Contra Todd and Peter

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Richard Smyth at Road Run

Contra Todd and Peter

Legg inn av Richard Smyth at Road Run » 06 sep 2005 03:35:02

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.

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. 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.

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. 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. If you blame it, blame it for the kind of fault that one would find in a dictionary that contained misspelled words or in a dictionary for children that contained adult pornography.

Regards,

Richard Smyth
smyth@nc.rr.com

Todd A. Farmerie

Re: Contra Todd and Peter

Legg inn av Todd A. Farmerie » 06 sep 2005 03:35:03

Richard Smyth at Road Runner wrote:
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.

You appear to be creating a dicotomy where there is a broad spectrum.
Between those who are just decorating paper with interesting names and
serious scholars are the ,ajority of genealogists, those who take a
serious interest in getting it RIGHT, but have neither the resources nor
aptitude to do the original research. While neither extreme is harmed
all that much, those in between can waste a lot of time tracking down
such groundless speculation, and the serious researchers can in turn
have their time wasted by these misled novices.


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. 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. If you blame it, blame it for the kind of fault that one would find in a dictionary that contained misspelled words or in a dictionary for children that contained adult pornography.


You may look at a work and see it as review, I may look at it and see it
as review, but a consumer who has not done their own research and who is
told that the work is the result of hours of independent original
research may not be as likely to look at it and conclude it is anything
other than what it (via its author) claims to be. Further, were one to
accept a work such as this as a review, that would likewise
mischaracterize it, as it contains much material that is not review, but
rather the author's original research. If a work contains 'information'
that is poorly supported or just plain bad, it doesn't matter whether
you call it original research or review, either way it does a disservice
to genealogy.

taf

Peter Stewart

Re: Contra Todd and Peter

Legg inn av Peter Stewart » 06 sep 2005 04:52:21

""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

Peter Stewart

Re: Contra Todd And Peter

Legg inn av Peter Stewart » 06 sep 2005 05:48:49

Hines wrote:

Still stewing in his own juices.

Still failing to own up to the consequences of his twisted criticism:
Hines opined that I was absolutely wrong about "Uriah N. Owen", but he
just isn't game to go on the record directly stating that Richardson is
actually right & telling the truth on the same matter, which must go
with my being wrong. Feeble duplicity & cowardice from Hines. There is
no grey area: either the man exists separately from Richardson or he
doesn't - even in Turkey, "Uriah" can't be partly real and partly a
fictional imposture on this newsgroup.

Sour Apples Writ Large re Richardson.

Um, I have no professional interest involved and my studies don't even
overlap with Richardson's - it's precisely due to this independence of
opinion that I am free to speak the truth about him without an axe to
grind and without favour to curry in any other quarter.

And tugging on that hook -- set deep in his belly.

Only no-one else can see any sense or substance at all to this forced
and clearly wishful analogy. Repeating it won't make it any more
plausible, of course.

The hook in question is Richardson's own lies about "Uriah", and the
line attached is tightening. His acolyte, whether willing or unwitting
in the falsehood, is at present having to choose between exposing
Richardson voluntarily and explaining how he was duped or waiting on a
more disgraceful exposure of the lie and then having to explain as well
his own guilty silence. Ain't life hard, for fibbers and their
hangers-on?

Peter Stewart

Richard Smyth at UNC-CH

Re: Contra Todd and Peter

Legg inn av Richard Smyth at UNC-CH » 06 sep 2005 05:58:01

You appear to be creating a dicotomy where there is a broad spectrum.

I cannot believe you believe what you have written. Suppose an editor wrote
you and said, "I know you're really busy writing up your research but could
you take a little time to give us a review article in an area you've been
working on". Would you write back and say "You appear to be creating a
dichotomy were there is a broad spectrum"? I daresay you know perfectly
well what an article or book is that is a survey of the literature and you
know that what is appropriate for such work is a function of who the
intended users are.

Further, were one to accept a work such as this as a review, that would
likewise
mischaracterize it, as it contains much material that is not review, but
rather the author's original research.

Again, you are writing as though I had created a new and previously unknown
distinction between publication of research and publication of a review of
the literature or of the present state of our knowledge. I would say that
if you put into a survey article a research result that has not been
previously published in a peer-reviewed forum without doing some pretty
heavy signaling that it is unreviewed material, then you have crossed a
fairly bright line that most researchers are well aware of. Passing off
your opinion about your data and conclusions as if they were established
facts is very bad form.

The fact that Richardson boasts about doing that very thing is, for me, one
of the marks of his sincerity.

Regards, really,
Dick Smyth

Peter Stewart

Re: Contra Todd And Peter

Legg inn av Peter Stewart » 06 sep 2005 06:09:31

Hines wrote:

Stewart should chase Uriah Owen off to Turkey -- if he can find him.

Stewart has already chased him down, to Salt Lake City.

Hines is still not game to take a stand, to make a plain statement of
his position. Rum, when at the same time he clearly can't shut-up.

At least for the moment he has paused from boring us about "Jack the
Ripper" while pretending that this was all somehow Leo's doing.

There must be a lurid polka-dot sky over the cheapjack fantasy world of
Planet Hines.

Peter Stewart

D. Spencer Hines

Re: Contra Todd And Peter

Legg inn av D. Spencer Hines » 06 sep 2005 06:20:01

Still stewing in his own juices.

Sour Apples Writ Large re Richardson.

And tugging on that hook -- set deep in his belly.

Hilarious!

DSH

"Peter Stewart" <p_m_stewart@msn.com> wrote in message
news:Vn8Te.24343$FA3.16130@news-server.bigpond.net.au...

<baldersnip>

Todd A. Farmerie

Re: Contra Todd and Peter

Legg inn av Todd A. Farmerie » 06 sep 2005 06:49:37

Richard Smyth at UNC-CH wrote:
You appear to be creating a dicotomy where there is a broad spectrum.


I cannot believe you believe what you have written. Suppose an editor wrote
you and said, "I know you're really busy writing up your research but could
you take a little time to give us a review article in an area you've been
working on". Would you write back and say "You appear to be creating a
dichotomy were there is a broad spectrum"?

The dichotomy I was talking about waa that a genealogist is either:

a) one engaged in serious research.

or

b) One who is just after an interesting story and doesn't care whether
it is right or not.

Your editor analogy has nothing to do with this that I can see.


Further, were one to accept a work such as this as a review, that would

likewise

mischaracterize it, as it contains much material that is not review, but
rather the author's original research.


Again, you are writing as though I had created a new and previously unknown
distinction between publication of research and publication of a review of
the literature or of the present state of our knowledge. I would say that
if you put into a survey article a research result that has not been
previously published in a peer-reviewed forum without doing some pretty
heavy signaling that it is unreviewed material, then you have crossed a
fairly bright line that most researchers are well aware of.

Yes, but most casual readers are not.

Passing off
your opinion about your data and conclusions as if they were established
facts is very bad form.

The fact that Richardson boasts about doing that very thing is, for me, one
of the marks of his sincerity.

Huh?

D. Spencer Hines

Re: Contra Todd And Peter

Legg inn av D. Spencer Hines » 06 sep 2005 07:00:02

Stewart should chase Uriah Owen off to Turkey -- if he can find him.

Hilarious!

Tally Ho!

DSH

Leo van de Pas

Re: Contra Todd and Peter

Legg inn av Leo van de Pas » 06 sep 2005 08:12:02

----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Smyth at UNC-CH" <smyth@email.unc.edu>
To: <GEN-MEDIEVAL-L@rootsweb.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 1:59 PM
Subject: Re: Contra Todd and Peter
<snip>

The fact that Richardson boasts about doing that very thing is, for me,
one
of the marks of his sincerity.

Regards, really,
Dick Smyth

You surprise me that you put the word sincerity and the name of Richardson

in one sentence. If Richardson sincerely practiced what he preaches the
atmosphere on gen-med would be so very different.

Sincerely he accused Peter Stewart, Tim Powys-Lybbe and myself of fighting
with everyone while he was away to the point he felt sorry for everyone.
Having asked several times of some proof for this statement, he sincerely
remains silent.

He sincerely preaches we should have genealogy and friendship on gen-med and
at the same he has been hounding me about a dubious e-mail and Peter Stewart
to see whether Peter Stewart is Peter Stewart.

He sincerely tells one of his friends that Uriah send an e-mail to him from
Turkey and as a result he had to re-type, no he can't send it on, to convey
Uriah's message. No I would not put the word sincere in one sentence with
Douglas Richardson.

If he wants to be sincere and start with a clean slate, that slate has to
come clean. Really.
Leo van de Pas

Richard Smyth at Road Run

Re:Contra Todd and Peter

Legg inn av Richard Smyth at Road Run » 06 sep 2005 14:00:02

I am having difficulty following this discussion. I introduced a distinction. To which Todd replied:

You appear to be creating a dicotomy where there is a broad spectrum.

I replied with what I thought was evidence that my distinction is a familiar distinction in the world of research publication. Todd replies:

The dichotomy I was talking about waa that a genealogist is either:
a) one engaged in serious research.
or
b) One who is just after an interesting story and doesn't care whether
it is right or not.
Your editor analogy has nothing to do with this that I can see.

Meanwhile, Peter replies to my original message:

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.

Gentlemen, I concede the field. Wherever it is.

Regards,

Richard Smyth
smyth@nc.rr.com

Gjest

Re: Contra Todd and Peter

Legg inn av Gjest » 06 sep 2005 17:54:02

In a message dated 9/5/2005 6:33:35 PM Pacific Daylight Time, smyth@nc.rr.com
writes:


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. 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.

I would agree as long as each hypothesis is so marked, and each *fact* with
support is also so marked, or perhaps wholely *un*marked and thus indicate the
distinction between one type of statement and the other.
Many researchers rely on secondary works and when asked, will point, to
such a work as the basis of their facts. When told that the *fact* in question
is really just a *guess* by the author, they will pontificate and gesture
about wildly until subdued by tranquilizer dart. Not very pretty. And should be
avoided when possible.
Will Johnson

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