If I had to guess whether
Wikipedia or the median refereed journal article on economics was more likely
to be true, after a not so long think I would opt for Wikipedia. This
comparison should give us pause.
That’s me, writing for The New Republic. But what does this all mean? ("Sadly, the final lessons here are brutal.") I consider the recent spate of fake biographies and memoirs and arrive at some conservative and traditionalist answers.
Good for you. I’m sick of all of the wikipedia bashing. Let’s recognize it for what it really is; one of the single greatest achievements in human history.
I work in a public middle school, where many teachers tell students not to use wikipedia. This is absolutely crazy. Not only does it essentially prevent students from doing any research at all on their own; but wikipedia has far more detailed and accurate information than their textbook; “Roosevelt’s New Deal pulled America out of the Great Depression by creating jobs for the unemployed.”
By the way, I’d really like MR to give its opinion on Google’s upcoming wikipedia competitor: Knols. My thoughts on it are that Knols are more likely to represent popular knowledge, but less likely to express the diversity of opinions that Wikipedia does.
I think its also worth mentioning that the Wikipedia project was supposedly inspired by Hayek’s The Use of Knowledge in Society.
Josh, don’t you think the anti-wikipedia bias might stem from a simple fear of competition? Teachers and professors of all sorts don’t want to be replaced. I know I’ve used Wikipedia in preference to textbooks and the notes of professors in graduate engineering courses; I’d imagine a few people feel threatened by this.
Grant,
Probably a combination of that, and just plain stubborness. Most adults are not very internet savvy; at a department meeting I mentioned imdb, and not a single other person had heard of it. These teachers just get it in their heads that anybody can edit wikipedia, and assume that means it is not reliable and thus not useful or counterproductive. QED. If only they knew how unreliable the things they teach students are.
Cyrus is right. Wikipedia explicitly forbids original research. Journals explicitly require original research — they won’t publish stuff that’s already well-known and widely proven.
To the extent there is a difference in reliability, it probably has a lot more to do with the difference in types of articles than the differences in the reviewing or publishing process.
Sorry Tyler, but I am not convinced.
The median journal article focuses on what we don’t know and what is not so easily verifiable. The median Wiki entry focuses on what is well established (but not known to all). Wouldn’t one expect (and even demand) more errors in a activity which is meant to create new knowledge (such as academic research) than one would in a synthesis of existing knowledge.
Consumers of economic knowledge need to be forewarned, however, that journals are not repositories of facts, but rather of ideas.
Roger
Regarding use by students, I agree with bartman and Seth. I suggest that students use Wikipedia
as a good initial source, but that they then should track down more reliable basic sources to be
cited in papers.
I have read all the claims of how Wikipedia is at least as reliable as the Encyclopedia Britannica,
which may well be true. However, I must report that I have found a number of egregious errors in
Wikipedia entries. It may still be that there are fewer than in journal articles, but then it has
already been pointed out by others that the two are not comparable at all.
Free Exchange at the Economist picked this up.
Prediction markets, the hobbyhorse of Robin Hanson and overcoming bias,
are good at some things (predicting election outcomes) and very bad at
some others, e.g. forecasting Nobel Prize recipients.
Picking nits, the insightful review on Amazon of Defonseca’s book was not the first Amazon review. Amazon now moves the most helpful reviews to the first page for the book.
I recently took over an engineering project that a previous student had used to complete her master’s degree, and my first task was to read her thesis. To my shock, it cited Wikipedia, not once, but twice!
My thoughts on citing wikipedia is: why bother? Isn’t the rule of thumb is that you don’t have to provide a reference for knowledge that can be found in multiple sources? Isn’t that pretty much the requirement for a wikipedia article?
“don’t you think the anti-wikipedia bias might stem from a simple fear of competition? Teachers and professors of all sorts don’t want to be replaced. ”
My experience, not a single professor has ever mentioned this in the least!
Its really very different functions indeed..
It is enlightening!
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