The power of simple curiosity

"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." - Archilochus

WHAT happens when an entire non-fiction book is built on a premise that the author got completely wrong? Author Naomi Wolf found out the painful way.

She was subjected to a "live" correction while on radio to promote her non-fiction book Outrages that examined the criminalisation of gay men during the Victorian times. On BBC Radio, she told host Matthew Sweet that she had found "several dozen executions" of men accused of having sex with other men.

"I don't think you're right about this," Mr Sweet pointed out.

He was right. Ms Wolf had misinterpreted the phrase "death recorded". Quite the opposite from a literal reading of the legal term, "death recorded" meant that the person on trial had been spared from execution by a judge.

The host explained that the legal category was created in 1823 so that judges could abstain from pronouncing a sentence of death on any capital convict whom they found to be worthy of a pardon.

Ms Wolf said she would correct portions in her book; her publisher last month maintained that her thesis holds, but has now said it will postpone publication of a US edition and recalled all copies already in circulation at retail.

When vaunted experts get things so wrong, we should ask why.

In this case, it seems that book publishers had counted on the author's strength in research and fact-checking. It's time to ask publishers to hire professional fact-checkers at their expense, rather than passing it on as a cost to authors, wrote author Anand Giridharadas.

He came to that conclusion in criticising a separate book by another well-known writer, Jared Diamond, over what Mr Giridharadas deemed as factual errors in the book, Upheaval.

"The time has come for those of us who work in book-length nonfiction to insist that professional fact-checking become as inalienable from publishing as publicity, marketing and jacket design," he wrote in The New York Times. "In the age of tweets, it cannot be the fate of the book to become ever more tweetlike - maybe factual, maybe whatever."

Against this backdrop, it is informed public debate that allowed some errors to float to the surface.

In the case of Ms Wolf, this major misinterpretation was uncovered in part because the radio journalist was a subject-matter expert. The BBC host had written in 2001 a book on the social history of the Victorian era. The other part of the equation is having the correction done so publicly.

Economist Tim Harford recently examined the issue of debate and collaboration among different types of technical experts, noting that there is a growing need for diversity in a world of specialists to solve complex problems, be they in scientific discovery or in public governance.

"The classicists need to work with the scientists, but the physicists also need to work with the biologists, the economists must work with the psychologists, and everyone has to work with the statisticians."

He cited 1960 lectures by CP Snow, a novelist and English physical chemist, which suggested that, in Mr Harford's words, "grave mistakes can result not only from a vacuum of technical knowledge in politics, but from a monopoly - the single expert, unchallenged."

The example used by Mr Snow was the Allied forces' bombing of dense urban areas in Germany during World War II - a failed strategy that also hurt civilians. It was a military call based on a flawed statistical study by Winston Churchill's scientific adviser. The problem was, no one had the skill and the power to rebut it.

Still, leaving so-dubbed experts to sort one another out poses its own set of risks. Take Mr Giridharadas's review of the book Upheaval, which suggested multiple errors, one of which involves Singapore. Mr Giridharadas said the book wrongly stated that the prime minister now is Lee Kuan Yew.

But a check on my own copy of the book suggested that the discussion should be more nuanced - it may have been an issue with language and grammar editing, rather than strict factual inaccuracy.

The exact sentence on Chapter 8 reads: "For an Asian perspective on Japan's view of World War Two, here is an assessment by Lee Kuan Yew, a keen observer of people who as prime minister of Singapore for several decades became familiar with Japan, China, and Korea and their leaders." Lesson here: tenses matter.

I was not alone. A few NYT readers who commented on the book review went through the same rigour of hunting the text down on page 314, to come to the same conclusion.

To be sure, it was Mr Giridharadas's review of the book that prompted me to cross-reference that against other reviews - including one from Bill Gates - and to finally fact-check the fact checking. The episode only served to reinforce my wariness of experts loftily claimed on either side.

But it also means that having technical experts sort out collaboration and their egos alone would not build an informed society.

It is tedious for an everyday reader to fact-check a book, yet experts - and the businesses that sell their expertise - with the fame and fortune to determine the facts, don't seem to see it as their responsibility to safekeep credibility. The mantra of "trust me until you don't" seems outdated in this knowledge economy. (Or for a local flavour: "You thought, I think, who confirm?)

The problem with know-it-alls is that they tend to stay in their exclusive lanes, keep to their technical jargon, and play with a narrow margin of error. What's missing then in all this discussion on experts and diversity is the humility that stirs open dialogue, learning, and correction. Can the inquisitive question monopolies of power and get away with it?

I suppose then, it's better for all to boldly say we do not know, so that we would. For the ordinary person with less time and money on their hands, to probe experts and reclaim this curiosity can be a hard slog. But the patient pursuit of knowledge on our own terms today, is also to be free.