Post #2862246
2025-10-13 18:39 UTC
@DerPumu@mstdn.games @richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
To uncritically cite a faulty source directly or by proxy is bovine scholarship. Give it less attention.
What's needed are scholars who critically cite faulty sources to corral them.
(The opening chapters of Gilbert's 'On the Lodestone' offer an unrelenting rundown of centuries of careless pseudo scholarship on magnets, whose authors comprise a kind pre-enlightenment artificial intelligence endlessly repeating and embroidering their own output.)
Replies (1)
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@DerPumu@mstdn.games 2025-10-13 19:03
@oof@mastodon.sdf.org @richpuchalsky@mastodon.social how do you determine that they are faulty? You check their sources. You check the sources of those. It all looks legit. Do you go for a fourth layer of sources? A fifth? When do you stop? When the original slop article is buried 5 layers or more in, it becomes impossible to fact check.