Just to elaborate, this statement is not true. If you want an idea of the expert consensus in a particular field , a specialized encyclopedia written and edited by professional historians may well be a better source than individual historians who have their biases and idiosyncrasies. The encyclopediawe are talking about is in three volumes, has received excellent professional reviews and as mentioned was edited by a professional military historian. There is also the matter of publication date; the encyclopedia was published in 2009 whereas the books you have mentioned were written much earlier than that. On the whole I would say the encyclopedia is a more reliable source of the current consensus. And of course in the context of the discussion about the reliability of Wikipedia as a reference source, it’s ironic that you are now disputing a professionally produced reference book.
Earlier today I was on my Iphone, so I couldn’t get much information on it, because when I was clicking on it for some reason that part wasn’t loading. Apologies for the delay in the response.
The article in question you’re talking about was written by Marco Hewitt so it seems to me the question would be how reliable a source Marco Hewitt is.
I suppose I could try and nitpick by pointing that it doesn’t appear that Marco Hewitt was a historian at that time but was merely a PhD. candidate in Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Western Australia, but that really wouldn’t be fair. He classifies himself as “a scholar-activist and is committed, through his research, to working towards both social and environmental justice”. The focus of his research is upon the Filipino diaspora, and the rise of globalization in the Pacific Rim and how post-Cold War Politics effects that.
His PhD. thesis is “‘Post-Cold War politics in the Asia-Pacific and the rise of globalisation: An ethnographic exploration of Filipino transnational activism”. I can’t find any confirmation as to whether or not he’s gotten a PhD. since 2009 when the article was written that was published in the Encyclopedia.
Now, I don’t know if he’s done any special research on the Philippine-American War and he doesn’t mention where the estimates that put the death toll as high as a million came from and that is really weirdly higher than most other historians have gotten, but I’ll freely concede that if he shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand and clearly many serious academics respect him and he may very well have a PhD and even if he doesn’t yet have one that certainly doesn’t disqualify him.
I suspect some right-wingers get nervous when they hear people describe themselves as “scholar-activists committed to social justice” but not being a right-winger I’m not concerned, even though I come from a country run by scholar activists who’ve not done that good a job at it.
It would be rather interesting to find out what were his sources for the claim that estimates of the deaths ranged from 250,000- 1 Million and why they were so much higher than those of Karnow in is his book In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines, since Karnow is hardly a lover of Empire and why they were also significantly higher than Kolko and Zinn, both of whom had vested interests in listing the figures as high as possible. For example, had he done any original research on his the War.
I was on my Iphone earlier and was confused by your claim that General Bell’s statement implied that around 600,000 Filipino civilians were killed since the NYT article you clicked on didn’t list that. I wanted to find out where you’d gotten the figures from and I simply misread on my Iphone the population stats.
My bad, though I am happy that you managed to have a fun time ridiculing “my reading skills”. I did deserve it I guess.
Actually, no, we’re not discussing an encyclopedia. We’re discussing an article by a Doctoral candidate named Marco Hewitt and the question is whether or not he is(to use your words) “a more reliable source of the current consensus.”
It’s not clear that he is or even that he thinks he is.
That being said, I’m going to recommend we drop this discussion of the Philippine-American War, or, if you wish to continue, to take it to the pit because it distracts from the larger question of the reliability of wikipedia.
I think presuming the wiki article is correct is extremely foolish.
I would say that you’re better off examining the article to see what it cites and the check up on it’s citations.
For example, if it’s an article on the Armenian massacres and it’s source is either Armenopedia or TallArmeniantale, I’d probably take anything it says with a grain of salt.
Furthermore, quite often when you click on the citations in the footnotes you’ll find either a dead link(never a good sign) or that it badly paraphrased the article, or in more than a few cases, the cite it lists said nothing of the sort.
Frankly, you’re better off and being more intellectually honest if you cite the sources of the wiki articles than just saying “wiki says”.
For example, since you have a vague interest in the Middle East, though you think it would be beneath you to actually have to read something other than wikipedia on the subject, say “Benny Morris says…” or “Israel Shahak says…”. That way, people can actually judge who you’re referring to.
Wikipedia itself shouldn’t be seen as a source. It should be seen as a repository of sources, some of which are really good, some of which are okay, and some of which are utter shit.
Um you do understand how a professionally produced encyclopedia works right? They don’t just invite random people to write on topics they know nothing about. The editor will ask someone with relevant expertise and then also check that the article is accurate. So your comments on Marco Hewitt’s academic credentials are rather besides the point even assuming this is the same Macro Hewitt who wrote the article. The editor is an experienced military historian who has edited several other encyclopedias and such this is a credible and up to date reference work with excellent reviews from publications like Library Journal.
Since you keep referring to Karnow, have you actually read his book? Can you explain what his arguments and sources are for his figures. Repeatedly invoking a bunch of names whose work you are obviously not familiar is really not an argument.
And your Luzon gaffe was much more than about reading skills. If you had even the most basic knowledge of the Philippines you would know that the main island could not possibly have a population of 50,000. If you wanted to check the population of California and misread it as 30,000 you would immediately know it was wrong and recheck it wouldn’t you?
Right now? Not to hand. But I have a really bad one that I tried to correct a few months ago. The article on unification was actually describing the dual problem of antiunification, i.e. exactly the opposite of what it should have been describing. I “fixed” it by rewriting the Introduction so it at least made sense, and adding the “Informal overview” section before I got bored. Somebody else came along after me and attempted to fix the article further, so it now kind-of makes sense but not really.
However, there’s just way too much wrong with that article. For one, it is conflating about three different topics: (first-order) semantic, syntactic and higher-order unification, really three different subjects with substantial bodies of scholarship associated with them. Even looking at the article now, the first line of the Section on higher-order unification:
Is still misleading at best, and arguably flat-out wrong. There is no need to mention higher-order logic, here. Higher-order unification is not unification in higher-order logic. It’s the unification of typed lambda-terms.
Further, the second sentence is needlessly wishy-washy:
There is no “in general” about it. Higher-order unification is semidecidable. In fact, even second-order unification is semidecidable (Goldfarb’s theorem).
What’s bizarre is how important unification is. There’s well developed articles in the CS subwiki on (to me) incredibly obscure topics. But unification is fundamental in quite a few important subjects in CS, from theorem proving to programming language type system implementation. It seems that there’s no rhyme or reason, other than the caprice of authors, as to how articles develop, or how resources are diverted towards truly important articles.
Unless there are two Marco Hewitt’s who both write about the Philippines it’s the same one.
Dude, let it go. I made a mistake so if you want to attack me and argue about the Philippine-American War then take it to the pit. I made a mistake in skimming an article and you made a mistake in assuming an article was written by a historian rather than merely a doctoral candidate. I don’t feel like it’s worth continuing to argue about it and it distracts from the discussion we’re having regarding wikipedia.
I am not attacking you when I say your knowledge of the Philippines is very limited. Do you seriously claim otherwise?
And once again the exact professional credentials of Hewitt are not important, what matters is the credibility of the publication the article is in. Occasionally non-Phd’s will publish articles in respected academic books or journals and such articles are definitely worthwhile reference sources and more so than ,say, an op-ed piece published by a Nobel laureate.
Sigh,
Look, it’s late and I have to work tomorrow. I’m tired of arguing about the Philippine-American War and no, I don’t have specialized knowledge of the Philippines unless you count an ex and her brother whom I’m still good friends with.
Perhaps you speak Tagalog fluently and have lived in Manilla for years. I don’t know.
Since you’re asking if I read Karnow’s book on the Philippines the answer is that I read read parts of it years ago for school, though I no longer have it on hand.
Beyond that, the credibility of the author of an article is extremely important so I’m a bit surprise that you’re insisting that Marco Hewitt’s credentials aren’t important. I certainly don’t know any academics who would take such a stance.
Anyway, if you want to continue this fight, for the very last time, take it to the pit because it’s not fair to the people who are here to discuss wikipedia.
Yes, the author’s credibility is important. However, if I’m figuring out how to judge his credibility, I’m gonna have to go with the judgment of the encyclopedia editor, not yours. An editor who includes an article from a non-credible source risks his own reputation. You, on the other hand, only benefit from smearing the author’s reputation, since it helps you win an argument on the internet.
Credentials and credibility aren’t necessarily the same thing and in this case writing an article on the relevant subject in a well-regarded encyclopedia edited by an experienced historian is sufficient evidence of credibility.
I’m actually not attacking Marco Hewitt. I’m merely pointing out that, at the time of the article, he was merely a graduate student who’s focus of study was affects of globalization and the end of the Cold War on the Filipino Diaspora and that he classifies himself as “a scholar-activist” who wants his research to promote “social justice.”
He also gives no indication of focusing on the study of the Philippine-American War but merely makes a comment that estimates of civilian deaths ranged from 250,000 to one million and doesn’t explain where he heard of estimates of such high figures.
We do know that professional historians who closely examined the conflict trying to come up with figures came up with much lower ones. Left Hand suggested that they might not have known about such estimates and Lantern demanded an answer to how they handled General Bell’s quote, but I have an extremely difficult time that after studying the conflict intensely that Karnow, Lafeber, Zinn and Kolko were all unaware of them.
I’d want to know why that is. For that matter, I’d want to know from him how reliable he thinks the high estimates are. It’s certainly very possible he thinks the actual figures are far lower than the million.
Also, what makes you think this encyclopedia is “well-regarded”?
The above isn’t a troll question, it’s just an honest question. Is it regularly assigned to students in college? Had either of you heard of it before this discussion?
Finally, this is distracting from the discussion of wikipedia, so once more, if you want to further argue about the Philippine-American War or argue over the credibility of a man you’d never heard of prior to yesterday who you mistakenly thought was a professional historian(granted, by now he may be) then I recommend taking it to the pit.
I would judge the encyclopedia is well-regarded from the good professional reviews it has received.
You keep mentioning Lafeber, Karnow et al without any analysis of their arguments. What are their sources for their numbers? In fact we don’t even know that they do in fact argue for the low estimates. You keep repeating this but the only evidence you have provided is a small opinion piece by Max Boot. If you place such weight on the statements of Karnow et al why don’t you dig up their books and discuss their actual arguments?
If I had to guess, I would say that there are a range of estimates from 200,000 to 1 million because of conflicting pieces of evidence. Different historians place weight on different pieces of evidence. I have provided one piece of evidence for why the low number may be wrong. You haven’t provided any of the evidence on which the low numbers are supposed to be based.
By which you mean the review from the Library Journal on Amazon of the book you just found out about yesterday.
Max Boot used Karnow and Lafeber as his sources for his book on the Philippine-American War and those two men are both extremely well-regarded historians. I have an extremely difficult time believing they would have been so dramatically wrong.
The “one piece of evidence” you’ve provided is a sentence by a grad student and self-styled “scholar-activist” fighting for “social justice”. That’s hardly very compelling.
Finally, for the very last time, since we’ve gotten way off-topic, if you want to continue to make such arguments then take it to the pit, because this thread is supposed to be about the reliability of wikipedia, not the Philippine-American War.
You apparently think that wikipedia is reliable when it comes to controversial topics.
I don’t and I think most reasonable people would also disagree. I’d even wager that Marco Hewitt and Spencer Tucker aren’t big fans of it.
What on earth does the date I found the review have to do with it? The Library Journal is is a respected publication and it published a good review of encyclopedia as did other publications.
You don’t even know that the books of Lafeber and Karnow support your position. Despite repeated requests you have refused to provide actual citations from their books about their casualty estimates let alone what their evidence is.
Actually my evidence is the quotation from the General Bell. And of course the other source is a well-reviewed academic reference work but it’s getting tedious to keep repeating this. You, on the other hand, haven’t provided a single piece of evidence. All you do is keep repeating the names of Karnow and Lafeber like a mantra but aside from an opinion piece from Boot you haven’t even shown they agree with you.
What is this weird obsession with the Pit? If you wish to start a thread there please do so. I am staying put in this thread unless a mod requests otherwise.
Er, did you miss post 82 where I specifically referred to Karnow’s In Our Image?
If you’re going to insult my reading skills you might wish to avoid making mistakes like that.
So your evidence consists of one comment by a US general, who doesn’t even give an estimated number of how many people were killed(he just says one out of six) which you at one point seem to imply that historians were unaware of, which seems quite weird. Obviously, various historians who’ve examined the war and the odds that they were unaware of General Bell’s quote is astronomically low. It’s quite common for generals during wars to overestimate or underestimate the number of people killed.
Generally, most people trust historians researching the conflict to get better information and quite often such quotes turn out to be wrong.
Also, you keep trying to hide behind this “well-reviewed academic reference work” which you’d never even heard of before yesterday and ignore the fact that you’re evidence is one sentence from an article by a grad student who styles himself as a “scholar-activist” fighting for “social justice” who says, without providing any sources, that some estimates put the civilian death toll around one million.
Most people would not be nearly as sure as you are based on one sentence from a “scholar-activist”.
We know who Boot’s sources from his book The Savage Wars of Peace are, we don’t know who Hewitt’s are and you have yet to provide a single reliable historian who claims the figures were as high as you suggest.
Now, finally, I’m done arguing about the Philippine-American War.
We’re discussing wikipedia.
I think it’s a really awful source when it comes to any controversial topic, whereas you think it isn’t. That strikes me as being extremely foolish.
Wikipedia is a repository of sources, some of which are very good, some of which are okay, and some of which are dogshit.
The contents of articles on controversial subject tend to be determined by the winners of edit wars by partisans and the winner more often is simply the group which is more determined.
Moreover, the sources for such articles are often not responsible historians, but usually polemists who’s skills and credentials are often dubious at best.
For example, while it’s gotten better, wiki articles on the treatment of Dhimmis under Islamic rule used to consist almost entirely of excerpts from Bat Ye’or’s screeds though there’s no evidence of her having specialized training or study in the subjects and tended to ignore far more respected scholars who argued that she grossly misrepresented the situation.
Have you even read the relevant portions of the book? In which part of the book does Karnow discuss casualties? What are the numbers that he mentions and what are his sources? Etc. Just throwing out the name of a book and expecting us to treat it as some kind of gospel is hardly an argument
Well maybe but I would like to know what the arguments of Karnow et al actually are assuming that they even back your point. If they consider Bell’s quote not credible what are their reasons? If they have better sources what are they? Did the US military actually keep track of civilian casualties. I am skeptical but certainly if there is good documentary evidence to justify the lower numbers that would strengthen your case . But of course that is precisely what you are unable to do instead preferring instead to smear Hewitt based on some random stuff you found on the Internet. Apparently you are a better judge of Hewitt’s scholarly credibility than the editor of a respected academic reference work though you don’t know even the most basic facts about the Philippines.
To repeat you haven’t provided a single piece of evidence for your claims about civilian casualties except for an opinion piece by Boot. Though you keep invoking Karnow and Lafeber you haven’t even shown that they agree with you let alone what their evidence is.
I do find it hysterically funny that you’re demanding Karnow’s sources and how he arrived at his figures but you’re perfectly willing to accept one offhand comment by a grad student social-activist and don’t care what his sources are.
Anyway, you haven’t explained why think wikipedia is a reliable source for use when it comes to controversial topics. Most academics I know are extremely leery of taking anything wikipedia says without verifying wikipedia’s cites and that’s especially true when it comes to controversial subjects.
Why do you feel differently?
Mate, scroll up you can see I specifically deny any knowledge and was depending on Ibn Warraq who is normally meticulous. Your cite shows his position as problematic.
I nevertheless stand by my judgement re Wikipedia as a shaky source, fun to use for GD and the like but not to be relied on for any proper citation work.
The wikipedia article on restaurants has at least one complete falsehood in it.
Ask me how I know.
Go on.
That sounds like a threat.