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Fight Over Facts

ASEE Prism, Summer 2006 by Grose, Thomas K

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SCHOLARLY DEBATE is one thing. But there's a full-scale feud raging between the scientific journal "Nature" and the world's oldest encyclopedia, the "Encyclopaedia Britannica."The issue: Is the online (and free) Wikipedia encyclopedia as accurate as the Britannica? Wikipedia, of course, is based on open-source software that allows unpaid contributors from around the world to write and edit its entries. Last year, Wikipedia's reputation sustained a high-profile black eye over a posted biography of legendary newsman John Seigenthaler that claimed-falsely, if not bizarrely-he had been a suspect in the assassinations of President John Kennedy and his presidential candidate brother Robert.

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But Nature's study last December determined that "the difference in accuracy (between the two encyclopedias) was not particularly great" and that major errors in Wikipedia, like the Seigenthaler debacle, were rare. Nature's news team took 50 articles from each resource-on topics as diverse as the Archimedes Principle, the kinetic isotope effect and Pythagorus'Theorem-and asked experts to vet them, without revealing their source. Now the Brittanica-clearly not happy with the claim that it is no more reliable than an upstart, free rival compiled by anonymous contributors-has struck back. Brittanica claims that "almost everything" in the Nature article was "wrong and misleading." Britannica says it's not infallible but is nonetheless a reliable source, given its "strong scholarship," judgment and editorial oversight. It demanded a retraction. Nature's response: No way. It's "confident" the comparison was fair, it says. -TG

Copyright American Society for Engineering Education Summer 2006
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Fight Over Facts

ASEE Prism, Summer 2006 by Grose, Thomas K

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