correction "Murphy's Law" 1943, not

Thu Oct 15 21:36:59 UTC 2009

I just had a problem with Google Groups (Usenet) search yesterday. I got 86
hits for "w00t!" Then I narrowed the date range of the search and got 600+
hits. I did another search on the term and got 46 hits. Then I did the
search again, asking for the results to be displayed chronologically and I
got 23 hits. I found a cite from 1995, but I clicked away and when I
searched for it again, I could find nothing earlier than 2000.

I'm convinced Google does some massaging of the data to display what they
think you are looking for, rather than what you are asking for. As such, I
do not think Google search results are conclusive of anything. They may hint
at reality, but they don't necessarily represent it.

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Jonathan Lighter
Sent: Thursday, October 15, 2009 10:45 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: *correction* "Murphy's Law" 1943, not

Another problem with GB:  sometimes the cite's there and sometimes it isn't.
About fifteen minutes ago I saw in pdf an example of "zorch" in Life
magazine from 1953.  Fourteen minutes later it was unrecoverable.

I've already noted the problem of known occurrences not showing up at all,
those these are *presumably* only in non-full-view sources.

JL

On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 1:03 PM, Dave Wilton <dave at wilton.net> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Dave Wilton <dave at WILTON.NET>
> Subject:      Re: *correction* "Murphy's Law" 1943, not
>
>
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---
>
> This is a problem that medievalists have faced since, well, forever.
> Reliance on print versions of medieval works without checking the
> manuscript
> itself or a good facsimile of the MS is a recipe for disaster. Editorial
> intervention will inevitably change the work. Even well-edited print
> versions will omit information or be otherwise misleading. In some
> important
> respects, distribution of information in the age of the internet resembles
> that of the pre-Gutenberg world.
>
> (It never occurred to me that someone might cite Google Books or
> Newspaperarchive without looking at the page images.)
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
> Of
> Shapiro, Fred
> Sent: Thursday, October 15, 2009 8:30 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: *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.
>
> Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
>
> -----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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