Talk:Robert Peary
From Academic Kids
Does any know why we have April 6 and April 16 listed? I thought there was doubt that Peary thought he had got there on April 6/April... could the 16th have been a typo? And then someone added the correct date but didn't have the confidence to remove the first one? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 22:08, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
- A good Google hunt convinces me that it was indeed a typo - no doubt about the date. Updating the article. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 22:22, 5 Dec 2003 (UTC)
What is this "A 1996 analysis of a newly-discovered copy of Peary's record indicates that Peary was almost certainly 20 miles (32km) short of the Pole"?
- Who did the analyzing? How credible? I think it probably was a good analysis, so a little more information would help.
- Are those 20 miles really 32 km, or are they the 37 km which would be normal use of "miles" in this context? I'm changing the conversion--prove otherwise if that is the case. (If the analysis was done by the fools at National Geographic, good luck in figuring out a definitive answer.) Gene Nygaard 14:59, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- That book is mentioned with a quote later on, but there is nothing to indicate any connection between that book and the "analysis" under discussion. Furthermore, even if you were to make that connection now in the article, we still wouldn't know:
- Whether that analysis was done by the author of that book, or whether he was citing someone else's analysis.
- What those damn "miles" are. Gene Nygaard 02:18, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- That book is mentioned with a quote later on, but there is nothing to indicate any connection between that book and the "analysis" under discussion. Furthermore, even if you were to make that connection now in the article, we still wouldn't know:
Robert Edward Peary
It seems unlikely that the 1996 analysis was Fergus Fleming's, since his book was published in 2002. Uncited is Robert Bryce's massive 1996 work, Cook & Peary which reaches a similar conclusion, but not based on any new analysis of any newly discovered Peary records. Cook & Peary does contain new analysis of newly discovered Cook records, which demolishes Cook's claim quite completely.
Lacking any source citation for the 1996 analysis, I'm going to remove that sentence in the text, and cite both Bryce and Dennis Rawlins' book, which should be sufficient.
