Source criticism

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This entry is about source evaluation (or information evaluation) in an interdisciplinary context and thus not limited to some discipline-specific understanding of the term "source criticism". A source (an information source) may be a document, a person, a speech, a fingerprint, a photo, an observation or anything used in order to obtain knowledge. In relation to a given purpose, a given information source may be more or less valid, reliable or relevant. "Source criticism" - in a broad meaning of that term - is the interdisciplinary study of how information sources are evaluated for given tasks.


The meaning of "Source Criticism"

Problems in translation: The Danish word “kildekritik” like the Norwegian word “kildekritikk” and the Swedish word “källkritik” derived from the German “Quellenkritik” and is closely associated with the German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886). Wikipedia have Danish, German, Norwegian and Swedish entries about this concept written from the perspective of history (there is now also a separate Danish entry about source criticism in an interdisciplinary perspective). However, generally seems the English term “source criticism” to be used somewhat different compared to the Continental/Scandinavian “Quellenkritik”.

A search for "source criticism" in titles of papers in the databases Arts & Humanities Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Citation Index (july 2008) found only 26 papers, which is a very low figure compared to the widespread use of this concept in (parts of) Europe. Those 26 papers were distributed among the following disciplines (one document indexed as both RELIGION and ORIENTAL STUDIES):

    • 15 57.7% RELIGION
    • 5 19.2% HISTORY
    • 2 07.7% CLASSICS
    • 2 07.7% PHILOSOPHY
    • 1 03.8% LITERATURE
    • 1 03.8% MUSIC
    • 1 03.8% ORIENTAL STUDIES

Bible studies seem to dominate the use of "source criticism" in America. All five HISTORY papers were by European authors/journals. The term is thus relatively seldom used in English about historical methods and historiography. It is used by Howell & Prevenier (2001) but this book is a based on a Dutch book. It is not used by, for example, Brundage (1989). (The term "historical criticism" was used 115 times in the same databases, but still dominated by Biblical studies (39.1%) followed by History (19.1%). It is thus not likely that the European term translates to "historical criticism").

This difference between European and American use of "source criticism" is somewhat strange considering the influence of Ranke on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. It has been suggested that differences in the use of the term are not accidental but due to different views of the historical method. In the German/Scandinavian tradition this subject is seen as important, whereas the Anglo-American tradition it is believed that historical methods must be specific and associated whith the subject studied, why there is no general field of "source criticism". Earlier versions of this entry (before june 26, 2008) was about source criticism in Biblical studies. This is, however just one among many domains applying source criticism.

In the Scandinavian countries and elsewhere is source evaluating (or information evaluating) also studied interdisciplinarily from many different points of view, partly caused by the influence of the Internet. It is a growing field in, among other fields, Library and information science. In this context there is a need to consider source criticism from a broader perspective than just, for example, History or Biblical studies.

Related concepts

Core principles

  • Human sources may be relics (e.g. a fingerprint) or narratives (e.g. a statement or a letter). Relics are more credible sources than narrratives.
  • A given source may be forged or corrupted why strong indications of the originality of the source increases its reliability.
  • The closer a source is to the event which it purports to describe, the more one can trust it to give an accurate description of what really happened
  • A primary source is more reliable than a secondary source, that is more reliable than a tertiary source and so on.
  • If a number of independent sources contain the same message, the credibility of the message is strongly increased.
  • The tendency of a source is its motivation for providing some kind of bias. Tendencies should be minimized or supplemented with opposite motivations.
  • If it can be demonstrated that the witness (or source) has no direct interest in creating bias, the credibility of the message is increased.

Contributing fields

Epistemology

Epistemological theories are the basic theories about how knowledge is obtained and thus the most general theories about how to evaluate information sources. Empiricism evaluate sources by considering the observations (or sensations) on which they are based. Sources without basis in experience are not seen as valid. Rationalism provides low priority to sources based on observations. In order to be meaningful observations must be grasped by clear ideas or concepts. It is the logical structure and the well definedness that is in focus in evaluating information sources from the rationalist point of view. Historicism evaluates information sources on the basis of their reflection of their sociocultural context and their theoretical development. Pragmatism evaluate sources on the basis of how their values and usefullness to accomplish certain outcomes. Pragmatism is skeptical about claimed neutral information sources.

The evaluation of knowledge or information sources cannot be more certain than is the construction of knowledge. If we accept the principle of fallibilism we also have to accept that source criticism can never 100% verify knowledge claims. As discussed in ther next section is source criticism intimately linked to scientific methods.

Research methodology

Research methods are methods used to produce scholarly knowledge. The methods that are relevant for producing knowledge are also relevant for evaluating knowledge. An example of a book that turns methodology upside-down and uses it to evaluate produced knowledge is Katzer; Cook & Crouch (1998). See also Unobtrusive measures, Triangulation (social science).


Science studies

Studies of quality evaluation processes such as peer review, book reviews and of the normative criteria used in evaluation of scientific and scholarly research. Another field is the study of Scientific misconduct.

Harris (1979) provides a case study of how a famous experiment in psychology, Little Albert, has been distorted throughout the history of psychology, starting with the author (Watson) himself, general textbook authors, behavior therapists, and a prominent learning theorist. Harris proposes possible causes for these distortions and analyzes the Albert study as an example of myth making in the history of psychology.

Textual criticism

Textual criticism (or broader: text philology) is a part of philology, which is not just devoted to the study of texts, but also to edit and produce "scientific editions", "scholarly editions", "standard editions", "historical editions", "reliable editions", "reliable texts", "text editions" or "critical editions", which are editions in which careful scholarship has been employed to ensure that the information contained within is as close to the author's/composer's original intentions as possible (and which allows the user to compare and judge changes in editions published under influence by the author/composer). The relation between these kinds of works and the concept "source criticism" is evident in Danish, where they may be termed "kildekritisk udgave" (directly translated "source critical edition").

In other words it is assumed that most editions of a given works is filled with noise and errors provided by publishers, why it is important to produce "scholarly editions". The work provided by text philology is an important part of source criticism in the humanities.


complete works and monumental editions

Psychology

The study of eyewitness testimony is an important field of study used, among other purposes, to evaluate testimony in courts. The basics of eyewitness fallibility includes factors such as poor viewing conditions, brief exposure, and stress. More subtle factors, such as expectations, biases, and personal stereotypes can intervene to create erroneous reports. Loftus (1996) discuss all such factors and also shows that eyewitness memory is chronically inaccurate in surprising ways. An ingenious series of experiments reveals that memory can be radically altered by the way an eyewitness is questioned after the fact. New memories can be implanted and old ones unconsciously altered under interrogation.

In psychoanalysis is the concept of defence mechanism important and may be considered an important part of the theory of source criticism because it explains psychological mechanisms, which distort the realiability of human information sources.

See also: Cognitive bias

Library and information science

Study issues like relevance, quality indicators for documents, kinds of documents and their qualities (e.g. scholarly editions) and related issues. Book review


Libraries sometimes provide advices on how their users may evaluate sources. The library of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, for example, provide this link about General Source Criticism and Topicality and Reliability of Printed Documents.

Source criticism in specific domains

Source criticism of different media

See also:

Photos

See also:

Source criticism of Internet sources

Much interest in evaluating Internet sources (such as Wikipedia) is reflected in the scholarly literature of Library and information science and in other fields.

Examples of literature examining Internet sources include Chesney (2006), Fritch & Cromwell (2001), Leth & Thurén (2000) and Wilkinson, Bennett, & Oliver (1997).

Special topics such as the reliability of search enginees and Wikipedia have their own investigations.

See also:

Criticism of search enginees

Gerhart, Susan L. (2004). Do Web search engines suppress controversy?. First monday 9(1).

Source criticism of Wikipedia

The scientific journal Nature compared Wikipedia with Encyclopedia Britannica. (See Giles, 2005) Encyclopedia Britannica replied (2006). The German magazine Stern compared Wikipedia with leading German Encyclopedias (Sterns test of Wikipedia, ).

Source criticism in Archaeology and History

"In history, the term historical method was first introduced in a systematic way in the sixteenth century by Jean Bodin in his treatise of source criticism, Methodus ad facilem historiarium cognitionem (1566). Characteristically, Bodin's treatise intended to establish the ways by which reliable knowledge of the past could be established by checking sources against one another and by so assessing the reliability of the information conveyed by them, relating them to the interests involved." (Lorenz, 2001, p. 6870).


In archaeology is radiocarbon dating an important technique to establish the age of information sources. Methods of this kind were the ideal when history established itself as both a scientific discipline and as a profession based on "scientific" principles in the last part of the 1880s (although radiocarbon dating is a more recent example of such methods). The empiricist movement in history brought along both "source criticism" as a research method and also in many countries large scale publishing efforts to make valid editions of "source materials" such as important letters and official documents (e.g. as facsimiles or transcriptions).

Historiography and Historical method include the study of the reliability of the sources used, in terms of, for example, authorship, credibility of the author, and the authenticity or corruption of the text.

Brundage (2007) and Howell & Prevenier (2001) provide introductions to the field.

Source criticism in the Arts

Connoisseur

Source criticism in Astronomy

In this domain has source criticism in particular been associated with the concept personal equation.

Source criticism in Biblical studies

Main article: Source criticism (Biblical studies)

.

Source criticism, as the term is used in biblical criticism, refers to the attempt to establish the sources used by the author and/or redactor of the final text. The term "literary criticism" is occasionally used as a synonym.

Biblical source criticism originated in the 18th century with the work of Jean Astruc, who adapted the methods already developed for investigating the texts of Classical antiquity (Homer's Iliad in particular) to his own investigation into the sources of the book of Genesis. It was subsequently considerably developed by German scholars in what was known as "the Higher Criticism", a term no longer in widespread use. The ultimate aim of these scholars was to reconstruct the history of the biblical text, as well as the religious history of ancient Israel.

In general, the closer a source is to the event which it purports to describe, the more one can trust it to give an accurate description of what really happened. In the Bible where a variety of earlier sources have been quoted, the historian seeks to identify and date those sources used by biblical writers as the first step in evaluating their historical reliability.

In other cases, Bible scholars use the way a text is written (changes in style, vocabulary, repetitions, and the like) to determine what sources may have been used by a biblical author. With some reasonable guesswork it is possible to deduce sources not identified as such (e.g., genealogies). Some inter-biblical sources can be determined by virtue of the fact that the source is still extant; e.g., where Chronicles quotes or retells the accounts of the books of Samuel and Kings.

Out of source criticism developed the New Documentary Hypothesis. The New Documentary Hypothesis considers the sources for the Pentateuch, claiming that there were four separate sources that combined to create the first five books of the bible. These sources are the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and priestly. The Jahwist source is characterized by the use of the name YHWH, has a human like God, and is especially concerned with the kingdom of Judah. The Jahwist source is thought to be written c. 950 B.C. The Elohist source is characterized with God being called Elohim, and deals more with the kingdom of Israel. The Elohist source is thought to be written c. 850 B.C. The Deuteronomic source is characterized by a sermon like style mostly concerned with law. The Deuteronomic source is thought to be written c. 721-621 B.C. The Priestly source is characterized by a formal style that is mostly concerned with priestly matters. The Priestly source is thought to be written c. 550 B.C. While there are many opponents to the Documentary Hypothesis, the majority of biblical scholars support it. Some of the other hypotheses that have been raised by source criticism are the fragmentary and supplementary hypotheses.

Related to Source Criticism is Redaction Criticism which seeks to determine how and why the redactor (editor) put the sources together the way he did. Also related is form criticism and tradition history which try to reconstruct the oral prehistory behind the identified written sources.


Source criticism in Journalism

Journalists often work with strong time pressure and have access to only a limited number of information sources such as news bureaus, persons which may be interviewed, newspapers, journals and so on (see journalism sourcing). Journalists' possibility for conducting serious source criticism is thus limited compared to, for example, historians' possibilities.


Source criticism in Legal studies

The most important legal sources are created by parlaments, governments, courts and legal researchers. They may be written or unformal and based on established practices.

In assessing the relative value of different kinds of information sources and evidence are court decisions always decisive - directly or indirectly. The discussion of the relevance and importance of kinds of sources must be seen as what kind of evidence is most important in court rooms, both in a descriptive way (what do courtrooms actually use) and in a normative way (what should courtrooms ideally use). Although legal information is mostly used outside courtrooms, its relevance and validity is tested by its use in courtrooms or as thought esperiments: What would be the case if tried in court.

Different views concerning the quality of different sources is related to different lagal philosophies: Legal positivism is the view that the text of the law should be considered in isolation, while legal realism, interpretivism (legal), critical legal studies and feminist legal criticism interprets the law on a broader cultural basis.

See also: Evidence (law)

Source criticism in Medicine

In medicine there is today a strong school of thought termed "evidence based medicine" (EBM). Here have very explicite criteria been developed on how to evaluate documents, including a hierarchy of evidence. EMB may thus be seen as a theory about source evaluation in medicine (a theory connected with empiricism).

Riegelman (2004) Studying a Study and Testing a Test: How to Read the Medical Evidence. Is a general text about critical reading in medicine.

Literature and references

  • Bazerman, Charles (1995). The Informed Writer: Using Sources in the Disciplines. 5th ed. Houghton Mifflin.
  • Bee, Ronald E. (1983). Statistics and Source Criticism. Vetus Testamentum, Volume 33, Number 4, 483-488.
  • Brundage, Anthony (2007). Going to the Sources: A Guide to Historical Research and and Writing, 4th Ed. Wheeling, Illinois: Harlan Davidson, Inc. (3rd edition, 1989 cited in text above).
  • Fritch, J. W., & Cromwell, R. L. (2001). Evaluating Internet resources: Identity, affiliation, and cognitive authority in a networked world. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 52, 499-507.
  • Harris, Ben (1979). Whatever Happened to Little Albert? American Psychologist, 34, 2, pp. 151-160. link to fulltext
  • Howell, Martha & Prevenier, Walter(2001). From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-8560-6.
  • Katzer, Jeffrey; Cook, Kenneth H. & Crouch, Wayne W. (1998). Evaluating Information: A Guide for Users of Social Science Research. 4 ed. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.
  • Leth, Göran & Thurén, Torsten (2000). Källkritik för internet . Stockholm: Styrelsen för Psykologiskt Försvar. (Hentet 2007-11-30).
  • Loftus, Elizabeth F. (1996). Eyewitness Testimony. Revised edition Cambridge, MA: Harward University Press. (Original edition:1979).
  • Lorenz, C. (2001). History: Theories and Methods. IN: Smelser, N. J. & Baltes, P. B. (eds.) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Amsterdam: Elsevier.(Pp. 6869-6876).
  • MATHEWSON Daniel B. (2002). A critical binarism: Source criticism and deconstructive criticism. Journal for the study of the Old Testament no98, pp. 3-28. Abstract: When classifying the array of interpretive methods currently available, biblical critics regularly distinguish between historical-critical methods, on the one hand, and literary critical methods, on the other. Frequently, methods on one side of the divide are said to be antagonistic to certain methods on the other. This article examines two such presumed antagonistic methods, source criticism and deconstructive criticism, and argues that they are not, in fact, antagonistic, but similar: both are postmodern movements, and both share an interpretive methodology (insofar as it is correct to speak of a deconstructive methodology). This argument is illustrated with a source-critical and a deconstructive reading of Exodus 14.
  • Mattus, Maria (2007). Finding Credible Information: A Challenge to Students Writing Academic Essays. Human IT 9(2), 1-28. Hentet 2007-09-04 fra: http://www.hb.se/bhs/ith/2-9/mm.pdf
  • Rieh, Soo Young & Danielson, David R. (2007). Credibility: A multidisciplinary framework. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 41, 307-364.
  • Riegelman, Richard K. (2004). Studying a Study and Testing a Test: How to Read the Medical Evidence. 5th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
  • Slife, Brent D. & Williams, R. N. (1995). What's behind the research? Discovering hidden assumptions in the behavioral sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. ("A Consumers Guide to the Behavioral Sciences").
  • Webb, E J; Campbell, D T; Schwartz, R D & Sechrest, L (2000). Unobtrusive measures; revised edition. Sage Publications Inc.
  • Wilkinson, G.L., Bennett, L.T., & Oliver, K.M. (1997). Evaluation criteria and indicators of quality for Internet resources. Educational Technology , 37(3), 52-59.
  • Wilson, Patrick (1983). Second-Hand Knowledge. An Inquiry into Cognitive Authority. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood.

See also


External links

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