, with no roads at all.  Yet not "impossible."  Beale is making it up as he goes along ... and who cares anyway, it's a law review.

Cornell University is, on the other hand, an ivy league school, considered one of the eight best in America ... and yet here they are printing work from a scholar cribbing sentences like a junior-high school student putting one over on the gym instructor teaching social studies.  Including the introduction, for heaven sake, which is non-fact writing we do to preface the subject material.  It's ...

Exactly what I'd expect from a university professor.