Barbara Eberhard's Blog - Posts Tagged "fact-checking"
Finding Errors / Making Errors
As I've shared before, I'm working on a biography of my father.
In the wake of his death in 2020, I wrote an obituary using some materials he'd left behind, including his "autobiography", Extraordinary Events in My Life. That obituary became the first draft of a Wikipedia article I finally got through the Wiki-wickets in 2021.
But it also got "picked up" by others writing obituaries about Dad or articles about his passing.
As I'm writing his biography, I've copied or bookmarked all those articles, and I've found quiet a few errors in what they added to what I had written.
One says Dad helped create the National Conference of Building Codes and Standards (NCSBCS) in the 1980s. Dad had actually done it in the late 1960s, when he was at the National Bureau of Standards / Institute for Applied Technology. In the 1980s, Dad was back in DC (after a stint in Buffalo), but no longer at NBS. From other research I've done, NCSBCS came into being in 1967. It wasn't that hard to figure that out, and it's a little annoying to me that the reporter who wrote about Dad having been instrumental in bringing NCSBCS together didn't do at least a little background check to make sure the dates were correct.
Likewise, today I read another article about Dad that talked about the first faculty at the School of Architecture & Environmental Design at the State University of New York at Buffalo meeting at our house at 30 Voorhees Avenue in Buffalo. A quick Google search reveals that there is, in fact, no 30 Voorhees Avenue. And having searched my memory for the actual address (I was 6 when we moved there), I know it was 35 Voorhees Avenue, which I confirmed with a street view from Google Earth.
Now, I'm not perfect. And I'm sure I'm also making errors in my writing of Dad's biography. I only hope that the folks I send the draft to do a better job of fact-checking me than the fact checkers at either of the above publications.
In the wake of his death in 2020, I wrote an obituary using some materials he'd left behind, including his "autobiography", Extraordinary Events in My Life. That obituary became the first draft of a Wikipedia article I finally got through the Wiki-wickets in 2021.
But it also got "picked up" by others writing obituaries about Dad or articles about his passing.
As I'm writing his biography, I've copied or bookmarked all those articles, and I've found quiet a few errors in what they added to what I had written.
One says Dad helped create the National Conference of Building Codes and Standards (NCSBCS) in the 1980s. Dad had actually done it in the late 1960s, when he was at the National Bureau of Standards / Institute for Applied Technology. In the 1980s, Dad was back in DC (after a stint in Buffalo), but no longer at NBS. From other research I've done, NCSBCS came into being in 1967. It wasn't that hard to figure that out, and it's a little annoying to me that the reporter who wrote about Dad having been instrumental in bringing NCSBCS together didn't do at least a little background check to make sure the dates were correct.
Likewise, today I read another article about Dad that talked about the first faculty at the School of Architecture & Environmental Design at the State University of New York at Buffalo meeting at our house at 30 Voorhees Avenue in Buffalo. A quick Google search reveals that there is, in fact, no 30 Voorhees Avenue. And having searched my memory for the actual address (I was 6 when we moved there), I know it was 35 Voorhees Avenue, which I confirmed with a street view from Google Earth.
Now, I'm not perfect. And I'm sure I'm also making errors in my writing of Dad's biography. I only hope that the folks I send the draft to do a better job of fact-checking me than the fact checkers at either of the above publications.
