Sure, we should keep our footnotes tight, but the thing is that some people's footnotes aren't. It's the same thing as tax returns and immigration papers: we try to keep ours tight, but some people's inevitably aren't.
This is what Michael Perelman recently posted on the topic of footnote accuracy -- the error rate is estimated to be 30-45% (no wonder, since few of them were edited by anyone other than their authors, if your earlier note on academic publishing is correct):
<blockquote>From: Laurie Wermter <lwermter at library.wisc.edu> List Editor: Seth Wigderson <Sethw at suscom-maine.net> Editor's Subject: Footnote Accuracy Author's Subject: Footnote Accuracy Date Written: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 18:07:22 -0500 Date Posted: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 18:07:22 -0500
Dear H-Labor: It's a good thing that a couple of people asked me to provide some citations to the library science literature about footnote accuracy as mentioned in my H-Labor post of May 28, 2003, because I'm afraid my memory was somewhat in error and I want to correct the percentages which I misremembered!
I should have reported that about 30-45 percent of the footnotes in a published work will contain an error of some kind, while about TEN percent of the total footnotes in the published work will have an error so major as to prevent the cited work from being found. My apologies for having mis-remembered the figures, but the actual numbers of errors in footnotes are still quite daunting.
If you'd like to follow-up on this topic, here are key articles and reports on this topic:
Faunce, Gavin J., and R.F. Soames Job. "The Accuracy of Reference Lists in Five Experimental Psychology Journals." _American Psychologist_, v. 56, no. 10 (October 2001), p. 839-30.
Harper, J.A. "Citation Inaccuracy in a Scientific Journal: A Continuing Issue." _Science & Technology Libraries_, v. 20, no. 4 (2001), p. 39-44.
Kristof, Cynthia. "Accuracy of References in Five Entomology Journals." [Master's research paper, Kent State University, 1994.] 36 p.
Available as ERIC Document, ED389341.
Benning, S.P., et al., "Incorrect Citations: A Comparison of Library Literature with Medical Literature." _Bulletin of the Medical Library Association_, v. 81 (January 1993), p. 56-58.
Pope, Nancy N. "Accuracy of References in Ten Library Science Journals." _RQ_, v. 32, no. 2 (Winter 1992), p. 240-243.
White, Arden, et al. "A Sixteen Journal Study of Accuracy of Direct Quotes and Associated Reference List Entries." [Research report, 1991.] 9 p. Available as ERIC Document, ED331079.
White, Arden, and Nelda R. Hernandez. "Direct Quote and Reference List Entry Faults and Errors in a Sample of Articles from the American Educational Research Journal, Compared with Findings from Previous Research." [Research report, 1991.] 14 p. Available as ERIC Document, ED331081.
White, Arden. "A Ten Journal Study of Reference List Inaccuracies." [Research report, 1991.] 22 p. Available as ERIC Document, ED331080.
Sweetland, James H. "Errors in Bibliographic Citations: A Continuing Problem." _The Library Quarterly_, v. 59, no. 4 (October 1989), p. 291-304.
Eichorn, Philip, and Alfred Yankauer. "Do Authors Check Their References?: A Survey of Accuracy of References in Three Public Health Journals." _American Journal of Public Health_, v. 77 (August 1987), p. 1011-1012.
White, Arden. "Reference Inaccuracies in Two Counseling Journals." _Counselor Education and Supervision_, v. 26, no. 4 (June 1987), p. 286-292.
Regards,
Laurie Wermter Reference Department, Memorial Library University of Wisconsin-Madison wermter at library.wisc.edu
<http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-Labor&month=0306&week=d&msg=bZu7NIhM7bX5t4sGAtFGXw&user=&pw=></blockquote>
* I'm not all that interested in Ward Churchill himself, so I'm making this as a general comment. Enough said about Ward Churchill -- it's time to take a look at a bigger picture.
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>