Phil,
I hear you and completely agree with you about the nature of claims. My only concern is these private clubs may have private evidence that they, for one reason or another, choose not to share. I honestly have no idea why anyone would want to keep a private history, but you know better than I do that some choose to operate that way. I'm just doing things as best as I think I can as a non-expert in the area.
Bret,
If you're frustrated by this thread, I'm sorry. This is not my intention, and these threads do spiral a bit. I do understand that discussions of any point of controversy can be unnecessary and unpleasant, especially when that is instigated by someone else's apparent self-promotion. I can see that line in this thread, and I regret if that is the way this has gone. I'll try to discuss some of my reasoning in good-faith here, and if that is unwelcome or seen as patronizing, I'm sorry about that too.
The reason why I'm fairly obsessed with citations and verifiability basically goes back to my time studying philosophy of science. While it is entirely practical that we could have a single Raynor list that most people agree is correct, but when it comes the nature of Knowledge and Truth (with capital letters), the idea that there will ever be a single, definitive Raynor list, should ultimately run into the philosophical
problem of induction.
Two allusion I think illustrate this well is, on the straightforward side, the "debate" as to the spherical nature of the earth, and on the more complicated side is the "debate" as to the authorship of the works of Shakespeare:
To the first point, that flat-earthers exist is a testament that there will somehow be contrarians in the face of overwhelming, and readily available evidence. That contrarians exist, however, is fairly inconsequential as the evidence speaks for itself, and that these contrarians exist is more of a curiosity or novelty, rather than a problem, so long as they are not able to enforce their orthodoxy over others. In this situation, any serious discussion of the distinction between truth and Truth in regards to the earth being spherical, despite any technicality, becomes strained to the point of ridiculousness. And I understand that.
The
debate of the authorship of the works of Shakespeare is a bit more interesting. Here we have a significant amount of record such that it's arguable that it should be straightforward, however, it is still notable that there are
other narratives that even some academics seem to find the most plausible. However, the clear evidence speaks for itself for all practical purposes, and many-if-not-most of these dubious theories rely heavily on a
lack of falsifiabliity.
Now, as you point out correctly, given the lack of evidence to back up the claims about Raynor at MV, we have a situation clearly illustrated by
Russell's Teapot, and given the contravening evidence, for all practical purposes the claims should generally be dismissed, at least until new evidence is presented. Again, here we are talking about knowledge, and not Knowledge, because unseen evidence could exist. Again though, the evidence speaks for itself, and the lack of evidence speaks volumes.
As long as MV relies on generally unfalsifiable claims, by presenting no positive evidence, they should not be taken seriously. However it is easy to muddy the waters, such with the case of the Earl of Oxford, any suppression of these theories generally adds a narrative component to their lack of falsifiabliity. Ultimately, it seems that trying to turn perfectly reasonable knowledge into Knowledge is tilting at windmills, as there will be contrarians out there with the inclination (and monetary incentives) to present their version of Russell's Teapot to the community.
Here, I must point out, as respectfully as possible, that my understanding of these philosophical theories suggests that a definitive list, especially one presented without citation, is mostly only falsifiable to the author. That's all fair and good, and experts are respected because they have developed respected reputations. An open list of citation, however, presents an understanding that is falsifiable for everyone. This presents a form of powerful knowledge, even if does not hold the thrust of Knowledge.
Here, ultimately, I see no researcher should ever need to explain themselves for their view of the evidence they've presented. The evidence should speak for itself. The influence of the researchers exists as a guide to walk through the evidence to illustrate the argument/narrative that they've seen in it, which should be readily apparent to anyone looking at the evidence in good faith, even if it is not obvious. Here, I'm highly influenced by
Spinoza. Thus, I think it's appropriate to create and maintain entries for Oxfordian theories, despite how dubious they are, because, again, it is the evidence that should stand in the academic tradition, not any school of thought.
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I apologize for any pedantry here, and for the wall-of-text nature of the way I write. In the next section I explain what I've done with my site and why I've done it. Obviously, feel free to skip this part if folks aren't interested (as I fully understand it could be seen as self-promotion), but I think it's relevant to this discussion. Again, I will apologize for my superfluousness, but it's really the only way I know how to engage in these discussions in good faith.
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Now, there are plenty of ways to present open lists of citations. I have propose a few ways to do this in some private discussions with a few golf historians, and they have been generally rejected. The first is that clubs or institutions themselves organize an open format to share citations. That is to say, each club website simply has a subdomain, say, someclubwebsite.org/historical_citations.json, or similar, so that anyone looking for information to that club via navigating to that subdomain. While the club may not present the text of the citations, it may be privately owned or copyrighted, the citation itself is still valuable to any researcher. This is a perfectly straightforward decentralized way of doing things. I would prefer this. I, however, have no way of implementing such a thing aside from presenting it in a more academically minded forum, where researchers like yourself and authors like Phil hang out.
The other option is the publication of open academic journals on the subject, with a peer review system. If this system exists, I'm generally not aware of it. And with all respect and admiration of Adam's publication, it is not the type publication I'm talking about. I wish that type of publication existed, but I am in no position to create it.
What I do have in my power is to try and create a centralized resource of citation, and that is what I'm trying to do because I think it's worth doing. "You would need guys like Sven Nilsen, Mike Cirba, Joe Bausch, Phil Young, Jim Kennedy, Anthony Pioppi, Nigel Islam, Brad Klein to comb through this list to make it as accurate as possible, and even then there would be disputes and discrepancies." I completely agree with this assessment, and I also agree that it's implausible, and the project will likely fail, but the fact remains that as someone who is academically minded, this is the only path forward I see that I can execute, and I think it's something worth trying. The primary reason why I have pursued this is simply that it didn't exist, and the nature of open, centralized resources tend to create a virtuous circle dynamic at surprising rates. This means that if one historian engages with it, it becomes extremely more likely that another would. The more that do, the more everyone benefits. All I can do is put in a lot of work, and try to present myself as open and honestly as I can as a good faith actor in the project.
If anyone made it this far, thanks for hearing me out.