Refuting the recent study on encyclopedic accuracy

Martin writes “Remember the article published in Nature that compared the accuracy of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikipedia? EB has written a lengthy rejoinder saying
the report was wrong “Because Nature’s research was invalid. As our editors and
scholarly advisers have discovered by reviewing the research in depth, almost
everything about the Nature’s investigation was wrong and misleading. Dozens of
inaccuracies attributed to the Britannica were not inaccuracies at all, and a number
of the articles Nature examined were not even in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The
study was so poorly carried out and its findings so error-laden that it was
completely without merit.”
They appear to have a strong case against the Nature article. Read the 20-page
report here.”

March 23, 2006 by Uncategorized 5

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5 Responses

  1. John says:
    March 23, 2006 at 1:28 am

    “We do not accept this criticism.”
    Wow, talk about protesting too much. The tone of this piece is right up there with Rob Schneider’s critic attack, or other hyper-sensitive authors not accepting criticisms.

    However… presuming EB really was slighted, isn’t that just then yet further proof that refereed journals can’t be trusted…?

    Reply
  2. Bibliofuture says:
    March 24, 2006 at 12:33 am

    Re:”We do not accept this criticism.”
    John

    I don’t think it is an issue of not accepting criticism. The article in Nature was supposedly a scientific study. Brittanica needed to do more than say “that is not true” they needed a strong defense of how the article was flawed. Readers of the Nature article think they are reading a scientifuc study and are going to give it alot of weight. I think Brittanica needed to make a strong response.
     
    For those of you that have not read the response I would ask you to do so. I think it is well worth the read.

    Reply
  3. deborah says:
    March 24, 2006 at 12:50 am

    Re:”We do not accept this criticism.”
    I would love to see Nature‘s response. Those are some serious and worrying allegations.

    Reply
  4. Anonymous Patron says:
    March 24, 2006 at 3:21 am

    Re:”We do not accept this criticism.”
    “Nature‘s” response is here: http://www.nature.com/press_releases/Britannica_re sponse.pdf

    Basically: “We do not intend to retract our article”. Let battle commence!

    Reply
  5. Anonymous Patron says:
    March 24, 2006 at 4:43 am

    Nature’s Response
    Nature’s response to why some of the articles they compared were from Britannica for Kids.

    This was done in a few cases when the Britannica website
    provided articles from these sources when queried on the pre-determined topics; as we
    said, the survey compared the content of the websites.

    So it looks like the Nature study was just a comparison of the websites.

    Reply

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