Britannica lashes out at Wikipedia comparison study

The Encyclopaedia Britannica has lashed out at a study by Nature that claims Wikipedia "comes close " to Britannica's accuracy in covering scientific topics. The publication compared 50 entries in the two online versions of the publications and tallied 123 inaccuracies in Britannica and 162 in Wikipedia.

Nature used a panel of researchers who received texts from the publications without knowing the source and asked them to hunt for errors and omissions.

Where Britannica is compiled by a team of paid researchers, Wikipedia relies on the public to enter information and hunt for inaccuracies. Nature's study was published shortly after several reports emerged about Wikipedia inaccuracies, which prompted the service to bolster its editing and reviewing guidelines.

Claiming that the Nature study was "fatally flawed", Britannica has published a 20-page rebuttal in which it attempts to discredit the study ( PDF download ).

"The entire undertaking – from the study's methodology to the misleading way Nature "spun" the story- was misconceived," the document alleges. "The facts call for a complete retraction of the study and the article in which it was reported."

The Britannica paper highlighted several inconsitancies. Reviewers for instance alleged that Britannica omitted information because they were presented with excerpts rather than the full entry. In another case, Nature rearranged and re-edited Britannica articles. A third complaint pointed out that Nature used text from the more basic student edition of the Encyclopedia.

Nature responded that it has no intention to retract the study. "We feel this was a reasonable characterisation," the scientific publication claimed ( PDF download ).

It admitted that some of Britannica's criticism was valid, but replied that both Britannica and Wikipedia were treated in the same way and the any procedural inaccuracies would have equally affected both publications ( click here for initial story).

"Because the reviewers were blind to the source of the material, they were evaluating […] there is absolutely no reason to think that any errors they made would have systematically altered the results of our inquiry."

The excepts for instance were created to provide reviewers with articles of comparable lengths, and such excerpts were created of both articles, Nature claimed.

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