Encyclopedia Britannica Criticizes Nature Study

Encyclopedia Britannica issued a harsh critique of a report released in December by the journal Nature about the reliability of information on Wikipedia. In its report, Nature concluded that the incidence of errors was about the same in Wikipedia as in Encyclopedia Britannica. The report compared articles on 50 topics and uncovered four serious errors each in Wikipedia and in the Encyclopedia Britannica, though Wikipedia contained more factual errors (162 versus 123). A response from the encyclopedia challenges Nature’s results, citing what it called “a pattern of sloppiness, indifference to basic scholarly standards, and flagrant errors so numerous they completely invalidated the results.”

The encyclopedia takes issue with more than 50 specifics of the Nature report and asks that the journal retract the report. Editors at Nature defended the report, saying, “We reject those accusations and are confident our comparisons are fair.”

BBC, 24 March 2006