""Richard Smyth at Road Runner"" <smyth@nc.rr.com> wrote in message
news:003c01c5b283$4d576440$020010ac@pierce...
My point is that guesses are free - they are easily made and easily
abandoned if they prove erronous. However, in this modern internet era
where a speculation, even one couched as a speculation, immediately
shows
up in a hundred databases across the web and in various
vanity-published
books that in turn get recopied into more databases, there is a
responsibility not to present such guesses unless there is something
more
than vague speculation behind them, and certainly not to present them
as
fact as has been done in numerous instances both here and in published
books.
I agree completely - well said, Todd.
I disagree with Todd and Peter on this point. I believe Todd's standard
attaches
much too much importance to the trivial and unimportant harm done to the
many who are not engaged in serious research and does so at the expense of
serious potential harm done to the few who are engaged in research. As
to
the former, I seriously wonder whether the fate of the hundreds or
thousands
who are taken in by bad genealogy can actually be described as harm. If
they
eroneously believe they have a proven descent from King David, how are
they
harmed? And I would say, if they are harmed, so be it.
They are harmed because the study of genealogy everall is diminshed by
guesswork in particular instances: historians look at what passes amongst
the light-minded for "cutting edge" research in genealogy and turn up their
noses. If it matters in the first place who was related to whom, and how, in
the medieval era, then it must matter if the information circulated to
amateurs is right or wrong, just as it matters if popular history books are
carefully researched or not. No-one today is grievously "harmed" if, say, a
wrong date is given for the Gettysburg address in a history of the Civil
War, and the knowledgeable would merely scoff at this anyway; but if sales
were high enough the error would linger and reappear.
The outlandish speculations & fabrications in _The Da Vinci Code_ are
credited by thousands, some of whom imagine that the fame of the title lends
some plausibility to the contents. Their educators have contributed to a
culture of ignorance in which they can flourish with third-rate standards,
and so the bandwagon rolls inexorably on. Some SGM readers still pipe up
occasionally to say "Leave Doug alone, he's alright & you are just envious
of his wonderful record of finds". Yet these people have the benefit of
seeing his shoddiness & dishopnesty exposed here, day after
day....Ineducable stupidity can be left to its own sorry devices, but it
should not be encouraged by silence.
What a person who is doing research needs is an idea that might be true
and
that immediately suggests things to do to determine whether it is or is
not true.
Medieval sources are few enough that a competent researcher will look into
the same ones with or without a guiding idea of the likely outcome. But
having a _desired_ outcome is itself undesirable.
Undocumented speculation will do about as much harm to a serious
researcher
as a glance at some fanciful pedigree from King David would do. The only
thing that can seriously affect the course of inquiry is falsified data,
not
unsubstantiated hypotheses whose lack of support is transparent. About
hypotheses Peter Hempel used to say "They are not as plentiful as
blueberries."
Anyone who can provide me with an hypothesis about the parents of the
Samuel Green who married Mary Drew of Oyster River NH will be doing me
a service, no matter how the hypothesis is packaged.
Why? To take a case that I have been pursuing lately, the specious linking
of (everybody's ancestress) Beatrice, supposedly the second wife of the
Frankish King Robert I, to the Carolingian cadet line of the counts of
Vermandois, has worked its way into the landscape of genealogy and history,
appearing to this day unquestioned in scholarly analyses of late-9th century
politics in Francia. And it is based on NO evidence, indeed on nothing
better than the unsupported and higly dubious theory of Karl Werner.
Historians of the calibre of Constance Bouchard and Christian Settipani have
blatantly misread a charter text referring to a different woman entirely as
supporting this ancestry of Beatrice, because they mistakenly took Werner's
guess as solid.
Richardson is no Werner, of course, but even a laughing-stock can be taken
seriously by people who are not equipeed to see through him & not warned
about his follies.
I believe that the reason you two put yourselves in this position in which
you
are so solicitous of the consumers of Richardson's product is because you
accept his own classification of what his work is. He believes, sincerely
perhaps, that his work belongs in the category of genealogical research.
I can assure you I do not fall into this error: Richardson's work _contains_
some genuine research, but this is overlaid with so much burdensome garbage,
obfuscation and self-promoting nonsense as to be almost invisible.
But, if you open one of his books and look at it (I have two of his
books), it
is obvious at a glance that it is not organized as research work. It
quite
clearly belongs, not to any science of discovery, but to a science of
review.
No, it doesn't belong to any scientific level - the research is too
haphazard. His constant reference to CP as the be-all & end-all of research
apart from his minor revisions & additions to it is telling enough: as to
secondary authorities the more recent literature, and other valuable work
apart from that, are virtually unknown territory to him unless he is guided
through in each specific instance. A real scholar must go about this work
for himself, largely as a finding aid for primary evidence anyway, and
should do so spontaneously rather than just when goaded and directed.
Richardson fails on all counts. By dint of coverage he finds some small
nuggets of information, and even works a few things out for himself - but
not nearly enough, by any stretch of his own wishful thinking, to be
actually respected ny experts in the field.
Peter Stewart