True Facts or False Facts—Which Are More Authentic? by T. Mills Kelly
“When a reasonable source appears through such a search, they often use that source with almost no critical analysis of the quality of that source.“
Some secondary sources students use are so watered down, that it’s debatable whether or not it’s worth using anymore. For example, a student might be researching Phillis Wheatley, a slave that was the first African American poet published. If a student was in desperate need of a secondary source fast, they would google her name and use the most credible source on the first page of Google. One result on the first page is from the Smithsonian, a very recognizable museum, so their information must be true. But further inspection shows that it’s a Smithsonian blog post, which can still be accurate, but also lists several other secondary sources as citations. It’s just a mix of other secondary sources on the same person, essentially, all information that’s been said before. There’s no new thought, information, or primary sources. Students really need to think critically about whether or not a source is credible enough to use for research, or if it’s a good stepping stone to other sources.
In this age of PhotoShop and digital image manipulation, many students are at least a little skeptical about some images
How will the use of A.I affect the field of history, whether it’s through A.I text or photo imagery?
Artificial intelligence is on the rise and there seems to be very little to stop it. Already there’s A.I programs that can mimic people’s voices, faces, and ones to create text and images. Some schools have recognized the use of A.I in school work by students and have taken measures to prevent students from turning in A.I work as their own. But to be honest, how does one create a system that can detect whether or not words were written by a human or an A.I? If a system can’t detect a computer’s writing, who’s to say a student won’t use it to write a twenty-page paper and have it highly praised by their professors? Or from it reaching other historians and scholars? I think T. Mills Kelly has material for another experiment.
“In fact, ethical concerns were a part of our discussions in class almost every session once work on the hoax began…In the end, the distinction that made it possible for several students to feel more comfortable with the hoax was thinking of it as humor or satire rather than “serious history.””
I have never really heard about the ethics of writing, creating, and doing history. Obviously, plagiarism is part of it, it’s not really ethical to steal someone else’s work and publish it as your own, but in terms of T. Mills Kelly’s experiment, I wish he had discussed more on the ethics part and some of the concerns his students had. He discussed certain topics that he made off limits, ones that could be harmful or dangerous if false information about them spread about, but besides certain topics, how else can writing about false history be an ethical concern and are there any ethical concerns about writing about history that is true?
