Does History have a Replication Crisis?
September 13, 2023 3:26 PM Subscribe
Back in June, the historian Jenny Bulstrode published a paper, Black Metallurgists and the Making of the Industrial Revolution, in which she argued that one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution had been pioneered by (and stolen from) enslaved ironworkers in Jamaica. Now another historian, Oliver Jelf, has published a reply, which, to put it mildly, casts considerable doubt on Bulstrode's claims (it's been described as a 'ruthless demolition job which makes for a gruesomely compelling read'). Anton Howes asks: does history have a replication crisis?
Bulstrode has not responded directly to the controversy, but has taken to Twitter to denounce 'misleading and inaccurate accusations' by unnamed persons.
Bulstrode has not responded directly to the controversy, but has taken to Twitter to denounce 'misleading and inaccurate accusations' by unnamed persons.
Does it really matter if in like 2 decades there won’t be any academic history anymore?
Even if I believed this was true (and I don't) I'll borrow a quote from The Lion in Winter: "When the fall is all there is, it matters."
posted by Parasite Unseen at 3:42 PM on September 13, 2023 [22 favorites]
Even if I believed this was true (and I don't) I'll borrow a quote from The Lion in Winter: "When the fall is all there is, it matters."
posted by Parasite Unseen at 3:42 PM on September 13, 2023 [22 favorites]
if nothing we do matters, then nothing matters but what we do
posted by Sebmojo at 3:53 PM on September 13, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by Sebmojo at 3:53 PM on September 13, 2023 [9 favorites]
No? No.
This is how history (as a profession) is supposed to work, actually
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:11 PM on September 13, 2023 [21 favorites]
This is how history (as a profession) is supposed to work, actually
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 4:11 PM on September 13, 2023 [21 favorites]
History as a discipline is not about replicability.
posted by Galvanic at 4:17 PM on September 13, 2023 [32 favorites]
posted by Galvanic at 4:17 PM on September 13, 2023 [32 favorites]
As somebody with a more-than-passing interest in history (and, I'll admit, only a passing interest in historiography), I'll say that history can't have a replication crisis because it can't be scientific. There is no experiment; there is no control group; there is no repetition; there is no replication. There are only sources, interpretations, and arguments.
It'll be interesting to learn what the outcomes of this set of arguments ends up being.
posted by clawsoon at 4:18 PM on September 13, 2023 [27 favorites]
It'll be interesting to learn what the outcomes of this set of arguments ends up being.
posted by clawsoon at 4:18 PM on September 13, 2023 [27 favorites]
it can't be scientific. There is no experiment; there is no control group; there is no repetition; there is no replication. There are only sources, interpretations, and arguments.
This just means it can't be experimental. The dictionary definition allows for observations, not just randomized controlled experiment:
posted by pwnguin at 4:23 PM on September 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
This just means it can't be experimental. The dictionary definition allows for observations, not just randomized controlled experiment:
the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained:In recent years the Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded to researchers for designing and applying observational techniques to places we cannot ethically run RCEs.
posted by pwnguin at 4:23 PM on September 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
There is no doubt that other cultures developed considerable expertise in ferrous metal production before "the" Industrial Revolution in the UK. There are surviving fine iron and steel pieces made in India, Persia, Turkey and Syria showing knowledge of alloying and carbon control that are hundreds of years older. And yet these techniques were lost somehow, typically just as some of those areas were put under colonial rule.
I suspect that many of these technologies, like Reeder's ironworks in Jamaica, were quietly and conveniently hidden, forgotten or destroyed to prevent the technologies getting into enemy hands.
I dislike the sneering tone of the Ian Black commentary immensely. He sounds too happy to have found someone to pick on.
posted by scruss at 4:24 PM on September 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
I suspect that many of these technologies, like Reeder's ironworks in Jamaica, were quietly and conveniently hidden, forgotten or destroyed to prevent the technologies getting into enemy hands.
I dislike the sneering tone of the Ian Black commentary immensely. He sounds too happy to have found someone to pick on.
posted by scruss at 4:24 PM on September 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
scruss: And yet these techniques were lost somehow, typically just as some of those areas were put under colonial rule.
That reminds me of how Polynesian navigation techniques were wiped out almost everywhere because Christian missionaries decided that the classes in which the techniques were passed on were demonic pagan religious ceremonies and the people who were passing them on were witch doctors. If it hadn't been for a handful of navigators left on one island, it's another bit of knowledge that would've disappeared exactly like the ones you mentioned.
posted by clawsoon at 4:37 PM on September 13, 2023 [17 favorites]
That reminds me of how Polynesian navigation techniques were wiped out almost everywhere because Christian missionaries decided that the classes in which the techniques were passed on were demonic pagan religious ceremonies and the people who were passing them on were witch doctors. If it hadn't been for a handful of navigators left on one island, it's another bit of knowledge that would've disappeared exactly like the ones you mentioned.
posted by clawsoon at 4:37 PM on September 13, 2023 [17 favorites]
It’s funny, I help maintain our quality control process at the design firm I work for. Often we will have people send alarming emails outlining how the process found x horrifying issue, and how we have a quality crisis. Every time I have to point out that this is evidence of the process working. Worry when your review team says “everything looks great, no problems found, going home early today.”
posted by q*ben at 4:56 PM on September 13, 2023 [25 favorites]
posted by q*ben at 4:56 PM on September 13, 2023 [25 favorites]
Does it really matter if in like 2 decades there won’t be any academic history anymore?
Insert fiction, painting, X genre of music - a vast preponderance of shit does not negate the transcendent, potentially transformative and otherwise just plain joy inducing value of the good stuff. One of the real beauties of the humanities is that they aren’t about efficiency, and the failures don’t cancel real achievement.
posted by ryanshepard at 5:21 PM on September 13, 2023 [14 favorites]
Insert fiction, painting, X genre of music - a vast preponderance of shit does not negate the transcendent, potentially transformative and otherwise just plain joy inducing value of the good stuff. One of the real beauties of the humanities is that they aren’t about efficiency, and the failures don’t cancel real achievement.
posted by ryanshepard at 5:21 PM on September 13, 2023 [14 favorites]
I used to envision time as a cone of probabilities all leading to a point called 'now' with a straight line trailing out behind it. As I've become acquainted with all the claims and counterclaims and outright myths about the past I now see history as spreading cone of probability as well.
The sooner we give up the myth that we 100% know anything about the past the happier we will be.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:23 PM on September 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
The sooner we give up the myth that we 100% know anything about the past the happier we will be.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:23 PM on September 13, 2023 [8 favorites]
Yeah, but if I'm understanding Anton Howes in that last link, this isn't an example of the system working, but rather an example of one rare time that something was caught, which was apparently so rife with specious conclusions that it calls into question why there's not a structure in place for more people like Jelf to be double-checking primary sources. "A grad student decided to look into this one paper that got a relatively huge amount of traction" isn't a "system."
posted by Navelgazer at 5:26 PM on September 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by Navelgazer at 5:26 PM on September 13, 2023 [11 favorites]
Howes first cites a bunch of long-lasting historical false facts and citations, which while irritating and hard to quash have been around as long as history has been a profession. Hardly an argument for a crisis, unless it’s been a continuous crisis.
He then pivots to this example, which he mentions was not only questioned by him but also researched and refuted by another, unconnected reader.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t have strict standards of quality in academic publishing. But pop journalism and active falsehoods propagated for financial or political reasons are, in my opinion, far more common and more dangerous. The examples he gave give no evidence for the word “crisis” for the reasons stated above. I’m going with Betteridge’s law on this one.
posted by q*ben at 5:36 PM on September 13, 2023 [7 favorites]
He then pivots to this example, which he mentions was not only questioned by him but also researched and refuted by another, unconnected reader.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t have strict standards of quality in academic publishing. But pop journalism and active falsehoods propagated for financial or political reasons are, in my opinion, far more common and more dangerous. The examples he gave give no evidence for the word “crisis” for the reasons stated above. I’m going with Betteridge’s law on this one.
posted by q*ben at 5:36 PM on September 13, 2023 [7 favorites]
There is no doubt that other cultures developed considerable expertise in ferrous metal production before "the" Industrial Revolution in the UK. There are surviving fine iron and steel pieces made in India, Persia, Turkey and Syria showing knowledge of alloying and carbon control that are hundreds of years older. And yet these techniques were lost somehow, typically just as some of those areas were put under colonial rule.
My understanding was that the innovative method of ironworking was fairly specific in the claims, and well suited to both large scale, and high quality production. It's not just that Jamaica had skilled slave ironworkers/metallurgists. Interestingly, Cort's process, was built on previous innovations, which really shouldn't be all that surprising. Though the innovation is claimed here to have been pilfered from enslaved Jamaican metallurgists, it wasn't really perfected and practical until refinements subsequent to Cort by other innovators. But Cort gets the credit by having his name on the patents.
I heard a podcast about Bulstrode's paper a while back that accidentally made it seem a bit like Jamaica was practically a stone age economy, save for the advanced forge run by Black metallurgists and the process they are claimed to have invented. It sounded really interesting, but wasn't very specific other than repeating the claims, and like most of us, the podcast didn't seem to be well versed enough in the field to really explain the nature of the supposed technological advance. I was quite surprised to hear that colonial Jamaica had sufficient inputs (iron ore/scrap iron and coal) to produce large scale quality wrought iron profitably. In retrospect, this may not have been the case, and highly dependent on the definitions of "large scale" and "quality", with the profit propped up by distance from England and a workforce of slaves.
I suspect that many of these technologies, like Reeder's ironworks in Jamaica, were quietly and conveniently hidden, forgotten or destroyed to prevent the technologies getting into enemy hands.
Jelf claims this is exactly what happened. The threat of military invasion led to the demolition of the foundry, rather than its dismantling and export to England, where Cort was supposedly able to reverse engineer the process. Apparently, Reeder sought compensation for the destruction of his foundry for the rest of his days.
Jelf says several of Bulstrode's claims cannot be supported by known historical documentation. If this is the case, and Bulstrode's work won't withstand scrutiny, the claims will be called out and fall by the wayside. This sort of thing happens all the time, so much so, I'd be reluctant to hold it as an example of a crisis in the field.
posted by 2N2222 at 7:00 PM on September 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
My understanding was that the innovative method of ironworking was fairly specific in the claims, and well suited to both large scale, and high quality production. It's not just that Jamaica had skilled slave ironworkers/metallurgists. Interestingly, Cort's process, was built on previous innovations, which really shouldn't be all that surprising. Though the innovation is claimed here to have been pilfered from enslaved Jamaican metallurgists, it wasn't really perfected and practical until refinements subsequent to Cort by other innovators. But Cort gets the credit by having his name on the patents.
I heard a podcast about Bulstrode's paper a while back that accidentally made it seem a bit like Jamaica was practically a stone age economy, save for the advanced forge run by Black metallurgists and the process they are claimed to have invented. It sounded really interesting, but wasn't very specific other than repeating the claims, and like most of us, the podcast didn't seem to be well versed enough in the field to really explain the nature of the supposed technological advance. I was quite surprised to hear that colonial Jamaica had sufficient inputs (iron ore/scrap iron and coal) to produce large scale quality wrought iron profitably. In retrospect, this may not have been the case, and highly dependent on the definitions of "large scale" and "quality", with the profit propped up by distance from England and a workforce of slaves.
I suspect that many of these technologies, like Reeder's ironworks in Jamaica, were quietly and conveniently hidden, forgotten or destroyed to prevent the technologies getting into enemy hands.
Jelf claims this is exactly what happened. The threat of military invasion led to the demolition of the foundry, rather than its dismantling and export to England, where Cort was supposedly able to reverse engineer the process. Apparently, Reeder sought compensation for the destruction of his foundry for the rest of his days.
Jelf says several of Bulstrode's claims cannot be supported by known historical documentation. If this is the case, and Bulstrode's work won't withstand scrutiny, the claims will be called out and fall by the wayside. This sort of thing happens all the time, so much so, I'd be reluctant to hold it as an example of a crisis in the field.
posted by 2N2222 at 7:00 PM on September 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
"Study the historian before you begin to study the facts."
-Edward Carr.
posted by clavdivs at 7:55 PM on September 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
-Edward Carr.
posted by clavdivs at 7:55 PM on September 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
The story of how a number of innovations came
together and lead to cheap and abundant quantity of steel and iron and with it the modern age is important to examine and make sure it has included all those who contributed. History tends to focus on “great men” and we know from contemporary experience despite the biographies of the likes of Steve Jobs that the reality is always a big group of mostly anonymous collaborators slowly working over decades with women and minorities the first to be written out.
posted by interogative mood at 7:59 PM on September 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
together and lead to cheap and abundant quantity of steel and iron and with it the modern age is important to examine and make sure it has included all those who contributed. History tends to focus on “great men” and we know from contemporary experience despite the biographies of the likes of Steve Jobs that the reality is always a big group of mostly anonymous collaborators slowly working over decades with women and minorities the first to be written out.
posted by interogative mood at 7:59 PM on September 13, 2023 [4 favorites]
Jelf says several of Bulstrode's claims cannot be supported by known historical documentation. If this is the case, and Bulstrode's work won't withstand scrutiny, the claims will be called out and fall by the wayside.
Usually no one notices the debunking, especially when it is a story that people want to believe.
posted by betweenthebars at 8:08 PM on September 13, 2023 [9 favorites]
Usually no one notices the debunking, especially when it is a story that people want to believe.
posted by betweenthebars at 8:08 PM on September 13, 2023 [9 favorites]
The term "replication crisis" is obviously a bad fit but otherwise I think Howes' essay is sensible, and he explains why it's a decent analogy, at least: Colorful stories get repeated by others (including academics!) and the sort of basic fact checking you assume you are getting from professional academics just hasn't been done*. He's arguing for similar solutions too: More accessible sources, more attempts by peers to reproduce the work.
How bad is it? I don't know. I also don't know how bad is too bad. It's definitely not just pop history and newspapers who repeats bad facts though. For a layman, I read an above average amount of serious history and you definitely see that well known but debunked stories get repeated.
Interestingly, I first saw this about the Cort process on Erik Loomis post on LGM. Loomis is a history professor, and his post doesn't just link to the new (probably incorrect?) fact, but also another erroneous story about a slave who invented the cotton gin. Loomis' own link to the cotton gin story explains "Hey, this story isn't true, sorry, wrote it a long time ago and didn't vet it correctly!" but obviously the "fact" was rattling around in Loomis' head. (FWIW I like Loomis, and this stuff isn't his field so I don't think it means anything beyond bad facts being sticky.)
* In the days of yore, when Twitter was worth visiting, this is related to what a historian called the "Chortlemuffin Effect," which was that if you followed the trail of citations for some fascinating fact you will leap from respectable work to respectable work, until you eventually find it first appeared in the writings of an 18th century Englishman (aka "Lord Chortlemuffin") who just pulled it out of his ass.
posted by mark k at 8:12 PM on September 13, 2023 [18 favorites]
How bad is it? I don't know. I also don't know how bad is too bad. It's definitely not just pop history and newspapers who repeats bad facts though. For a layman, I read an above average amount of serious history and you definitely see that well known but debunked stories get repeated.
Interestingly, I first saw this about the Cort process on Erik Loomis post on LGM. Loomis is a history professor, and his post doesn't just link to the new (probably incorrect?) fact, but also another erroneous story about a slave who invented the cotton gin. Loomis' own link to the cotton gin story explains "Hey, this story isn't true, sorry, wrote it a long time ago and didn't vet it correctly!" but obviously the "fact" was rattling around in Loomis' head. (FWIW I like Loomis, and this stuff isn't his field so I don't think it means anything beyond bad facts being sticky.)
* In the days of yore, when Twitter was worth visiting, this is related to what a historian called the "Chortlemuffin Effect," which was that if you followed the trail of citations for some fascinating fact you will leap from respectable work to respectable work, until you eventually find it first appeared in the writings of an 18th century Englishman (aka "Lord Chortlemuffin") who just pulled it out of his ass.
posted by mark k at 8:12 PM on September 13, 2023 [18 favorites]
I'm a layman, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to use the words like "replication" in this context to describe checking a paper to make sure its citations say what the paper claims they say, despite the fact that that's not the exact way such words are typically used regarding scientific papers.
posted by Flunkie at 8:40 PM on September 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Flunkie at 8:40 PM on September 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
One thing I'll thank this post for is leading me down the Wikipedia rabbit-trail of the much-argued-over history of iron metallurgy in sub-Saharan Africa. Maybe it was invented there a millennium before anywhere else; maybe it arrived a millennium after. In either case, it had a long history.
posted by clawsoon at 8:40 PM on September 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 8:40 PM on September 13, 2023 [2 favorites]
Usually no one notices the debunking, especially when it is a story that people want to believe.
Yes, and...? I mean, how difficult is it to do preemptive debunking?
One of the things I hate about this story is how it's been promoted somewhat to valorize the lives of enslaved people who've largely been forgotten. This is an angle that fits Metafilter like a glove, and would be well worth doing. If it were true. I don't think we're all that married to it enough to get upset when it's looking shaky. But I've seen threads get axed because doubt was credibly thrown on an otherwise respected topic/person on the blue. Yes, nobody notices a debunking when it's literally removed from sight for the explicit reason that it pecks at a story people really want to believe. But that's getting to another topic.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:56 PM on September 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
Yes, and...? I mean, how difficult is it to do preemptive debunking?
One of the things I hate about this story is how it's been promoted somewhat to valorize the lives of enslaved people who've largely been forgotten. This is an angle that fits Metafilter like a glove, and would be well worth doing. If it were true. I don't think we're all that married to it enough to get upset when it's looking shaky. But I've seen threads get axed because doubt was credibly thrown on an otherwise respected topic/person on the blue. Yes, nobody notices a debunking when it's literally removed from sight for the explicit reason that it pecks at a story people really want to believe. But that's getting to another topic.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:56 PM on September 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
One of the things I hate about this story is how it's been promoted somewhat to valorize the lives of enslaved people who've largely been forgotten.
In case you couldn't tell from the linked essays, there's a simmering resentment, usually in people one or more steps removed from academia but not always, at the shocking!!! discovery!!! that the Industrial Revolution arose in the bosom of a global capitalism that was draining resources both physical and mental from around the globe. So it's unfortunate when a scholar working along these lines gets over her skis, as every aggrieved white guy suddenly gets some grist for his mill.
History has also gotten more tolerant of inference and speculation when attempting to recover the lives of people who were not permitted to leave many traces on the record. This is mostly a good thing--careful and well-informed speculation is significantly better than silence, as long as no one forgets it's speculation. But the original paper has an undertone of that method gone wrong.
posted by praemunire at 9:10 PM on September 13, 2023 [12 favorites]
In case you couldn't tell from the linked essays, there's a simmering resentment, usually in people one or more steps removed from academia but not always, at the shocking!!! discovery!!! that the Industrial Revolution arose in the bosom of a global capitalism that was draining resources both physical and mental from around the globe. So it's unfortunate when a scholar working along these lines gets over her skis, as every aggrieved white guy suddenly gets some grist for his mill.
History has also gotten more tolerant of inference and speculation when attempting to recover the lives of people who were not permitted to leave many traces on the record. This is mostly a good thing--careful and well-informed speculation is significantly better than silence, as long as no one forgets it's speculation. But the original paper has an undertone of that method gone wrong.
posted by praemunire at 9:10 PM on September 13, 2023 [12 favorites]
Bloomery based iron smelting is basically magic. Here is a traditional smelt in Africa. Here is one in Colorado at Black Bear Forge (part 1, part 2). This gives you wrought iron. Then they figure out how to put that in another furnace and transform it in a crucible to add just enough extra carbon to make steel. Eventually they got to this process of making Wootz steel which we’ve only figured out how it was probably made recently.
Now of course it is mostly blast furnaces turning out industrial quantities of steel and iron. Once thsie showed up in Britain and North America and started mass production most of those probably millennia old operations that had handed down secrets for generations were obliterated. They just couldn’t compete.
posted by interogative mood at 10:07 PM on September 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
Now of course it is mostly blast furnaces turning out industrial quantities of steel and iron. Once thsie showed up in Britain and North America and started mass production most of those probably millennia old operations that had handed down secrets for generations were obliterated. They just couldn’t compete.
posted by interogative mood at 10:07 PM on September 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
The response by Jelf reminds me of the spat between John Adamson and Mark Kishlansky in the early 90s, in which Kishlansky wrote a blistering critique of Adamson’s arguments about the role of the nobility in the English Civil Wars. Like this debate, it turned on detailed analysis of sources and the ways sentences had been read or eluded when quoted. Adamson replied with an equally blistering rebuttal and the debate played out for months in journals. I’m surprised Bulstrode hasn’t given a detailed response, but then again Jelf’s critique does seem pretty convincing - especially when it comes to whether information about Reeder’s forge came to Cort’s attention.
One way in which this is different to Adamson and Kishlansky though is the relative positions of the two academics. Adamson had only recently got his PhD whereas Kishlansky was an established academic. There was an element of criticism of Kishlansky by some at the time for punching down. Whereas in this case Jelf is still studying for a Masters and this seems to be the first thing he’s published.
I remember Kishlansky ending his last article in the debate by counting the number of archival sources he and Adamson had read and debated about, and posing the question to the reader: “have you read every one?”. This was at a time when some had been calendared in printed editions but many were still manuscripts in county archives and the libraries of aristocratic houses. That problem gets easier as more sources are digitised, but the labour involved in fact checking every quote and footnote in a book or article is still immense. There is a lot we end up taking on trust because of a historian’s qualifications and reputation.
posted by greycap at 11:36 PM on September 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
One way in which this is different to Adamson and Kishlansky though is the relative positions of the two academics. Adamson had only recently got his PhD whereas Kishlansky was an established academic. There was an element of criticism of Kishlansky by some at the time for punching down. Whereas in this case Jelf is still studying for a Masters and this seems to be the first thing he’s published.
I remember Kishlansky ending his last article in the debate by counting the number of archival sources he and Adamson had read and debated about, and posing the question to the reader: “have you read every one?”. This was at a time when some had been calendared in printed editions but many were still manuscripts in county archives and the libraries of aristocratic houses. That problem gets easier as more sources are digitised, but the labour involved in fact checking every quote and footnote in a book or article is still immense. There is a lot we end up taking on trust because of a historian’s qualifications and reputation.
posted by greycap at 11:36 PM on September 13, 2023 [6 favorites]
I suspect that many of these technologies, like Reeder's ironworks in Jamaica, were quietly and conveniently hidden, forgotten or destroyed to prevent the technologies getting into enemy hands.
Unlike Reeder’s ironworks, perhaps, since apparently this new theory is garbage.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:09 AM on September 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Unlike Reeder’s ironworks, perhaps, since apparently this new theory is garbage.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:09 AM on September 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Confirmation bias for a narrative advantageous to one's own side is a powerful force. I can understand falling for it. You just end up interpreting everything going your way as evidence, and explain everything going the other way as a jigsaw piece you need to fit in place, even if you have to add conspiratorial explanations, rather than have a critical eye looking at oneself: is this assumption reasonable?
In a way, this reminded me of the Batmobile case. It clearly wasn't one of auto theft, but because the complainant believe his spot in the queue was stolen, and the case was handed to head of auto theft task force, it was treated as an auto theft, and investigated as an auto theft. At no point was the person being investigated contacted to see what's his version of the story UNTIL the team, going out of state, arrested the person, THEN the team realized they f-ed up.
I'll let Steve Lehto read through the final report on the monumental f-up.
posted by kschang at 1:13 AM on September 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
In a way, this reminded me of the Batmobile case. It clearly wasn't one of auto theft, but because the complainant believe his spot in the queue was stolen, and the case was handed to head of auto theft task force, it was treated as an auto theft, and investigated as an auto theft. At no point was the person being investigated contacted to see what's his version of the story UNTIL the team, going out of state, arrested the person, THEN the team realized they f-ed up.
I'll let Steve Lehto read through the final report on the monumental f-up.
posted by kschang at 1:13 AM on September 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
We're this many comments in and nobody's made a dad joke about replicating history first as a tragedy, then as a farce?
posted by busted_crayons at 1:44 AM on September 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by busted_crayons at 1:44 AM on September 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
"in 1781 a man with the surname of Cort arrived in Portsmouth from Jamaica. She describes him as a ‘cousin’ of Henry Cort,"
Henry! Henry, it's Marvin. Your cousin, Marvin Cort. You know that new ironworking technique you're looking for? Well, listen to this!
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 2:43 AM on September 14, 2023 [18 favorites]
Henry! Henry, it's Marvin. Your cousin, Marvin Cort. You know that new ironworking technique you're looking for? Well, listen to this!
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 2:43 AM on September 14, 2023 [18 favorites]
There is no doubt that other cultures developed considerable expertise in ferrous metal production before "the" Industrial Revolution in the UK. There are surviving fine iron and steel pieces made in India, Persia, Turkey and Syria showing knowledge of alloying and carbon control that are hundreds of years older. And yet these techniques were lost somehow, typically just as some of those areas were put under colonial rule.
When was Turkey under colonial rule?
posted by atrazine at 3:59 AM on September 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
When was Turkey under colonial rule?
posted by atrazine at 3:59 AM on September 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
It sounds like there's not enough detail in the current record about how Henry Cort developed his process to understand whether he really developed it himself (alone or with others) or whether he stole some or all of the ideas needed from other people. If so, that gap must be tempting for a historian to try and fill.
posted by plonkee at 3:59 AM on September 14, 2023
posted by plonkee at 3:59 AM on September 14, 2023
It sounds like there's no evidence at all for most of the claims Bulstrode made, and that multiple reviewers failed to catch that basic problem. That's a bit different than "not enough detail."
This is an unfortunate episode that's probably going to end up boosting the far-right attack on the history of and teaching about race.
posted by mediareport at 4:11 AM on September 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
This is an unfortunate episode that's probably going to end up boosting the far-right attack on the history of and teaching about race.
posted by mediareport at 4:11 AM on September 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
The Howes article is very clear about how and why it is referencing the replication crisis:
>history, which is not just a replication crisis but a reproducibility crisis. Replication is when you can repeat an experiment with new data or new materials and get the same result. Reproducibility is when you use exactly the same evidence as another person and still get the same result — so it has a much, much lower bar for success, which is what makes the lack of it in history all the more worrying.
--
Bulstrode's article appears not to simply be an alternative interpretation of sources, but instead is basically a set of lies about what the cited sources say - you cannot reproduce Bulstrode's arguments from the claimed evidence. If that is generally true - that historians are just making up what they claim their sources say - and few people ever bother to check, then that does seem like a crisis.
posted by Ktm1 at 5:14 AM on September 14, 2023 [6 favorites]
>history, which is not just a replication crisis but a reproducibility crisis. Replication is when you can repeat an experiment with new data or new materials and get the same result. Reproducibility is when you use exactly the same evidence as another person and still get the same result — so it has a much, much lower bar for success, which is what makes the lack of it in history all the more worrying.
--
Bulstrode's article appears not to simply be an alternative interpretation of sources, but instead is basically a set of lies about what the cited sources say - you cannot reproduce Bulstrode's arguments from the claimed evidence. If that is generally true - that historians are just making up what they claim their sources say - and few people ever bother to check, then that does seem like a crisis.
posted by Ktm1 at 5:14 AM on September 14, 2023 [6 favorites]
What Jelf’s initiative reveals, I think, is a potential solution to at least some of the problems that history faces. Just as in the sciences it is considered good practice to make one’s data available, in history it should perhaps be a requirement to upload to some public repository the photographs or transcriptions of any cited archival sources that are not otherwise freely accessible online.I agree with Howes here, though I don't think uploading is enough. We arrived at our modern style of writing papers mostly by accident, and the fact that it involves using footnotes and endnotes instead of sidenotes or inline sources/data/graphics seems like a major part of the problem. Locality matters. There's a tremendous amount of avoidable friction caused by the need to go "somewhere else" by following a chain of references. If even a lay reader skimming Bulstrode's paper had the original source ready-to-hand (ideally inline, ideally collapsible because it's electronic-first), the word-surgery and inventing-narratives aspects of this charade would be much tougher to pull off.
posted by daveliepmann at 5:39 AM on September 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
The sooner we give up the myth that we 100% know anything about the past the happier we will be.
Who, in your eyes, is the “we” in that sentence?
When was Turkey under colonial rule?
The “typically“ in your quote seemed like enough of a disclaimer that it wasn’t intended to be absolute, but huge swaths of land in what’s now Turkey changed hands quite a bit between the early crusades and WWI. Amidst much smashing of things like religious icons that could easily have led to technologies being destroyed.So I don’t think the overall point is a wild claim. I guess your quibble depends a lot on how we define terms like “Turkey” and “colonial rule.”
And quibbles like that are part of why we have historiography!
posted by aspersioncast at 6:00 AM on September 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
Who, in your eyes, is the “we” in that sentence?
When was Turkey under colonial rule?
The “typically“ in your quote seemed like enough of a disclaimer that it wasn’t intended to be absolute, but huge swaths of land in what’s now Turkey changed hands quite a bit between the early crusades and WWI. Amidst much smashing of things like religious icons that could easily have led to technologies being destroyed.So I don’t think the overall point is a wild claim. I guess your quibble depends a lot on how we define terms like “Turkey” and “colonial rule.”
And quibbles like that are part of why we have historiography!
posted by aspersioncast at 6:00 AM on September 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
Does it really matter if in like 2 decades there won’t be any academic history anymore?
I don't think academic history will cease to exist.
As a discipline, it will probably be smaller: fewer full time faculty, fewer majors.
posted by doctornemo at 6:13 AM on September 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
I don't think academic history will cease to exist.
As a discipline, it will probably be smaller: fewer full time faculty, fewer majors.
posted by doctornemo at 6:13 AM on September 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
I've always taken it to be implicit in the attribution of significant Industrial Revolution development to a specific man that he was building on past work of other players and had lots of skilled assistance and benefited from a very favorable intellectual, regulatory, and capital formation regime. It's as much a citation that he was able to fund, organize, and lead the project through to market and then promote and scale production to win a market position for the innovation. Very much not Einstein's annus mirabilis papers or Shakespeare's plays, and not even really Edison's effort at modesty in inspiration vs. perspiration.
posted by MattD at 6:28 AM on September 14, 2023
posted by MattD at 6:28 AM on September 14, 2023
I'm a layman, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to use the words like "replication" in this context to describe checking a paper to make sure its citations say what the paper claims they say, despite the fact that that's not the exact way such words are typically used regarding scientific papers.
It's terribly unreasonable to use words like "replication" because it implies that there's all sorts of other scientific disciplinary apparatus done in history as it is in the sciences. But it isn't. History is a different discipline, with a different approach, different values, and different theoretical underpinnings.
It's like complaining about the lack of replication in film-making ("Hey, Martin Scorsese, I used your script and the same type of cameras but what I made isn't like the Godfather at all!")
At its core, history relies on historians interpreting sources. That interpretive act is open to all sorts of problems: mistakes, bias, outright fraud. And it is always limited to what sources are actually available. It is an attempt to paint as complete a picture of the past as is possible (we read all the sources* -- none of this creating a "sample" with a "control group." Everything goes in the pot.)
The linked article points out the problems with that act, but it's not a crisis nor a new development.
posted by Galvanic at 7:21 AM on September 14, 2023 [7 favorites]
It's terribly unreasonable to use words like "replication" because it implies that there's all sorts of other scientific disciplinary apparatus done in history as it is in the sciences. But it isn't. History is a different discipline, with a different approach, different values, and different theoretical underpinnings.
It's like complaining about the lack of replication in film-making ("Hey, Martin Scorsese, I used your script and the same type of cameras but what I made isn't like the Godfather at all!")
At its core, history relies on historians interpreting sources. That interpretive act is open to all sorts of problems: mistakes, bias, outright fraud. And it is always limited to what sources are actually available. It is an attempt to paint as complete a picture of the past as is possible (we read all the sources* -- none of this creating a "sample" with a "control group." Everything goes in the pot.)
The linked article points out the problems with that act, but it's not a crisis nor a new development.
posted by Galvanic at 7:21 AM on September 14, 2023 [7 favorites]
The response by Jelf reminds me of the spat between John Adamson and Mark Kishlansky in the early 90s
Oh, no, Kishlansky was much meaner. (I have a weak spot for that kind of no-holds-barred style in formal intellectual debate, but I recognize it can be counterproductive and I'd really hate to see it used against a younger marginalized scholar [which Adamson was not; just a somewhat less prestigious flavor of white dude]).
I was recently reading Geoffrey Parker's biography of Charles V and, although he is obviously an incredibly well-studied figure, I was struck by how evident it was that most scholars simply could not even read all the languages necessary to bring together a full picture of his governance (and I'm guessing that even Parker lacked the skills to decipher local/indigenous sources from America). And that's before we even start thinking about the archival access necessary (Parker found the original of a fairly important source just sitting here in New York! I was irritated at that--that discovery was owed to some young grad student). Now, Charles V is an extreme case (he ruled most of continental Europe that the French didn't), but the limitations on historians are both very real and in the terrifying category of "unknown unknowns."
In the end, you have to have a narrative or your work is unreadable, but you should always be aware that...hm...I'm not sure there's an inverse saying for "we are not carving nature at its joints."
posted by praemunire at 7:44 AM on September 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
Oh, no, Kishlansky was much meaner. (I have a weak spot for that kind of no-holds-barred style in formal intellectual debate, but I recognize it can be counterproductive and I'd really hate to see it used against a younger marginalized scholar [which Adamson was not; just a somewhat less prestigious flavor of white dude]).
I was recently reading Geoffrey Parker's biography of Charles V and, although he is obviously an incredibly well-studied figure, I was struck by how evident it was that most scholars simply could not even read all the languages necessary to bring together a full picture of his governance (and I'm guessing that even Parker lacked the skills to decipher local/indigenous sources from America). And that's before we even start thinking about the archival access necessary (Parker found the original of a fairly important source just sitting here in New York! I was irritated at that--that discovery was owed to some young grad student). Now, Charles V is an extreme case (he ruled most of continental Europe that the French didn't), but the limitations on historians are both very real and in the terrifying category of "unknown unknowns."
In the end, you have to have a narrative or your work is unreadable, but you should always be aware that...hm...I'm not sure there's an inverse saying for "we are not carving nature at its joints."
posted by praemunire at 7:44 AM on September 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
There is no doubt that other cultures developed considerable expertise in ferrous metal production before "the" Industrial Revolution in the UK. There are surviving fine iron and steel pieces made in India, Persia, Turkey and Syria showing knowledge of alloying and carbon control that are hundreds of years older. And yet these techniques were lost somehow, typically just as some of those areas were put under colonial rule.
I may be misunderstanding your point, but steel production goes back thousands of years; the Romans had it, and the Chinese had it, and everyone in between had it too. There are fine pieces all over; Damascus steel was legendary. A lot of this is super well documented; Needham has chapters and chapters on steel production in China and even summaries make my eyes glaze over. Despite being a chemist who likes history.
The relevant part of the industrial revolution wasn't about inventing steel, or even necessarily making it at higher quality, but about processes to manufacture it at high volume and low cost. With steel production everyone with agency was trying to copy the British techniques because of their obvious potential. Westerners would recount legends about Saladin's fine sword of Damascus steel, but there's a reason they didn't wax poetic about his steel frame buildings.
posted by mark k at 7:47 AM on September 14, 2023 [11 favorites]
I may be misunderstanding your point, but steel production goes back thousands of years; the Romans had it, and the Chinese had it, and everyone in between had it too. There are fine pieces all over; Damascus steel was legendary. A lot of this is super well documented; Needham has chapters and chapters on steel production in China and even summaries make my eyes glaze over. Despite being a chemist who likes history.
The relevant part of the industrial revolution wasn't about inventing steel, or even necessarily making it at higher quality, but about processes to manufacture it at high volume and low cost. With steel production everyone with agency was trying to copy the British techniques because of their obvious potential. Westerners would recount legends about Saladin's fine sword of Damascus steel, but there's a reason they didn't wax poetic about his steel frame buildings.
posted by mark k at 7:47 AM on September 14, 2023 [11 favorites]
So it is not only history. I think the problem is that people simply cannot understand how much checking is necessary to check even the briefest of articles, much less entire books. And the question rises, of: who is going to pay for that? And who is going to pay for all the subscriptions you would need to check all of that?
I am a student editor on a law journal at a moderately respectable but not top school (god help me). When articles come in and make it to the stage we are looking at them, we are trying to check every citation. Ideally, we would be checking not just that the citation is right, or that it cites to the right page, but that the citation is correct, that the material on the page says what the author of the article says it does.
I am behind on my articles, because I feel this is important and so am going piece by piece to make sure it's right. I was just in an editorial meeting where I was told that we should be spending only around four hours on each article. Four hours, on articles with literally dozens of citations. Four hours is tough just to match them to the page.
While I can't speak for the choices my fellow editorial board members are making or the quality of their work, I will say that I am not certain how robust the oversight is, and some of my fellow editorial board members seem to be speeding through their work in record times.
I don't know how much this is the case for academics, but I know they're also trying to publish and teach and do their own workload while they're also peer reviewing work. I'm not sure how robust their peer reviewing can be under those circumstances, and I'm not sure what the social stigma is if they peer review work and wind up saying "Hey, your sources are full of crap."
I suspect it's not great.
posted by corb at 7:49 AM on September 14, 2023 [12 favorites]
I am a student editor on a law journal at a moderately respectable but not top school (god help me). When articles come in and make it to the stage we are looking at them, we are trying to check every citation. Ideally, we would be checking not just that the citation is right, or that it cites to the right page, but that the citation is correct, that the material on the page says what the author of the article says it does.
I am behind on my articles, because I feel this is important and so am going piece by piece to make sure it's right. I was just in an editorial meeting where I was told that we should be spending only around four hours on each article. Four hours, on articles with literally dozens of citations. Four hours is tough just to match them to the page.
While I can't speak for the choices my fellow editorial board members are making or the quality of their work, I will say that I am not certain how robust the oversight is, and some of my fellow editorial board members seem to be speeding through their work in record times.
I don't know how much this is the case for academics, but I know they're also trying to publish and teach and do their own workload while they're also peer reviewing work. I'm not sure how robust their peer reviewing can be under those circumstances, and I'm not sure what the social stigma is if they peer review work and wind up saying "Hey, your sources are full of crap."
I suspect it's not great.
posted by corb at 7:49 AM on September 14, 2023 [12 favorites]
I don't know how much this is the case for academics
I would not say that academics have adequate time, but I would also say that legal journals are the JV at their absolute best. (That doesn't mean there's no such thing as good legal scholarship--don't @ me!--but the structure is an absolute disgrace. It's a wonder that any decent work gets published.)
posted by praemunire at 8:59 AM on September 14, 2023
I would not say that academics have adequate time, but I would also say that legal journals are the JV at their absolute best. (That doesn't mean there's no such thing as good legal scholarship--don't @ me!--but the structure is an absolute disgrace. It's a wonder that any decent work gets published.)
posted by praemunire at 8:59 AM on September 14, 2023
Oh, no, Kishlansky was much meaner.
Very true! The tone of his original “Saye What” article is withering to the extreme, although Adamson did come out swinging in his response. I always remember the Latin tag he starts with - “parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus” which translates as “mountains will go into labour, and a silly little mouse will be born”. A very Cambridge don way to try to skewer one’s opponent.
Jelf’s response has none of that but what did cast me back to Kishlansky’s approach was his cold and clinical unpicking of key parts of Bulstrode’s article, line by line and source by source. The absence of tone in his paper is in itself a tone, and if nothing else it’s a bold move from someone yet to finish his MA…
posted by greycap at 9:07 AM on September 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
Very true! The tone of his original “Saye What” article is withering to the extreme, although Adamson did come out swinging in his response. I always remember the Latin tag he starts with - “parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus” which translates as “mountains will go into labour, and a silly little mouse will be born”. A very Cambridge don way to try to skewer one’s opponent.
Jelf’s response has none of that but what did cast me back to Kishlansky’s approach was his cold and clinical unpicking of key parts of Bulstrode’s article, line by line and source by source. The absence of tone in his paper is in itself a tone, and if nothing else it’s a bold move from someone yet to finish his MA…
posted by greycap at 9:07 AM on September 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
A very Cambridge don way to try to skewer one’s opponent…
And unfortunately an attitude much more harmful to scholarly progress! "Oh, my colleague is so fixated on the details, how absurd, how picayune..." The hyper-combative American attitude has its own weaknesses (as noted above!), but I could never stand the smug insular provincial self-satisfaction of that particular type of Englishman--in addition to being annoying, it's actively stupid-making in a way that props up a lot of UK establishment moronicity.
posted by praemunire at 9:12 AM on September 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
And unfortunately an attitude much more harmful to scholarly progress! "Oh, my colleague is so fixated on the details, how absurd, how picayune..." The hyper-combative American attitude has its own weaknesses (as noted above!), but I could never stand the smug insular provincial self-satisfaction of that particular type of Englishman--in addition to being annoying, it's actively stupid-making in a way that props up a lot of UK establishment moronicity.
posted by praemunire at 9:12 AM on September 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
(Corb, you're in law school? Wow, what a great direction for you! Congrats and goddesspeed)
It seems Bulstrode has only been publishing since 2016. They may seem like part of the institution to someone who hasn't even graduated yet,but to me, they're still very new to the field.
They researched the history of industrial invention, publishing such works as A survey of the networks bringing a knowledge of optical glass-working to the London Trade in 2016 and Edward John Dent’s glass springs, archive and technical analysis combined in 2018.
In 2019, they contribute a chapter titled The face of a metal and the skin of a bomb to the book Migrants: art, artists, materials and ideas crossing borders. I assume justice and culture have been deep in their mind as it has been to all of us. I assume they were thinking and reading along these lines for years, maybe even reading metafilter.
Here is my fix-it fic about Bulstrode getting started on this research. During the course of study of innovation, they discovered that sugar cane was processed with rollers, and that metal was processed with rollers. They may have been looking into the first roller patent, and decided to see if there had been any recent trans-Atlantic activity that might have induced this innovation. And indeed, they found an iron foundry, in a sugar colony, that was destroyed shortly before the roller process was patented.
They collected a number of supporting facts - a cousin was in town! A killer in the local news, named after the foundry owner! A ship diverted!
Fortunately for us, Bulstrode published their findings. "Science" (in which I include the project of assembling and collecting all knowledge about everything) doesn't work of people don't share their ideas. Thankfully, this was not one of the ideas that got published on cracked.com between 2005 and 2010, so it doesn't live rent free in my brain.
My conclusion: go easy on Bulstrode, this is how history works, and it's always good to question everything.
posted by rebent at 9:14 AM on September 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
It seems Bulstrode has only been publishing since 2016. They may seem like part of the institution to someone who hasn't even graduated yet,but to me, they're still very new to the field.
They researched the history of industrial invention, publishing such works as A survey of the networks bringing a knowledge of optical glass-working to the London Trade in 2016 and Edward John Dent’s glass springs, archive and technical analysis combined in 2018.
In 2019, they contribute a chapter titled The face of a metal and the skin of a bomb to the book Migrants: art, artists, materials and ideas crossing borders. I assume justice and culture have been deep in their mind as it has been to all of us. I assume they were thinking and reading along these lines for years, maybe even reading metafilter.
Here is my fix-it fic about Bulstrode getting started on this research. During the course of study of innovation, they discovered that sugar cane was processed with rollers, and that metal was processed with rollers. They may have been looking into the first roller patent, and decided to see if there had been any recent trans-Atlantic activity that might have induced this innovation. And indeed, they found an iron foundry, in a sugar colony, that was destroyed shortly before the roller process was patented.
They collected a number of supporting facts - a cousin was in town! A killer in the local news, named after the foundry owner! A ship diverted!
Fortunately for us, Bulstrode published their findings. "Science" (in which I include the project of assembling and collecting all knowledge about everything) doesn't work of people don't share their ideas. Thankfully, this was not one of the ideas that got published on cracked.com between 2005 and 2010, so it doesn't live rent free in my brain.
My conclusion: go easy on Bulstrode, this is how history works, and it's always good to question everything.
posted by rebent at 9:14 AM on September 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
this is how history works
I am not unsympathetic to Bulstrode--I think the corrective impulse she's working from is the right one, I'm sure she didn't deliberately misrepresent anything--but you have to at least read the texts you're citing all the way through! There are some branches of history where you don't have to go grubbing tediously through the minutiae, but this is not one of them.
posted by praemunire at 9:18 AM on September 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
I am not unsympathetic to Bulstrode--I think the corrective impulse she's working from is the right one, I'm sure she didn't deliberately misrepresent anything--but you have to at least read the texts you're citing all the way through! There are some branches of history where you don't have to go grubbing tediously through the minutiae, but this is not one of them.
posted by praemunire at 9:18 AM on September 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
It's like complaining about the lack of replication in film-making ("Hey, Martin Scorsese, I used your script and the same type of cameras but what I made isn't like the Godfather at all!")
Well there's your problem. Martin Scorsese didn't make The Godfather.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 9:44 AM on September 14, 2023 [11 favorites]
Well there's your problem. Martin Scorsese didn't make The Godfather.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 9:44 AM on September 14, 2023 [11 favorites]
Well there's your problem. Martin Scorsese didn't make The Godfather.
I knew I should have double-checked that. Insert Francis Ford Coppola instead.
posted by Galvanic at 10:09 AM on September 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
I knew I should have double-checked that. Insert Francis Ford Coppola instead.
posted by Galvanic at 10:09 AM on September 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
Confirmation bias for a narrative advantageous to one's own side is a powerful force. I can understand falling for it.
In fact this is a double example. First, the excitement over the original publication was way more than would be justifiable for something that's a pretty arcane piece of historical metallurgy for most people. (Not for me, but I'm a long time history of technology superfan and a long Anton Howes blog about the deep history of the concept of vacuum in steam engines is a special treat for me). It's pretty clear that there were people who were primed to believe the original story, wanted to believe the original story, just as there are - as praemunire put it - "aggrieved white guys" who will be irritatingly pleased to see that the original story was wrong.
It sounds like there's not enough detail in the current record about how Henry Cort developed his process to understand whether he really developed it himself (alone or with others) or whether he stole some or all of the ideas needed from other people. If so, that gap must be tempting for a historian to try and fill.
The gap around Cort's invention is pretty typical of technology history of that period. However it's also the case that we have a lot of information on similar and clearly predecessor processes as well as tweaks by successors who did a lot of further work to really make the process practical. So we may not know how Cort came to his innovation in detail through lab journals etc. but we can pretty clearly place him in the history of steel making through what came before and after. It isn't a gap of the "how could he have made this leap?" kind that begs for a really meaty alternative explanation.
I've always taken it to be implicit in the attribution of significant Industrial Revolution development to a specific man that he was building on past work of other players and had lots of skilled assistance and benefited from a very favorable intellectual, regulatory, and capital formation regime. It's as much a citation that he was able to fund, organize, and lead the project through to market and then promote and scale production to win a market position for the innovation.
Basically, yes. Though note that for (classic!) administrative and legal reasons he lost his control of the patent and actually this may have played a huge part in the success of "his" process - freed of patent licensing, many people could take his sort-of-functional idea and develop it into something that worked much better. Had he maintained control of the patent he would no doubt have enforced the implementation of his particular method.
Here is my fix-it fic about Bulstrode getting started on this research. During the course of study of innovation, they discovered that sugar cane was processed with rollers, and that metal was processed with rollers. They may have been looking into the first roller patent, and decided to see if there had been any recent trans-Atlantic activity that might have induced this innovation. And indeed, they found an iron foundry, in a sugar colony, that was destroyed shortly before the roller process was patented.
Agreed. They're clearly wrong, and it is a dis-service to them that academic review didn't catch it but it's clear where the impulse came from. "Ah, rollers!" is an excellent hypothesis and actually looks like how a lot of technology innovation does happen, just in this case it doesn't stack up.
posted by atrazine at 10:12 AM on September 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
In fact this is a double example. First, the excitement over the original publication was way more than would be justifiable for something that's a pretty arcane piece of historical metallurgy for most people. (Not for me, but I'm a long time history of technology superfan and a long Anton Howes blog about the deep history of the concept of vacuum in steam engines is a special treat for me). It's pretty clear that there were people who were primed to believe the original story, wanted to believe the original story, just as there are - as praemunire put it - "aggrieved white guys" who will be irritatingly pleased to see that the original story was wrong.
It sounds like there's not enough detail in the current record about how Henry Cort developed his process to understand whether he really developed it himself (alone or with others) or whether he stole some or all of the ideas needed from other people. If so, that gap must be tempting for a historian to try and fill.
The gap around Cort's invention is pretty typical of technology history of that period. However it's also the case that we have a lot of information on similar and clearly predecessor processes as well as tweaks by successors who did a lot of further work to really make the process practical. So we may not know how Cort came to his innovation in detail through lab journals etc. but we can pretty clearly place him in the history of steel making through what came before and after. It isn't a gap of the "how could he have made this leap?" kind that begs for a really meaty alternative explanation.
I've always taken it to be implicit in the attribution of significant Industrial Revolution development to a specific man that he was building on past work of other players and had lots of skilled assistance and benefited from a very favorable intellectual, regulatory, and capital formation regime. It's as much a citation that he was able to fund, organize, and lead the project through to market and then promote and scale production to win a market position for the innovation.
Basically, yes. Though note that for (classic!) administrative and legal reasons he lost his control of the patent and actually this may have played a huge part in the success of "his" process - freed of patent licensing, many people could take his sort-of-functional idea and develop it into something that worked much better. Had he maintained control of the patent he would no doubt have enforced the implementation of his particular method.
Here is my fix-it fic about Bulstrode getting started on this research. During the course of study of innovation, they discovered that sugar cane was processed with rollers, and that metal was processed with rollers. They may have been looking into the first roller patent, and decided to see if there had been any recent trans-Atlantic activity that might have induced this innovation. And indeed, they found an iron foundry, in a sugar colony, that was destroyed shortly before the roller process was patented.
Agreed. They're clearly wrong, and it is a dis-service to them that academic review didn't catch it but it's clear where the impulse came from. "Ah, rollers!" is an excellent hypothesis and actually looks like how a lot of technology innovation does happen, just in this case it doesn't stack up.
posted by atrazine at 10:12 AM on September 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Near Front Royal, Virginia you can visit Elizabeth’s Furnace to see the remains of a pre civil war era iron furnace that was operated by African Slaves. Good hiking, fishing, rock climbing, and rock hunting there today.
posted by interogative mood at 11:17 AM on September 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 11:17 AM on September 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Just down the road from us in Manassas, interogative mood. Thank you.
posted by doctornemo at 1:03 PM on September 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by doctornemo at 1:03 PM on September 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Bulstrode references a lot of well-known, published sources that would be familiar to historians of the trans-Atlantic slave trade (I remember a couple of them from my undergrad degree in history 10 years ago). If she'd misrepresented or misinterpreted those sources, the reviewers probably would have pointed out the problem.
But other sources she relies on are harder to verify. Some are manuscripts and record that aren't available online. It's not reasonable for a reviewer to travel to all the archives in person to double check (in some cases, the reviewer might not even be able to read some of the sources--most of Bulstrode's sources are in English, but it looks like there's some Dutch and Danish in the mix too).
Jelf's rebuttal has an appendix with excerpts from a couple of Bulstrode's primary sources, but when I tried to look a few of them up I wasn't able to find copies of the texts anywhere else. For example:
What if he's misrepresenting the documents? I can't just go visit the archives on a whim, so I have to take someone's word for it (/s)
For the record, I do trust that Jelf is honest in his transcriptions of those documents. I just want to point out that, like Bulstrode's reviewers, we're trusting a historian to represent a source accurately instead of looking at the original ourselves.
In general, academia doesn't support replication efforts (there's a replication crisis in the hard sciences, too, not just in history). If you want to get research funding, and if you want to get your work published, you have to be doing something new instead of just verifying someone else's work.
If we don't start funding, respecting, and rewarding replication studies, people won't do them.
There's only so much that peer review can do. They can make sure that an article acknowledges and engages with relevant work in their discipline. They can check for oversights in the author's logic. But it's not reasonable for anyone to replicate the entire research process from scratch for free (if someone wants to send me on an all-expenses-paid trip to England, Denmark, and the Netherlands to visit the archives, I'd be happy to take them up on it, though)
posted by threecolorable at 8:07 PM on September 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
But other sources she relies on are harder to verify. Some are manuscripts and record that aren't available online. It's not reasonable for a reviewer to travel to all the archives in person to double check (in some cases, the reviewer might not even be able to read some of the sources--most of Bulstrode's sources are in English, but it looks like there's some Dutch and Danish in the mix too).
Jelf's rebuttal has an appendix with excerpts from a couple of Bulstrode's primary sources, but when I tried to look a few of them up I wasn't able to find copies of the texts anywhere else. For example:
- 1160 M/C/J/1, Petition by John Reeder to Speaker of Jamaica, 1783: just a catalog entry on the archive website
- King’s MS 214, A Memoir Relative to the Island of Jamaica, 1782, pp. 78-9: I was able to find a scan of one page of this document on the British Library's website, but it's not the page Jelf quotes from.
What if he's misrepresenting the documents? I can't just go visit the archives on a whim, so I have to take someone's word for it (/s)
For the record, I do trust that Jelf is honest in his transcriptions of those documents. I just want to point out that, like Bulstrode's reviewers, we're trusting a historian to represent a source accurately instead of looking at the original ourselves.
In general, academia doesn't support replication efforts (there's a replication crisis in the hard sciences, too, not just in history). If you want to get research funding, and if you want to get your work published, you have to be doing something new instead of just verifying someone else's work.
If we don't start funding, respecting, and rewarding replication studies, people won't do them.
There's only so much that peer review can do. They can make sure that an article acknowledges and engages with relevant work in their discipline. They can check for oversights in the author's logic. But it's not reasonable for anyone to replicate the entire research process from scratch for free (if someone wants to send me on an all-expenses-paid trip to England, Denmark, and the Netherlands to visit the archives, I'd be happy to take them up on it, though)
posted by threecolorable at 8:07 PM on September 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
That reminds me of how Polynesian navigation techniques were wiped out almost everywhere because Christian missionaries decided that the classes in which the techniques were passed on were demonic pagan religious ceremonies and the people who were passing them on were witch doctors.
In the interest of pedantry (and not pleasing aggrieved white guys), I recommend changing "almost everywhere" to "in many places" as I'm pretty sure the Hawaiians lost their navigation techniques before the arrival of the Europeans.1
1. I recently met some of the crew of the Hokule'a voyaging canoe and was told this by one of them. And, despite faltering memory, I'm pretty sure the navigator (taught by Mau Piailug) confirmed the claim.
posted by house-goblin at 8:36 PM on September 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
In the interest of pedantry (and not pleasing aggrieved white guys), I recommend changing "almost everywhere" to "in many places" as I'm pretty sure the Hawaiians lost their navigation techniques before the arrival of the Europeans.1
1. I recently met some of the crew of the Hokule'a voyaging canoe and was told this by one of them. And, despite faltering memory, I'm pretty sure the navigator (taught by Mau Piailug) confirmed the claim.
posted by house-goblin at 8:36 PM on September 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
Bulstrode seems like the "Cover blurb" style of quoting. Stephen King says "This is the most horrifying... book I have ever read!"
posted by 445supermag at 9:07 AM on September 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by 445supermag at 9:07 AM on September 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
...people simply cannot understand how much checking is necessary to check even the briefest of articles, much less entire books. And the question rises, of: who is going to pay for that? And who is going to pay for all the subscriptions you would need to check all of that?
Whoever is publishing the journal in question. If you honestly cannot, then perhaps it's best to close up shop until you can. Or risk losing the respect of would-be readers.
It seems Bulstrode has only been publishing since 2016. They may seem like part of the institution to someone who hasn't even graduated yet,but to me, they're still very new to the field.
And highly praised.
Jelf's piece appears to be his first foray into academic publishing. (It would be interesting to know how much time he spent in checking Bulstrode's piece, nevermind writing it up.)
I thought Bulstrode's twitter reply a bit odd. I will be interested to see if she refutes his refutation at greater length.
posted by BWA at 10:25 AM on September 15, 2023
Whoever is publishing the journal in question. If you honestly cannot, then perhaps it's best to close up shop until you can. Or risk losing the respect of would-be readers.
It seems Bulstrode has only been publishing since 2016. They may seem like part of the institution to someone who hasn't even graduated yet,but to me, they're still very new to the field.
And highly praised.
Jelf's piece appears to be his first foray into academic publishing. (It would be interesting to know how much time he spent in checking Bulstrode's piece, nevermind writing it up.)
I thought Bulstrode's twitter reply a bit odd. I will be interested to see if she refutes his refutation at greater length.
posted by BWA at 10:25 AM on September 15, 2023
Whoever is publishing the journal in question. If you honestly cannot, then perhaps it's best to close up shop until you can. Or risk losing the respect of would-be readers.
Well, there go all the history journals.
posted by Galvanic at 10:48 AM on September 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
Well, there go all the history journals.
posted by Galvanic at 10:48 AM on September 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
> I recommend changing "almost everywhere" to "in many places" as I'm pretty sure the Hawaiians lost their navigation techniques before the arrival of the Europeans.
Yeah, it's pretty complicated. There is another island where it wasn't lost, though: Taumako. They almost lost it a few years ago, but they managed to bridge the generation from their last navigator by aggregating what his various students knew. Now they're trying to start a school. See https://www.vaka.org/
My connection with all this is that I put together a computer lab for their elementary school on the island a couple years ago.
posted by madhadron at 11:20 AM on September 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
Yeah, it's pretty complicated. There is another island where it wasn't lost, though: Taumako. They almost lost it a few years ago, but they managed to bridge the generation from their last navigator by aggregating what his various students knew. Now they're trying to start a school. See https://www.vaka.org/
My connection with all this is that I put together a computer lab for their elementary school on the island a couple years ago.
posted by madhadron at 11:20 AM on September 15, 2023 [3 favorites]
But... it pretty clearly does not imply any such thing.I'm a layman, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to me to use the words like "replication" in this context to describe checking a paper to make sure its citations say what the paper claims they say, despite the fact that that's not the exact way such words are typically used regarding scientific papers.It's terribly unreasonable to use words like "replication" because it implies that there's all sorts of other scientific disciplinary apparatus done in history as it is in the sciences.
There was a lot of rushing to point out that history isn't science in this thread, but is anyone seriously under this impression? It's OK that words can have different meanings in different contexts.
posted by Flunkie at 4:00 PM on September 16, 2023
Yeah, it's pretty complicated. There is another island where it wasn't lost, though: Taumako. They almost lost it a few years ago, but they managed to bridge the generation from their last navigator by aggregating what his various students knew.
Hey, though we're navigating our way further off course from the main topic, that's awesome. Thanks for sharing. Very glad to learn that at least two groups of Polynesians have managed to replicate their historical practices.
posted by house-goblin at 5:55 PM on September 17, 2023
Hey, though we're navigating our way further off course from the main topic, that's awesome. Thanks for sharing. Very glad to learn that at least two groups of Polynesians have managed to replicate their historical practices.
posted by house-goblin at 5:55 PM on September 17, 2023
But... it pretty clearly does not imply any such thing.
Sure it does. It explicitly invokes science as the model that history is being compared to, and thus "replication" is not being used in a different way than it is in scientific endeavor, it's being used to invoke that entire apparatus. Howes concedes that history doesn't behave like science but he sees that as a problem, not a feature.
posted by Galvanic at 8:09 AM on September 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Sure it does. It explicitly invokes science as the model that history is being compared to, and thus "replication" is not being used in a different way than it is in scientific endeavor, it's being used to invoke that entire apparatus. Howes concedes that history doesn't behave like science but he sees that as a problem, not a feature.
posted by Galvanic at 8:09 AM on September 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Mod note: A few deleted. Please take it to MeMail if you'd like to comment at each other further, other people are reading these threads too, so let's leave some space for them.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 3:41 PM on September 21, 2023
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 3:41 PM on September 21, 2023
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