Britannica lashes out at Wikipedia comparison study
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24 Mar 2006, Tom Sanders in California , V3
The Encyclopaedia Britannica has lashed out at a recent study by Nature which claimed that Wikipedia "comes close" to Britannica's accuracy in covering scientific topics.
Nature compared 50 entries in the online versions of both encyclopaedias and counted 123 inaccuracies in Britannica and 162 in Wikipedia.
The magazine used a panel of researchers who received texts from the publications without knowing the source and asked them to hunt for errors and omissions.
While Britannica is compiled by a team of paid researchers, Wikipedia relies on the public to enter information and hunt for inaccuracies.
Nature's study was published shortly after several reports emerged about inaccuracies in Wikipedia, which prompted the service to bolster its editing and reviewing guidelines.
Claiming that the Nature study was "fatally flawed", Britannica has published a 20-page rebuttal (PDF download) in which it attempts to discredit the study.
"The entire undertaking, from the study's methodology to the misleading way that Nature 'spun' the story, was misconceived," the document alleges. "The facts call for a complete retraction of the study and the article in which it was reported."
The Britannica paper highlighted several inconsistencies. Reviewers claiming that Britannica omitted certain information did so because they were presented with excerpts rather than the full entry.
In another case, Nature rearranged and re-edited Britannica articles. A third complaint pointed out that Nature used text from the more basic student edition of the encyclopaedia.
Nature stated that it has no intention of retracting the study. "We feel this was a reasonable characterisation," the scientific publication claimed (PDF download).
It admitted that some of Britannica's criticism was valid, but replied that both Britannica and Wikipedia were treated in the same way and that any procedural inaccuracies would have affected both publications equally.
"Because the reviewers were blind to the source of the material there is absolutely no reason to think that any errors they made would have systematically altered the results of our inquiry," said the publication.
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Do you agree?
Nature's response seems a little ridiculous....
....in parts. Specifically, including the articles from the Yearbooks and comparing them directly with Wikipedia articles makes little to no sense. It doesn't matter that they're from the same website, the fact is that Wikipedia doesn't publish yearbook articles like Britannica does--if you're comparing the two as sources of information, then one should compare COMPARABLE articles--meaning both from the encyclopedia.
Secondly, cropping, or parsing articles in order to ensure they are of 'comparable length' is absolutely ridiculous. To then include 'errors' that result from ommissions is inexcusable. The Britannica articles were not written to be parsed, but to be read in full, and I don't understand the necessity that articles used be of comparable length. There's no word lmiit that I know of for either magazine, so just because one is shorter than the other doesn't mean they can't be compared.
Posted by Damon, 07 Apr 2006
"some of Britannica's criticism was valid"?
That "[s]ome of Britannica's criticism was valid" is categorically not the tenor of the Nature response. Rather, they have chosen to reject all of Britannica's criticisms.
Posted by Daen de Leon, 24 Mar 2006
Previous poster obviously not paying attention
You expose your inherent bias when you state that Britannica articles are meant to be read full length, not shortened [to match length with Wikipedia]. Articles FROM BOTH SOURCES were shortened to make them match up. Have you looked to see how many of the articles are longer in Britannica? I didn't think so. Some people are just too old fashioned and brain washed by the traditional media to pay attention. It's a shame that you consider yourself educated.
Posted by Obvious Man, 16 May 2006
Cover up by Britannica...
Britannica is complpaining that using anything other than their complete encyclopedia will lead to omissions being counted as errors against them. That's fine, but how do they explain away all of the factual errors that have been pointed out yet still remain in their abbreviated volumes? Isn't it funny how instead of addressing the criticism they lash out to keep Nature from delving deeper and finding even more errors. In fact, the concise and unabridged editions contradict each other on things as simple as birth dates and building years, by over 25 years in some cases. I'm glad Wikipedia has found and avoided these errors. That's the problem with Britannica, you never know whether the version you're looking at is good or not.
Posted by Obvious Man, 16 May 2006
Evolve or die
What everybody is failing to say (or see) is that both encyclopedias represent opposite poles of the concept: Scholars vs. Everyone, Free Service vs. Quality.
I am gladly surprised that humankind can do something with internet that isn´t (directly) related to porn.
Britannica alreday lost against digital encyclopedias and now is fighting an open source blog. If they don´t come up with something REALLY innovative will soon be death.
(I hope they know it, and if they don´t I hope they ask me what to do.)
Posted by Rafael de Alday, 21 Jun 2006