I wanted to connect two themes we’ve talked about recently into one post – the question of accuracy in historical accounts, and the question of whether open access to information (such as on Wikipedia) can work, in the sense that it portrays accurate information. I remember my husband telling me a story from his time in the Air Force during Desert Storm, back around 1990. He worked in intel, and after a certain battle he was part of a group that interviewed several people who had been involved in the battle, who were all within the same area. The purpose of this was to have an accurate depiction of what actually happened during the battle. The interviews took place within about 48 hours after the battle had ended, so there wasn’t a problem with faded memories. There were two accounts that especially stood out. The first man answered the questions in a calm way, saying it had been a clear, sunny day, and there wasn’t any smoke from artillery. As a matter of fact, according to him there wasn’t much resistance at all. The U.S. had done a little firing and the other side had run away. The second man, who was interviewed in a separate room, was more animated. He said all heck had broken loose (not his exact words), and there was mass chaos, with smoke so thick you couldn’t see next to you. People were getting sick from the toxic fumes. A third man’s account fell somewhere in between these two. This is the kind of situation that people see all the time – we each have our own “filter” on our experiences, our own way of processing the information in our minds. This must drive historians nuts! What really did happen in that battle? Do we ever really know the truth about historical events?

If there was a Wikipedia page written on this battle, what would it look like? Maybe Interviewee #1 would write his version, then interviewee #2 would read it and say, wait, that’s not at all what happened, and he could edit the page to give his version. This could go on and on with people continuing to change the story. Anybody researching the battle could get a different version on a different day. Suppose one researcher used one version and another researcher used another version. Who would be right? How could they agree? And what if a politician with a political agenda wanted to justify the battle, and added information on chemical weapons being used during the battle. Who is to say whether or not this was true? Various versions of this battle would be disseminated through research. Maybe I’m getting a little facetious, but it illustrated the point of yet another very important theme of our class – we have an obligation to weigh and measure information!