Critical boxing history and hero-worship

Really good and thoughtful response. What the excellent thread deserved early on. I'm going to read on but doubt anyone will have answered the question as well. Hats off Sal. And you @cross_trainer . Good stuff.

 

Again, historiography is a different thing from a methodology of researching printed media sources, the latter is more general/abstract, but at the same time applicable for any research of books/newspapers/etc, no matter what epoch or country or culture you are going to research. Unless we are talking about the results of source study, then these two branches of historical science do intersect somewhat.

 

Taking my most recent field of study, as an example - figuring out the 1820's boxing history. There's no existing historiography dedicated to this particular period of time. You can gather all the sources you can find, Boxiana (vol. 3 by Pierce Egan, vol. 4 by Jon Bee, New Series two volumes by Egan), Pugilistica vol. 2, a number of assorted newspaper clippings, and just quote this or that source.

You probably don't know much about the authors of these write-ups for the newspapers, who are these people, how qualified they were, did they have bias, how credible their write-ups are, how to look for proof of their credibility, using what methods, do you even need to do this?

Which newspapers are better to use than the others (because they always or mostly provided unique content), did their content vary over time, so they were preferred source one year, and just an alt the other year? How to find information that can help you solve this problem?

What to do with other newspapers, who could provide their own content or they could copy it from another source, how do you figure which one was the primary source of information, what to do if they have similarities and differences in the text, how to treat these simliarities and differences as a historian/scientist? Which newspapers to add your your bibliography/list of references, and which to ignore.

Basically, before actually researching this boxing epoch, you need to spend plenty of time researching the sources that can be used, and then you have to use the sources you have found properly. That's one of the problems I have with Adam Pollack's books, for example, yes, finding a bunch of primary sources is very good, but do you really know if you have collected/used the right newspapers, the ones that are most qualified to tell the story? I don't think his choice of the National Police Gazette for a lot of stuff was the right choice, but you wouldn't understand it if you haven't been looking for contemporary opinions about that newspaper, and if haven't compared their contents with what other sources wrote on the same subject, how they pointed out the errors and the shortcomings of the NPG. Ie. you don't have works of historiography dedicated to this topic and period of time, you are prone to using the wrong sources or using the sources incorrectly in general.

 

Let's say, even if it does intersect with other historical methods/branches, I think it deserves to be a separate course even for the fact how often it's ignored in many historical write-ups I've seen, which just compile what they found on the subject and leaving it to the reader to pick the version they believe the most. The author, if he wanted to be scientific, hasn't done his job if he chose such approach. Not every primary source is the same, sometimes I'd even pick a secondary source over a primary one, because the author of the secondary source understood what he was doing, knew the pros and cons of the primary sources and corrected their shortcomings one way or another.

 

You'll find that most historians are quite biased. The versions of things like the so called "Holodomor" are taught in our countries are very different, for example. I think there's less of a difference in bias in boxing vs normal history than you might realize.

 

Almost everyone who writes about boxing has an axe to grind. Otherwise, they wouldn't be motivated to write at all.

 

No offense, but I think you have a very idealized vision of the academic world. As a professor put it, "seniority beats reason in nearly all cases". This is true even in the hard sciences, it's hard to fathom the amount it affects the inferior trades. A lot of what you read online through news, Wikipedia and in textbooks is never published in a peer reviewed journal, and of course, there are openly and proudly revisionist movements which host peer reviewed journals. You will see opposite claims about the exact same historical events published multiple times a year, and the supports of each side will hold their article up and criticize the other. Obviously the average poster isn't putting in anywhere near the same level of research as a professional historian, but many of them use similar methods for that research. This forum is them publishing their claims to their peers and fellow historians.

*Edit, I'm not meaning to argue against you seriously. You're one of my favorite posters, so I should say that I really do hope you take no offense, and I meant nothing as an insult.

 

Confirmation bias can often be a pitfall - and unconsciously so (though sometimes deliberate). so a preemptive conscious effort has to be made to avoid and eliminate same.

Such bias has often found its way even into the stringent, rigorous and empiric world of science - and sometimes the “proofs” can
appear impressive in method and legit enough on the surface.

However, on closer examination, they’re found to have only called in the data and analyses to suit the premed conclusion.