Some of you may have seen that the Encyclopaedia Britannica has now responded to the Nature piece comparing it to Wikipedia three months ago. In that piece Nature hyped a study they conducted that showed Wikipedia to have only a few more errors than Britannica. Britannica, in the methodical way one would expect of it, has spent all this time breaking down the study, and has deemed it "fatally flawed." (See Britannica's report here.) The Register, hardly an enemy of the Free Culture Movement, has a scathing article on the Nature study, and Britannica's former editor in chief has a compelling essay in today's TCS Daily pointing out how quick Wikipedia supporters were to embrace -- and inflate -- the Nature study without actually examining it in a manner befitting, well, encyclopedia scholars. I haven't the foggiest idea why a respected publication like Nature chose to perform such a biased and irresponsible study, but it does seem that in today's media world we can't take anything at face value. I find that dismaying as a former member of the Fourth Estate. But I still trust the mainstream media more than I do Wikipedia.

posted by Patrick Ross @ 12:10 PM | Free Culture Movement

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