Making a fair and thorough literary evaluation of Book of Mormon authorship

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The use of the word “statistics” makes some people impressed. “Statistics” can be used to “prove” just about anything.

Anyone using statistics to apply real scholarship knows that one must apply scientific methods and standards in the use of statistical methods. That includes having a “control”, and being able to demonstrate that statistical biases have not been built into the “study”. The Jockers methodology has no statistical control, and builds entirely on statistical biases. To think he teaches at a university and yet shows such poor standards of research is what is a head-scratcher. The same goes for the English teacher who participated. My goodness–such an appalling lack of valid research methods.
 
LongJourney said:
Blatant ad hominem. His qualifications are impeccable.
english.stanford.edu/bio.php?name_id=66
stanford.edu/~mjockers/cgi-bin/drupal/node/1
And, if you will note, his area of specialty, along with computer programming, is Irish-American literature.:shamrock2:
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Hey…that’s not an ad hominem. It’s a straight insult. An ad hominem is part of the argument; that is “his work is false because he doesn’t have the qualifications to teach.” This was 'his work is lousy, so he doesn’t have the qualifications to teach." The first is a logical fallacy. The second is a conclusion based on the argument.

It’s still an insult, mind you, but not an ad hominem.

m’just sayin…
 
ParkerD said:
The use of the word “statistics” makes some people impressed. “Statistics” can be used to “prove” just about anything.

Anyone using statistics to apply real scholarship knows that one must apply scientific methods and standards in the use of statistical methods. That includes having a “control”, and being able to demonstrate that statistical biases have not been built into the “study”. The Jockers methodology has no statistical control, and builds entirely on statistical biases. To think he teaches at a university and yet shows such poor standards of research is what is a head-scratcher. The same goes for the English teacher who participated. My goodness–such an appalling lack of valid research methods.
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This post reveals a lot about you Parker, and nothing about the man you slander.
 
ParkerD said:
The use of the word “statistics” makes some people impressed. “Statistics” can be used to “prove” just about anything.

Anyone using statistics to apply real scholarship knows that one must apply scientific methods and standards in the use of statistical methods. That includes having a “control”, and being able to demonstrate that statistical biases have not been built into the “study”. The Jockers methodology has no statistical control, and builds entirely on statistical biases. To think he teaches at a university and yet shows such poor standards of research is what is a head-scratcher. The same goes for the English teacher who participated. My goodness–such an appalling lack of valid research methods.
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Jockers himself has written, and what he has been posted previously on this forum, that the statistical work was that of his colleagues, who are fully qualified to make such a study. He even objects to the study being called the “Jockers Study”, because the majority of the work was not done by him. Daniela M. Witten, Department of Statistics Stanford University, was the statistician on the study.

So, yes, it is poor LDS “apologetics” to insult him about his qualifications, because it is ignoring the fact of who was involved in the study.
For comparative purposes, we acquired digital versions of the Books of Isaiah and Malachi from the King James Bible as well as samples of known writings of Solomon Spalding, Sidney Rigdon, Parley Pratt, and Oliver Cowdery (Appendix A provides a detailed list of source materials). For control purposes, we selected two texts: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s (1855) Song of Hiawatha and Joel Barlow’s Columbiad (1825). Barlow and Longfellow were initially selected as control authors because both are roughly contemporary to the Book of Mormon, both deal to an extent with concepts found in the Book of Mormon, and both employ formulaic patterns consistent with patterns of verse seen in the Book of Mormon. [27] To further test the appropriateness of these control texts, we performed a series of simple hierarchical classification tests using frequently occurring non-contextual words and fifty novels of the same era (1789-1850). [28] The texts written by Longfellow and Barlow consistently clustered close to the Book of Mormon indicating that they were appropriate choices for use as control texts. (“Reassessing authorship of the Book of Mormon using delta and nearest shrunken centroid classification”)
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The chart, no matter how oversized, is an amazing indictment. It’s overwhelming! (not the chart, but the information!)

As was already said WOW!!
 
The words used in the study that supposedly draws the conclusion about “authorship” are as follows:

A total of 110 words used in NSC Classification for the seven-author case
1 a
2 after
3 again
4 against
5 all
6 among
7 an
8 and
9 are
10 as
11 at
12 away
13 be
14 because
15 been
16 before
17 but
18 by
19 came
20 children
21 come
22 day
23 did 24 do
25 down
26 earth
27 even
28 every
29 father
30 for
31 forth
32 from
33 go
34 great
35 had
36 hand
37 have
38 he
39 her
40 him
41 his
42 i
43 if
44 in
45 into
46 is 47 it
48 king
49 know
50 land
51 made
52 man
53 many
54 may
55 me
56 men
57 might
58 more
59 my
60 name
61 no
62 not
63 now
64 o
65 of
66 on
67 one
68 or
69 our 70 out
71 over
72 pass
73 people
74 power
75 said
76 say
77 shall
78 should
79 so
80 son
81 that
82 the
83 their
84 them
85 then
86 there
87 therefore
88 these
89 they
90 things
91 this
92 those 93 thus
94 time
95 to
96 up
97 upon
98 us
99 was
100 we
101 were
102 when
103 which
104 who
105 will
106 with
107 words
108 would
109 you
110 your

A total of 108 words used in NSC Classification for the five-author case

1 a
2 after
3 again
4 against
5 all
6 among
7 an
8 and
9 are
10 as
11 at
12 away
13 be
14 because
15 been
16 before
17 but
18 by
19 came
20 children
21 come
22 day
23 do
24 down
25 earth
26 even
27 every
28 for.
29 forth
30 from
31 go
32 great
33 had
34 hand
35 have
36 he
37 her
38 him
39 his
40 i
41 if
42 in
43 into
44 is
45 it
46 king
47 know
48 land
49 made
50 man
51 many
52 may
53 me
54 men
55 might
56 more
57 my
58 name
59 no
60 not
61 now
62 o
63 of
64 on
65 one
66 or
67 our
68 out
69 over
70 pass
71 people
72 power
73 said
74 say
75 shall
76 should
77 so
78 son
79 that
80 the
81 their
82 them
83 then
84 there
85 therefore
86 these
87 they
88 things
89 this
90 those
91 thus
92 time
93 to
94 up
95 upon
96 us
97 was
98 we
99 were
100 when
101 which
102 who
103 will
104 with
105 words
106 would
107 you
108 your
 
My!! What a long and empty post!! ITAYCD?

And I thought this thread was going to topple off the first page. Thank you for keeping it up front. 👍

And please note my sig. One of the links has a lot to do with this thread.
 
ParkerD said:
The words used in the study that supposedly draws the conclusion about “authorship” are as follows:

A total of 110 words used in NSC Classification for the seven-author case
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Can you site where your cut and paste is coming from please? Thanks.
 
RebeccaJ said:
Can you site where your cut and paste is coming from please? Thanks.
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RebeccaJ,
It came straight from the link you provided, going to the sub-link that provided the actual text of the study. Those were the words that provided the entire basis of the study including all the color graphs that were the result of running computerized comparisons.

The “control group” of the study was from a different genre of literature. That is why I did not consider it to have been a valid control group, particularly because the “controls” used were epic poetry in a set rhyme scheme, which is not going to have the same sentence structure or word use as historical religious text.
 
ParkerD said:
RebeccaJ,
It came straight from the link you provided, going to the sub-link that provided the actual text of the study. Those were the words that provided the entire basis of the study including all the color graphs that were the result of running computerized comparisons.

The “control group” of the study was from a different genre of literature. That is why I did not consider it to have been a valid control group, particularly because the “controls” used were epic poetry in a set rhyme scheme, which is not going to have the same sentence structure or word use as historical religious text.
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If you read the study, the control group was tested as showing a word print very close to the BoM, which unfortunately for your position, puts the BoM in the same genre.
 
RebeccaJ said:
If you read the study, the control group was tested as showing a word print very close to the BoM, which unfortunately for your position, puts the BoM in the same genre.
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No–they picked the two “controls” because there were words common to both works, and because they thought the two epic poems contained a “similar subject”. If the “word prints” had been “very close”, then that would have nullified their “study” because the controls would not have shown distinctiveness from their other samples.

So, the common words were the lists I provided. Those words are probably the most common words in the English language, except that they left out words like “God” and “Lord” because that would have not led to the conclusion they wanted to reach.

They’re saying because the number of word counts is similar from their list of words, the most closely matched word count author is most likely the same author as the author of the Book of Mormon. ???

Another anomaly from their “control” is that Song of Hiawatha was written after 1850.
 
🤷 I can’t claim to know statistics and word print analysis to say.

There are enough other things about the BoM for me to have said decades ago that it is not scripture. First, is Smith himself, but that is another topic.

But, for a believer such as yourself, I can see how you could explain away what you don’t want to see. Only problem is, unless you are a statistical expert, you are doing exactly what you have criticized Jockers for…not being an expert.

The Song of Hiawatha is based on Native legends, which makes it very relevant to the claims of the BoM. Which is essentially trying to posit itself as containing religious legends of Natives. A whole other group of problems there, but also another topic.
 
RebeccaJ said:
I can’t claim to know statistics and word print analysis to say.
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???

The “statistics” used is counting the number of occurrences of one of the words from the word list they selected. They let a computer do the counting, thus needing to use a text that was loaded into a database so that they could do that.
 
Parker, the Isaiah-Malachi sample served as a positive control. That is, since some of the BoM particularly II Nephi is IDENTICAL to passages in Isaiah, and Sidney Rigdon was proficient at imitating Biblical language, how do you account for that word-print finding what it was expected to find?

Also, the results of Dale’s study, more than 20 years ago, line up reasonably well with the Jockers et al. study. This can be confirmed with a chi-square, using word-count.
 
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