[john_yaya]

Facts are the foundation that such writing is built upon. If a piece of historical analysis contains a number of basic factual errors, that foundation is shaky at best. How can you or anyone go on to claim that the conclusion of the piece has any value at all, given that?

[jakelazaroff]

What is "a number"? What is the threshold at which it becomes appropriate to distrust the entire work?

Most of the critique from the right seems to start with the point of view that the 1619 Project should be distrusted and works backwards from there, rather than determining its trustworthiness based on a good-faith reading of the work itself.

[refurb]

When I did my thesis, the attitude was a factual error of significant magnitude brought the whole thesis into question.

[UncleMeat]

What field was your thesis in? Would your committee have considered the entire contents to be propaganda?

[UncleMeat]

Says you?

Historians should seek to make their writing based on as firm of factual footing as possible and make it clear when they are making an inference due to limitations of the archive. But historians constantly work with material that has factual errors and they do not tend to consider this to be a death sentence for a particular work.

I find that a huge number of people have very strong opinions about how historians work and have never actually spoken to one.

The large bulk of historians I speak to, whether tenured or tenure track or at various different institutions, do not arrive at the same conclusion that you do.

EDIT: We've hit the depth limit but I do not believe that I am more qualified here. I believe that professional historians are and that people should go speak to a bunch of them before developing very strong opinions about historical writing. I do not believe that this is a clubby toxic attitude but instead is valuing expertise and experience.

[john_yaya]

Excuse me, but there's an enormous difference between working with erroneous source material, and making factual errors when the correct data are already and widely available.

And, I reject your repeated assertions that because you have historian friends, you are somehow more qualified to speak on the topic than one who does not. That type of clubby gatekeeping is frankly toxic to society and you should abandon that sort of thinking immediately.

[UncleMeat]

I do not believe that it is toxic gatekeeping to suggest that the people who are most qualified to have opinions about historical writing are history professors.