Thread by @20committee

The remarkable implosion of the new book by @naomirwolf, live on air, is a cautionary tale for anyone who jumps into the archives without understanding their subject. Kudos to @DrMatthewSweet for his role in standing up for #facts.

Minor thread follows.

theguardian.com/books/2019/may…

No gloating is in order here, Wolf did what many have done: reading into records what they want to see there, without understanding terminology and context. This is a constant threat to historical scholarship. Without even getting into issues of languages and translations. /2

Most of my primary research has been in German and various Slavic languages, so I'm especially sensitive to understanding what often arcane, outmoded bureaucratic terminology actually means. This is a minefield, one which Wolf walked right into, with consequences we know. /3

I'm not discussing writers who intentionally misread documents or even invent them out of whole cloth to reach historical conclusions more to their ideological liking.

Yes, it happens. Put "Michael Bellesiles" into the Google if you don't believe me. /4

There's another relevant point here. This piece by @li88yinc gets it mostly right, noting that Wolf saw in the archives what she what she very much wanted to see. Her ideological bias did her in. That's pretty obviously true, but ... /5

thepostmillennial.com/naomi-wolf-was…

Per Emmons: "Where were the editors and fact checkers? Writers have much of the burden to get everything right, and when they’ve got a thesis, and find research to back it up, they are free to run with it without anyone stepping up and asking questions."

Ok, reality next. /6

There is no publishing house on earth with enough editors and fact checkers to delve deeply into archives to see if an author is right. That simply does not happen. Scholars are assumed to be acting like bona fide scholars, not partisan hacks with an ideological agenda. /7

The people who catch archival flubs are historians, not publishing houses, nearly all the time. Yes, this does happen. The difference here is Wolf got caught early and may now have time to correct her book. Though the centrality of her debunked claim seems central to her work. /8

That said, Oxford needs to be asked some questions immediately, since Wolf's book is based on her recent PhD dissertation. Which now clearly needs to be reexamined to check for archival accuracy.

The university, not the publishing house, is the one really on the hook here.

/9X