correction "Murphy's Law" 1943, not

Thu Oct 15 16:32:46 UTC 2009

Fred's points are likewise well-taken. However, I would like some clarification as to what "infrequently" means
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-----Original Message-----
From: "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
Date:         Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:30:12
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject:      Re: [ADS-L] *correction* "Murphy's Law" 1943, not

Ron's points are well-taken.  It is true that the particular "Murphy's Law" problem was something that would have come up if the letter in question was found with traditional research using printed materials.  But, speaking as someone who uses Google Books a lot for historical-lexicographical research and whose wife is a library researcher for the OED who is often asked to verify citations from Google Books, I would say that GB does have significant problems that are not easily verified from title pages online.  GB is fully capable of attaching title pages and texts that don't belong together, and does that not infrequently.

On balance, GB is more of a boon than a curse.  If the etymology of "whole nine yards" or "Murphy's Law" is ever solved, it will almost certainly be because Google Books or Newspaperarchive or some other large database happens to add the right book or newspaper or journal to its coverage.  My long-run fear, though, is that the allure and convenience of these databases is so great, and the economics of the alternative methods of research (research libraries of print materials) so problematic, that familiarity with print-based historical research will become a lost art and eventually few people will even be aware that there is a universe of print publications of which online versions are imperfect reproductions.

Fred Shapiro

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of ronbutters at aol.com [ronbutters at aol.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 15, 2009 9:37 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: *correction* "Murphy's Law" 1943, not

You all deserve high praise for this splendid work. I'm delighted to see ADSL used in this way.

Google books is usually not that difficult to verify. The reported dates of publication may be wrong (as Geoff Nunberg noted in reference to the frequent "1899" mistake. But the books that have pdf access also invariably have title pages with publication dates. Rather than patronizingly  berating the rich online resources as Nunberg did, I think most of us would agree that these online sources have revolutionized scholarship in historical lexcographical research. In fact, the problem with date verification in this case had nothing to do with any error in Google Books' dating, right? That is, the same problem would have arisen had the source been discovered in the time-consuming old-fashioned way--by actually reading a book.

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-----Original Message-----
From: "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
Date:         Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:06:10
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject:      Re: [ADS-L] *correction* "Murphy's Law" 1943, not

Thanks to Stephen for tracking this down.

The implications of the way this story turned out are quite fascinating.  First of all, it is sobering to realize that the OED, although more wedded to documented and dated citations than almost any other human institution, does often print citations from letters or diaries or journals that were published much later, essentially assuming that the source materials were reprinted verbatim.  As a result, some percentage of those citations must be based on a wrong assumption of dating.  Secondly, it is very sobering to realize that in the future everyone may base historical research on Google Books, which often messes up dating and editions, without doing anything close to the kind of checking that Stephen did.  Fifty years from now how many people will have the critical instincts to question what they get from online databases?  Thirdly, the way this story turned out is quite a tribute to the experience and instincts of a historical lexicographer such as Jon Lighter.  Jon immed!
 iately sensed that the 1943 citation was "too good to be true," and his instincts were completely vindicated.  In the quotation realm, I often dismiss an attribution to Mark Twain without giving it a second thought, because my experience tells me that a certain kind of attribution of a certain kind of quotation to a certain kind of author is almost always bogus.  Datings from Google Books or Newspaperarchive of a term much earlier than any other known evidence should always be double-checked, such as by looking at the date printed as part of the image of the newspaper page.

Fred Shapiro

________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Stephen Goranson [goranson at DUKE.EDU]
Sent: Thursday, October 15, 2009 5:22 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: *correction* "Murphy's Law" 1943, not

As some recall, I posted from Google Books a published letter dated 1943
containing "Murphy's Law." Long story short, and as Jonathan Lighter, Historical
Dictionary of American Slang editor, and others, suspected, the author added
that when transcribing his letter years later, he told me.

Thanks to Jon, Fred, Bill, Dave, Joel, Ben, Jesse, and to the author
Bill Sabel and his son Doug, for a variety of helps in getting this cleared up.

For those still interested, that leaves the trail of usage of the collocation
"Murphy's Law" spoken by Caltech theoretical physicist, mathematician, and
military consultant Howard Percy "Bob" Robertson, in an interview with
psychologist Anne Roe some time from January 27, 1949 (his 46th birthday, "age
46" recorded at the interview) and probably before March 16, 1949 (based on a
Dec. 16, 1948 letter offering an interview within 3 months). The evidence is in
Anne Roe's publications, her papers at the American Philosophical Society
archive in Philadelphia, and his papers in the Caltech archive.

Who will antedate 1949?

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson

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