I’m reading Smithsonian Magazine, and they’ve reprinted an exerpt from Michael Korda’s book Ike: An American Hero
In it, he writes:
I see Cecil covered this particular theory. (At the bottom here).
But, seems like with all the fact-checking going on for a Biography, Korda would have confirmed this little tidbit. So did he? Any new information here?
I’d say that there’s very little chance that Korda has any information that isn’t already well known to people researching the etymology of “the whole nine yards” and which hasn’t already been posted to the SDMB. That book is a year old. If Korda had new information, it would almost certainly have been checked out by etymologists. Nobody has even mentioned Korda, so it’s much more likely that Korda is just quoting the already debunked story about airplane ammunition belts. Most books are not fact-checked very well.
An understatement. Most books are not fact-checked at all. The author is presumed to be expert enough to write the book, and no publishing house is going to take the time or expense to hire fact checkers to wade through thousands of details.
Authors will throw in all sorts of stuff that is “common knowledge” because they assume common knowledge is correct. Anyone who is aware of this can find thousands of similar pieces of nonsense by glancing through any pile of books for the popular audience. (Not that academics are better informed or more careful, just that they are less likely to throw in such tidbits.)
Isn’t being less likely to throw in such tidbits kind of being more careful? Well, I suppose it might just be a stylistic thing.
I can’t count the number of times that I’ve seen reputable historians, biographers, scientists, etc commtting etymological blunders. Even the most cursory check by the writer would have shown him that there is no evidence at all for his assertion.
Double ditto on this. I’m reading a book on lightning (Friedman, “Out of the Blue”) now. On one page he talks about electrons going the speed of light. On the very next page he talks about X-rays and such going almost the speed of light. Sheesh.
Most “science” books I’ve read contain an obvious error every 5 pages or so.
OK then. Thanks for the clarification. I thought since it was a biography there would be more diligence than in a fiction book…apparently not.
There was more diligence than in a novel. Novels aren’t fact-checked at all except in rare cases. Biographies are sometimes fact-checked, but it’s generally not very done.
I wrote:
> Biographies are sometimes fact-checked, but it’s generally not very done.
I meant:
> Biographies are sometimes fact-checked, but it’s generally not done very well.
I’m curious. Under what circumstances are biographies fact-checked, and by whom?
I have a friend who works as a writer, researcher, and editor. I own a biography which is one of the books he worked on. He (and a couple other people) were paid by the author to do research for the biography, and they are thanked in the acknowledgments. This was a biographer who was already well known and thus had the money to pay researchers. I own a novel that he served as a researcher on. The author paid him to fill in some historical details that he couldn’t be sure that he got right, and he is thanked in the acknowledgments of this book too.
These things perhaps shouldn’t be described as fact-checking but as research, since they happened before the book was finished, not after it reached the publisher and was read by the editors.
Yes, that is not fact-checking under any normal definition. It’s more of an example of why publisher fact-checking would impose an impossible burden.