Oral-history bias demands triangulation against others and records.

Evidence

Oral-history interviews have well-known disadvantages. In particular, interviewees’ memories of events, especially of specific events long in the past, may be fallible, and they may wish a particular version of events to be accepted. In consequence, I have tried to “triangulate” as much I can, checking one interviewee’s testimony against that of others and (where possible) against the published record or econometric analyses of the markets they were describing. In the case of Long-Term Capital Management, for example, I checked for any “exculpatory” bias in insiders’ views of the fund’s 1998 crisis by interviewing others who had been active in the same markets at the same time. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 127

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Ethnographic interviews aim at informants’ self-understanding, not factual truth. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 947; Historical records structurally conceal assimilated minorities and amplify failure narratives — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1152; Academic analysis must triangulate oral histories with official urban plans (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Academic analysis must triangulate oral histories with official urban plans #exemplifies (0.85)
• Historical records structurally conceal assimilated minorities and amplify failure narratives #expands (0.78) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1152
• Closed archives create historical bias favoring the closed society #expands (0.75) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1842