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  Anonymous Coward, 26 Jan 2005 @ 5:53pm

  
  

  No Subject Given

  The issues with Wikipedia hasn't been so much its accuracy, but the "agenda" of many of its contributors and the resulting slants in the listings.
  
  You can rest assured that anything you read in Britannica will be in a bland, fact-like (and dry) format whether you are reading about Stalin or Reagan. Whether you are for or against any particular political philosophy, you won't get pissed off or excited about people you support or despise.
  
  The same can't be said of Wikipedia. Even Instapundit has noted that the entry on him is quite slanted to the negative.
  
  Is one better than the other? This is a personal call, as long as Wikipedia admits bias.

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• 

  dorpus, 26 Jan 2005 @ 9:07pm

  
  

  Polish Jelly Beans

  If there are Polish factories that make jelly beans in hundreds of colors, and if I did some massive clinical trial where thousands of pregnant women ate one color of jelly beans, then by chance alone, I could probably find a jelly bean color that is associated with a 20-fold increase in miscarriage rates, spontaneous abortions, and congenital birth defects. I could get my results published in the New England Journal of Medicine, receive the Nobel Prize, and start a UNICEF campaign to stop eating green jelly beans.... or can I?
  
  A recent review of articles submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine revealed an alarmingly high rate of spurious statistical reasoning, such as the jelly bean example cited above.
  
  

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  • 

    dorpus, 26 Jan 2005 @ 9:13pm

    
    

    Re: Polish Jelly Beans

    Ack, I meant to say, "published". It's an ongoing scandal in the medical research world.
    

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• 

  Mark, 27 Jan 2005 @ 7:03am

  
  

  Britannica

  I used to work at Britannica, so I'm not just shooting from the cuff here. The fact is that most articles in the Encyclopedia aren't written by experts. They're written by the staff of editors, whose responsibility it is to do some basic research into a topic before writing the article. Now, ideally those editors would be trained in the topic they specialize in, but sometimes that's not the case. I knew a science editor there who had been an English major in college. The major articles, though -- the ones over 1,000 words -- were commissioned for area experts (professors, scientists, etc.) and are more reliable. Most likely this 12 year old was looking at shorter pieces that were composed by someone who was doing his or her best, but who relied on bad or vague source material. I've been there and done that -- quite literally.
  
  That being said, the advantage of Britannica is it does have a staff of people who believe in what they do and work hard to get things right. It's their job to consult source materials, phone experts, and rigorously fact-check their materials. They're paid to get it right, which is why it's notable -- and worthy of newspaper articles and cheap shots from bloggers -- when they don't. Wikipedia is a useful resource, but it's susceptible to a series of its own potential failings, some of which Britannica avoids by -- get this -- paying professionals to do their job.

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• 

  DaveG, 27 Jan 2005 @ 9:54am

  
  

  No Subject Given

  However 'professional' the Britannica authors are, they still present a nationally biased view of events or topics. Lookup any African or Asian history, and then talk to someone who was educated and raised in that location and see the difference.
  
  I suspect Wiki's and the internet's more international audience, would tend to dilute the national perspective effect to some extent.

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