Don't Send a Lion to Catch a Mouse

[odin]

I regret to say that the Vedantam piece may need retraction. Lyall and Wilson presented the ideas cited by Vedantam at an American Political Science Association panel in 2006, where it was roundly criticized, not for the content of its arguments, but for the fact that they lifted almost their entire argument from another author's work. Ivan Arreguin-Toft published the same argument (including virtually the same empirical trend) in an essay entitled "How the Weak Win Wars" in International Security in 2001 (v26, n1). Toft later published his findings in a book in 2005. For those of you interested in the actual article Vedantam cites, it's available at Lyall's "personal web page" at Princeton.edu. I've attached pages 1–5 of Toft's paper (note the graphic on p. 97) so readers can judge for themselves. Lyall and Wilson appear to be moving forward with a new version of "their" argument, to be presented at a West Point conference next week. One can only hope they've re-framed their paper to acknowledge their debt to Toft (at the panel they presented, Toft was actually the panel discussant!).