Credible research?

Associate Professor David Hailey of Utah State University posted a note on the internet that he had done some research on the memos that Dan Rather used in the report on Bush's Guard duty. In this note he said that his personal research had turned up a typewriter that produced results just like the memos. This was news, of course, since virtually everyone who has examined the documents concluded they were not done on typewriters and, in fact, were produced by a computer. CBS producer Mary Mapes sent out the information on Hailey's new research.

Here's a portion (the Abstract) of what Hailey posted:

The following evidence from a forensic examination of the Bush memos indicates that they were typed on a typewriter:

The font is a common typewriter typeface invented at the beginning of the 20th century and in continuous use until the computer replaced the typewriter. The font's name is "Typewriter." Although the typeface was somewhat modified for civilian communities in the 1960s, it remained commonplace in the military well into the 1970s. In short, the Bush memos were produced in a version of Typewriter commonly used in the military at the time.

Hailey didn't specify the font, created multiple versions of the memos and made them by putting characters from multiple font sets together via software like Photoshop and printing them on a computer printer.

Here, by Jim Lindgren of the Volokh site, is a full discussion of the multiple versions of the "recreated" memos and discussion of the ways in which they were appear to be put together.

Hailey has since backed off his claims. What was he thinking? What kind of "research" prompts someone to say publicly that they have done something that they haven't? The curious thing in this episode is, again, not the documents but the thinking of the document handler.