My autistic fixes for academic research - Diana Moon Glampers Handicaps Journals

[Diana Moon Glampers]

History is one of the biggest areas where there should be bug bounties and a replacement of peer review with departmental review.

There are many, many incidents where historians' citations are absolute garbage that do not actually back up their opinion.

I recently went digging for the source of a specific statistic about the population of regions of Mesoamerica during pre-Columbian times, and found out the "gold standard" statistic cites a book you can't find online, but if you actually go buy the book like an autist, you'll find that the figures are nowhere to be found. They're made up. You can read the whole alleged source cover to cover in case of page numbering errors, but it's not there.

This happens so often when I go to follow up academic historians' big works. This isn't even counting all the people who misrepresent a cited author's argument! This is just people literally making up quantitative data and assuming facts not in evidence.

Typically the way this is now done is to cite some work that can't be found online at present, some nice out-of-print book you can claim said anything you like. It feels to me like the fancier, bespectacled version of when a blue-collar worker claims they used to work for Blockbuster and Sam Goody and Borders, good luck background checking that!

A history bug bounty, plus publishing by your own department (with consequences directly to you if it turns out you cost them a bug bounty through negligence or malice), would completely de-corrupt this. There'd be plenty of incentive for bored autists like me to go buy out-of-print texts and see if they really said what historians claim. It would completely knock the wind out of the sails of aggressively terrible, fake historical research.

 

[William Murderface]

History is one of the biggest areas where there should be bug bounties and a replacement of peer review with departmental review.

There are many, many incidents where historians' citations are absolute garbage that do not actually back up their opinion.

I recently went digging for the source of a specific statistic about the population of regions of Mesoamerica during pre-Columbian times, and found out the "gold standard" statistic cites a book you can't find online, but if you actually go buy the book like an autist, you'll find that the figures are nowhere to be found. They're made up. You can read the whole alleged source cover to cover in case of page numbering errors, but it's not there.

This happens so often when I go to follow up academic historians' big works. This isn't even counting all the people who misrepresent a cited author's argument! This is just people literally making up quantitative data and assuming facts not in evidence.

Typically the way this is now done is to cite some work that can't be found online at present, some nice out-of-print book you can claim said anything you like. It feels to me like the fancier, bespectacled version of when a blue-collar worker claims they used to work for Blockbuster and Sam Goody and Borders, good luck background checking that!

A history bug bounty, plus publishing by your own department (with consequences directly to you if it turns out you cost them a bug bounty through negligence or malice), would completely de-corrupt this. There'd be plenty of incentive for bored autists like me to go buy out-of-print texts and see if they really said what historians claim. It would completely knock the wind out of the sails of aggressively terrible, fake historical research.

How do you plan to have departmental review when you don't have historians in a department that overlap, especially in sources not in English?

Let's say I'm writing a paper about French-English trade relations, circa-1300. My primary sources are going to be in Latin, Middle English, and Old French, and likely dialects of the latter two. If no other historians in my department can read Middle English or Old French how do they verify what I claim the sources are purported to say? Are they also supposed to fly to England and France to physically check the libraries and archives themselves to make sure the sources even exist? Who foots the bill for all this? Grants? The departments? The university press? Me?

 

[Diana Moon Glampers]

Consortiums, I imagine.

As for who foots the bill, think what the libraries pay for all their subscriptions. If everyone took that money and used it to make these journals, everyone would be better off.

 

[Audit]

Who foots the bill for all this? Grants? The departments? The university press? Me?

It's the histories. You know that there's barely any money in this. An easier solution would be to greatly reduce the total number of academic historians and closely scrutinizing the few remaining ones. Don't bother with trying to raise more money to cover rooting out the frauds. The sciences are on a downward funding trend decade-on-decade. It's a pipedream to expect more money to verify the past when the ruling class actively creates a false present.

Reducing the total number of academics in all fields of study globally would be a good idea in any case. Most of them aren't developing anything useful or unique. So many damn 9-5 on-the-job retirees and zero-impact cowardly workaholics publishing an endless train of derivative works in academia. I swear this whole industry is loaded with ego-fueled maniacs publishing for the sole purpose of looking more impressive and getting tenure.