Patrick Aiden Hunt wrote:
I know this may seem to some to be a silly question,
but why do you need
someone with academic credentials reviewing articles? Any normal
encyclopedia simply uses a basic bibliography and the information in the
article is from books that are written by experts who have academic
credentials already recognized. If we had people simply cite sources for
information, then it seems like we would have to worry much less about
the reviewers' credentials.
I mostly contribute to articles regarding U.S. Supreme Court cases and
legislation, so all I have to do is cite the actual opinion or portion
of the U.S. Code. But I imagine if I were contributing to an article on
another academic field I am interested in (such as Economics), I would
simply cite Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" or Keynes' "The
General
Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" or whatever economic treatise
the particular theory or concept came from. I would think it would make
little sense to have an academic scholar waste time signing off on the
article if all the reader would have to do is check the text that the
information comes from to ensure it's accuracy.
Well, a big problem is how to present information accurately and not in
a misleading way, and simply citing sources gives no guarantee of that.
I could cite all sorts of Supreme Court decisions and give a very
misleading view by not citing particular ones I should've cited, or only
citing obscure portions of well-known decisions, and so on. This can be
done either maliciously or because the author wasn't familiar with the
wider context so knowledgeable about what to cite.
I agree academic credentials aren't a magic bullet, but I do think
review of the _article_ itself, rather than merely requiring sources, is
necessary. Given maybe a dozen books on the subject of global warming,
for example, I could write an article taking almost any point of view
and have plenty of citations to back it up (even if I let you choose the
books!), but not all of these articles would be equally reliable.
-Mark