Re: Genealogy For The Beginner

On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 11:12:30 +0100, "Lesley Robertson"
<l.a.robertson@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>"J. Hugh Sullivan" <Eagle@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
>news:47b60295.32453555@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> All that can be sourced to the Family History Library,
>> Ancestry.com and other sources. So much for sources without adequate
>> confirmation. A lot of people are just lousy genealogists - and a
>> bunch of them don't seem to care.
>>
>
>But that shows that the system works - they give their source, which is 
>readily seen to be unreliable and the info can therefore be discarded.

That's fine if one wishes to be nothing more than a wheat and chaff
separator. I want someone to do that for me.

>One of my other incarnations has been as a member of an editorial board
for 
>a scientific journal. Even when deling with professionals, with
apparently 
>fairly well-enforced professional standards, I've still been saddened by
the 
>low standards of research and historical verification by some. It's going
to 
>happen, the only thing to do is find work-arounds.

It's going to happen but why must it? I think those people need to be
embarrassed.

The problem is that, once generally accepted, the thing grows
exponentially. A wrong repeated by enough people becomes right.

>"Everyone says, therefore it's true" is the fastest way to start alarm
bells 
>ringing.

Eliminate everything that is untrue, and whatever remains, however
impossible it seems, must be true. I believe A. Conan Doyle caused
Sherlock Holmes to say that.

Hugh