The Encyclopedia Britannica shreds the Nature article claiming Wikipedia is as accurate they are.
Refuting the recent study on encyclopedic accuracy by the journal Nature.
Some highlights
Almost everything about the journal’s investigation, from the criteria for identifying inaccuracies to the discrepancy between the article text and its headline, was wrong and misleading.
Britannica was far more accurate than Wikipedia according to the figures; the journal simply misrepresented its own results.
Contrary to the usual practice of making all data freely available in order to facilitate a study’s replication by others, Nature declined our repeated requests to make the full reports available.
One of the reviewer’s comments referred to text that does not appear in any Britannica publication.
The “article” on “aldol reaction” that the journal sent its reviewer consisted of passages taken selectively from two different Encyclopædia Britannica articles and joined together with text evidently written by Nature’s editors.
Britannica then documents in great detail what they said.
