In the September 2010 issue of the "peer reviewed journal of screen history, theory and criticism" Screening the Past there appeared an article that is almost a textbook example of how not to write history. The piece is riddled with errors of all levels of severity, from the minor, such as typing errors, spelling errors, inconsistency of presentation, and general carelessness (and even an obvious mirror image of a photograph); through moderate errors such as anachronism, inclusion of completely irrelevant material, and unnecessary repetition; to major faults, including errors of fact, self-contradiction, lack of logic in reasoning, and, worst of all, large helpings of speculation. Material that is presented as hypothetical early in the article is treated essentially as fact later on, and is used to draw conclusions. There are also many instances where an assertion is made without any evidence being presented to back it up.
According to the editors of Screening the Past at the time, the article was submitted to three referees who each recommended publication. Draw your own conclusions.
A PDF copy of the piece has been marked up
with comments pointing out many, but probably not all, of its errors.
(The original article is
here.)
But wait - there's more!
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia have what they laughingly call a "scholarly essay" online that includes material on the same subject as the above piece, and which is also error-ridden drivel. And it shows its origin as a cobbled-together collection of separate Web pages, being repetitious, self-contradictory, and lacking coherence and flow of narrative. This piece even won an award!
Again, a PDF copy of the article has been marked up with comments indicating many of its faults.
On another subject – the first De Forest phonofilm made in Australia – the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia appear to be trying for a record in the ratio of the number of errors to the number of lines of text: see the marked-up PDF copy of the blog entry.
And a relatively recent regurgitation of the old rubbish is in an unlikely place: the book Australian Horror Films, 1973-2010 by Peter Shelley, published in 2012, contains a brief "history" of Australian film production. Why so much detail is given to the very beginnings is anyone's guess; but it is carelessly written and there are many errors. See the comments on the Microsoft® Word copy of page 3, the first page of the Introduction, of this book. And there are nine more pages of introduction.
Screening the Past are trying to outdo themselves in the publication of nonsense. In issue 39 of this online journal, for which "[a]ll our essays are double-blind refereed and go through an extended editorial process where they are read by the referees and editors before they are revised", there is an atrocious article which has little more credibility than fiction.
Once again I submit a PDF copy of the piece
with comments indicating just how bad the original is.
(The original article is
here.)
And on and on it goes.
Screening the Past continues to serve up fake history:
Almost the greatest scientific invention of the age
is appalling, abounding in errors (endnote 37 is exemplary),
unsubstantiated assertions, and speculation.
Enjoy!
(The original article is
here.)
And what to do about Wikipedia? The articles on early Australian film history topics are written by ingenuous novices whose ideas of historical research are collecting newspaper articles from Trove and information from supposedly reliable (e.g. institutional) sources, and uncritically cutting-and-pasting them together to form texts. And these get high rankings in Google® search results!
It is a continual battle to eradicate the old myths and fallacies, let alone to try to prevent new ones from spreading.