On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 12:08 AM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:

The real question however is, are these "peer reviewed" in the proper and strict sense.

There are also "Who's Who's" out there, some of them just accept and print whatever the subject sends in. So the discovery of exactly what steps the publication goes through is pertinent. Just being the "member news" organ of an academic journal isn't a guarentee that the material is reviewed for veracity.

Agreed. But you also have to accept that there is a scale here. not everyone has professional historians poring over every detail of their lives. Some only have journalists or fellow colleagues or the like, who may get their information from family or others, or if the subject is still alive, from them directly.

The intelligent reader needs to realise this, and keep in the back of their mind that only the really famous people have the details checked out in great detail (and to be honest, not always even then - some mistakes in biographical details for really famous people propagated without correction for some time, so other mistakes may still be out there). When reading the biographical details for a more obscure person, you do need to look at the sources and question them, but that doesn't necessarily mean remove the material. Just make clear that only one source gives (for example) the middle name, and this is that source. Other editors and readers need to use their own judgment from that point on.

Or read about how to assess and judge and rank biographical sources for reliability.

Carcharoth