Another Wordprint-type Study

[Cold Steel]

Still, I think there's a tendency to revisit things that should have died long ago. Look at how often the same old topics arise on this board. What do you think motivated the return to the Spalding debate?

If someone found a new Spalding manuscript or anything except old testimony after the publishing of the Book of Mormon, or perhaps a journal entry dated 1828 mentioning "Lehi" or "Nephi" and so forth, I could see a valid reason for revisiting it.

Even if it could be put to bed now, we'd still likely see it rise from time to time.

BTW, what did you end up telling your priesthood leaders in the RLDS church? And what was Jim Kimball's views?

I think we offer more than "sincere testimony" in that substance should count as an element here, and I just don't see it happening. Still, I welcome the research. When the first wordprint articles hit the press, I didn't see a steady stream into the church. I certainly don't see a steady stream out of the church based on these newer studies.

[USU78]

Back in 1975, Moyle Q. Rice of Utah State University told me an interesting story. His master's thesis had dealt with changes in language in the various books in the BoM. His own theory was that JSJr was the sole author and that the different "voices" he had divined in the text back in the late 1930s were attributable to the influence of the KJV "inspiration" for the various tales, histories and sermons.

He was still angry that apologists had used his work as evidence of a multiple authors genesis for the BoM.

This Stanford stuff doesn't seem to add much to the discussion, but then maybe I'm missing something.

Or is it that we are doomed forever to keep recycling this old stuff?

[Cold Steel]

One blogger brought up some good points, one of which is:

First, it should be stated that other wordprint analysis studies have been said to demonstrate the Book of Mormon had more than one author, and that statistically, the odds of Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon or Solomon Spalding (sometimes Spaulding) were found to be slim to none. Those who performed these earlier studies included believing Mormons and others unaffiliated with the Church. In the case of the current study, Craig Criddle has participated in "Reformed Former Mormon" (RFM) and written on his disbelief in the Book of Mormon in other venues. Thus, like the former studies, the new study is not untainted by ideology or presuppositions.

Also:

...as Ben McGuire pointed out to me, they do not claim to be able to assign a probability to each putative author. The authors of the study claim to be able to assign a relative probability to each putative authorâ??that is, Solomon Spalding was 95% more likely to be the author of passage X than was Sidney Rigdon, and 99% more likely than Longfellow. In other words, it is not really proving any of the men wrote the book, only that some on their list are more likely to have done so, based on other writings, than the others.

And again, Joseph is not in the mix.

At best the study is a theory, though vastly far from hard proof. I remain unconvinced, just as before, in regards to wordprint analysis and the Book of Mormon. Now I wait to see what the experts have to say.

I'm sure there will be more on this later.

[Uncle Dale]

...

What do you think motivated the return to the Spalding debate?

The Stanford researchers worked on this project quite a while ago --

the publishing journal just now had the free space to carry their paper;

so the timing of its release to the public is not anything special.

I think that part of the motivation goes back a few years -- when I was

showing Craig Criddle how the "Spaldingish" phraseology in the BoM is

mostly clustered in the last 1/3 of Alma. I related to him that my 1980

JWHA paper responder (Elder Wayne Ham) had complained that my

methodology in identifying this clustering was subjective, and needed

some confirmation through quantitative methods, before it could be '

considered as anything meaningful/measureable.

Criddle already was talking to Jockers about word-print studies, and my

problem was added to their discussion. I don't know if they had already

decided to run tests on the BoM text before then or not --- but the answer

I got was that they would tell me, if they ever came across a similar

cluster of Spalding phraseology in Alma.

As things turned out, they did not do a phraseology study -- but their

testing nevertheless resulted in high levels of Spalding textual "signal"

in the same section of Alma. That occurred many months ago. So maybe

you can trace the "motivation" back that far, at least.

If someone found a new Spalding manuscript or anything except old testimony after the

publishing of the Book of Mormon, or perhaps a journal entry dated 1828 mentioning "Lehi"

or "Nephi" and so forth, I could see a valid reason for revisiting it.

Even if it could be put to bed now, we'd still likely see it rise from time to time.

understood

BTW, what did you end up telling your priesthood leaders in the RLDS church?

As luck would have it, by the time I got into grad school, my local leader in Ohio

was a very progressive Seventy, named Stan Hunt. He really did not care what I

thought about the BoM (so long as I lived by its precepts).

And what was Jim Kimball's views?

Jim's field of interest was Nauvoo and the Nauvoo charters. He wasn't much

interested in BoM studies, and seemed rather bored by my continual requests

to see Spalding and Rigdon stuff.

I think we offer more than "sincere testimony" in that substance should count as an element here, and I just don't see it happening. Still, I welcome the research. When the first wordprint articles hit the press, I didn't see a steady stream into the church. I certainly don't see a steady stream out of the church based on these newer studies.

You are probably correct, on both counts.

Ever wonder why Mormon scholars/leaders waste no time and effort trying

to refute my on-line materials and opinions? Answer: Probably not one single

person has left the LDS Church due to my efforts. I'm essentially harmless.

On the other hand, only 2500 Nepalese ever joined the RLDS Church

subsequent to my serving a volunteer "mission" in that kingdom. I'm more

of a threat as an apostate proselytizer, than as an anti-LDS activist....

sigh....

UD

[4truth]

UD:

Thanks for the reply!

My own opinion is that Hurlbut used John and Martha's statements as a sort of

template, in his subsequent questioning of other Conneaut witnesses. Thus, if

John and Martha mentioned some particular recollection, and another witness

did not, then Hurlbut may have coaxed that additional information out of

the later witnesses.

I think that's reasonable.

By such an interrogation process, the witness statements may have accumulated

a few more references to "Lamanite," etc., than they might have without Hurlbut's

involvement.

Agreed, but again...

1. We're assuming that's the case when it might not be

2. Even if it is the case, it's still quite possible that even with Hurlbut "jogging" memories, they were still valid memories that just needed to be "jogged."

3. I think it is more reasonable to assume either of the above as opposed to Hurlbut forcing non-existant memories into their brains, which--it seems to me--has to be the position of LDS apologists in order for their case to accomplish what they want it to accomplish

Obviously neither LDS apologists nor critics like myself are going to budge on this... it will take more evidence. Maybe the word-print thing will move some people. DNA moved a few.

I think the discovery of the Rigdon mail-waiting announcement has also helped to inject some life into the Spalding theory. And I think there is much to be said for parallels you cite between the OM and the Joseph Smith story.

The thing I like about Spalding--as opposed to a Smith only authorship theory--is that it explains a lot of things the Smith only version doesn't (or at least the Spalding theory better explains)--the large amounts of plagiarism being one.

But, oddly enough, none of the Conneaut witnesses recalled any names or details

from Spalding's "Roman Story." We know that an early draft of that manuscript

existed before Spalding left Conneaut --- his brother Josiah gave a fair summary

of the contents some years later, recalling an 1812 visit to Solomon at Conneaut.

Well I'm still learning all this, but John Spalding mentions:

In this work he mentioned that the American continent was colonized by Lehi, the son of Japheth, who sailed from Chaldea soon after the great dispersion, and landed near the isthmus of Darien. - John Spalding, American Review, 1851

Now this, to me is interesting because we have Lehi colonizing America---but Lehi is the son of Japheth. Are we ever told in the BOM who is Lehi's father? As far as I know we are not. Next we have Lehi sailing from Chaldea, whereas the BOM also doesn't tell us that and LDS apologists apparently have settled on Yemen. Spalding's Lehi apparently leaves right after the dispersion whereas the BOM Lehi leaves shortly before it and then the most interesting part of the quote, Spalding's Lehi lands "near the isthmus of Darien." Well that certainly gives a new meaning to "narrow neck of land" which--ironically now lines up with current LDS apologists reasoning but not with that of the early church fathers.

The point is... this is John Spalding, who we agreed is likely the most reliable of the Conneaut witnesses giving details we don't find anywhere else. How do we explain that? Would Hurlbut have implanted memories into John Spalding that we don't find in the BOM? I doubt it. If not, they must be legitimate memories.

I would thus expect at least some overlap with the Roman story details in the

witnesses' minds, if all their recollected story names were implanted memories.

Well yeah...if Hurlbut was out to get Smith at any cost--forget the truth--and all he finds is the OM, then why not embellish the testimonies he has to mix in some OM details? The OM is an incomplete MS so he could easily claim that what he had discovered was obviously an incomplete rough draft and that Nephi and Lehi, etc, were simply in the part that was missing. But all he has to do is mix in some details of the OM into his testimonies and, boom, he's got a solid link to Spalding... after all, that's what LDS apologists are claiming he was doing as it is.... so if they're right, why didn't he solidify it when he had a legitimate Spalding MS?

I would assume the earlier ones should be the most reliable. John mentions Manuscript Found,

Lehi, Nephites, and it came to pass, etc. Martha also mentions Lehi, Nephi and Lamanites & Nephites.

Again, it would appear the names are the key to it all.

Perhaps so -- but don't expect loyal Mormons to accept your conclusion. Oberlin

President James Fairchild came up with the false memories notion, and it served

the LDS/RLDS purposes so well that later investigators, like Brodie, believed that

notion without question.

I find that "loyal Mormons" put more stock in their own personal testimonies than facts anyway.

Educated speculation has its place in historical reconstruction. We must not forget

it is speculation -- but it serves as a possible starting point for useful research.

If all we had were those Hurlbut-Howe statements, they would be problematic.

But we have other sources to supplement them -- such as a report conveyed

from Eratus Rudd (who joined the Mormons), that Spalding wtote a lost tribes

story. By comparing the Howe-published statements with items such as the

Dec. 1833 Aaron Wright draft letter, we can begin to formulate a clearer picture

of what those early witnesses believed and said.

Agreed. I think the Rebecca Eichbaum testimony is compelling at putting Rigdon at Pittsburg at the right time (despite his denials) in light of the mail-waiting notice.

All the secondary reporting I have ever uncovered tends to support the basic

recollections relayed by the Conneaut witnesses. That does not mean that

their statements are reliable in every detail -- but they are a starting point.

Agreed.

If I ever find such evidence, I'll make it known to all -- but I doubt it exists.

The old RLDS justification for Hurlbut's manuscript-seeking activities, was that he

wanted to obtain the Roman story and destroy it -- so that his lies regarding Spalding

would forever go undetected. I see this as a very poor excuse for Hurlbut's known

activities. Also, he never did burn the Roman story, once he got hold of it.

Yeah... if he wanted to destroy it, he sure did a lousy job of carrying out his plans! I mean he travels all across the country at great expense and time diligently getting testimonies as he goes, only to find what he allegedly wants to destroy and then he doesn't destroy it?! I don't buy it.

I think Hurlbut may have done a little memory jogging for the latter witnesses, but he was disappointed when all he found in that chest was the OM. I think it took some of the wind out of his sails.

The minute we allow them.... a framework for a Spalding/Rigdon/BOM connection becomes credible.

Credible for you and me, perhaps -- but not for my former priesthood superiors

in the Reorganized LDS Church (who would not even take the trouble to hear the

whole report, before they rejected it all, out of hand, as being "apostate trash").

As always, some people are open, others are not.

One of the reasons that I'm pleased to see the Stanford researchers' paper published,

is that parts of it confirm what I was trying to convince the RLDS elders of, in 1978-79.

It has taken many years for me to obtain this necessary evidence -- and my old

church superiors are mostly dead by now. But I still feel vindicated to some extent.

Well congratulations then! I think this will prompt a reevalution of the Spalding theory and, no doubt a renewed interest in much of the work you've done on the subject. I've certainly been perusing your pages!

Perhaps I should submit my old thesis papers to one of the Oxford journals for

similar publication? Nah -- on second thought, I'd rather just endlessly argue here

with Life-On-A-Plate.

UD

Why not do both?!

[Gervin]

Perhaps I should submit my old thesis papers to one of the Oxford journals for

similar publication? Nah -- on second thought, I'd rather just endlessly argue here

with Life-On-A-Plate.UD

I thought you were preparing something for publication. Did that happen or was it weighlaid? Not that endlessly arguing with LOAP doesn't have its own rewards .....

[consiglieri]

Thanks, friend,

Which ever part of me is yet a gentleman is perhaps a residue of my

Latter Day Saintism -- a part of me that accepts and testifies to

supernatural things, such as inspired scripture.

You are more than welcome, good my brother!

The thought that comes to me reading your posts on this thread is that here is a study that plays right into what you have given a large portion of your life's energy into researching, and which supports in large measure the conclusions you have reached.

Your reserve in embracing the study's conclusions speaks volumes about your character, I should think.

All the Best!

--Consiglieri

[LifeOnaPlate]

Nah -- on second thought, I'd rather just endlessly argue here with Life-On-A-Plate.UD

I didn't think we were arguing anymore. Are we in a fight Unk?

I thought you were preparing something for publication. Did that happen or was it weighlaid? Not that endlessly arguing with LOAP doesn't have its own rewards .....

Put 'em up, put 'em up.

[Uncle Dale]

I didn't think we were arguing anymore. Are we in a fight Unk?...

If so, I forgot to bring my boxing gloves, friend.

So, let's just throw pieces of wrapped candy at one another.

Uncle "chocolate covered roasted coconut bonbons would do very nicely" Dale

[Uncle Dale]

...

evidence of a multiple authors genesis for the BoM.

This Stanford stuff doesn't seem to add much to the discussion, but then maybe I'm missing something.

...

I think that your assessment is perfectly valid, from the LDS perspective.

And it is that sort of deduction which I believe will keep the Mormon scholars

from rushing into any half-baked attempt to refute the Stanford researchers.

From the LDS perspective, what can we say here?

1. Yes -- perhaps certain 19th century writers' "word-prints" do match up with

certain chapters in our BoM better than do the "word-prints" of other writers.

Such a phenomenon is not necessarily inconsistent with an original Nephite

authorship, and might be provisionally explained in any number of ways.

2. Yes -- perhaps certain parts of the BoM match up better with the "word-print"

of Sidney Rigdon, than they do for Solomon Spalding. And, perhaps certain

parts resemble Spalding's phraseology/views better than they do Rigdon's.

Again, this fact is not necessarily inconsistent with a Nephite original text.

3. The fact that certain parts of the BoM resemble Rigdon's language and views

may simply show that he studied those parts and internalized their contents. Or,

he may have originally been attracted to accept the BoM, because it contained

language and theology that was highly compatible with his own.

4. The fact that certain parts of the BoM resemble Spalding's language and fictional

plots may simply be a coincidence -- and may thus account for the testimony of some

early witnesses, saying that parts of the BoM strongly reminded them of Spalding.

All of the above might well be conceded by LDS scholars, without losing a single

member, or weakening a single testimony in the Church.

Uncle "But, best to concede this in obscure footnotes; not in Conference Talks" Dale

.

[Benjamin McGuire]

I have some further comments for Uncertain. I spent some time reading up a bit on the subject here, and I have come to the conclusion that NSCC is probably very problematic in an application like this. I think that NSCC would work very well in a case where we have confident knowledge that the unknown author of a text was within a certain group of suspects. But without that confidence, it is quite useless. It might be useful even in taking apart a document with several known authors and identifying pieces that each was substantially responsible for. But, in this case, even with the anecdotal evidence provided in the essay, the identification of the group is rather weak - particularly when we note that they dismiss Joseph Smith entirely as a possible author.

The study actually seems to claim to be calculating the real probability that a particular author is the unknown author of a passage. However, this isn't what they are doing. There are several ways to show that this is the case. This might be the case if they were certain to have included all possible authors in the list of known authors (which is part of the reason for the otherwise non-essential historical narrative).

The first point I want to make is this - if we are using a system which can produce some kind of definite probability that a text with an unknown author A was really written by known author B, then we should be able to get the exact same results independant of what additional samples from other known authors are used - and more importantly under the condition where no samples from any authors other than author B are used. It should be apparent to anyone that this particular method, incorporating a single author with which to compare the unknown author too, will yield that author (Author as the first choice for every sample of unknown Author A, every time. This is in part due to the nature of Nearest Shrunken Centroid Classification used (as discussed below).

The second issue deals with the method. The vocabulary used in the process (and thus the word-frequency matrix that is used as the basis for the Nearest Shrunken Centroid Classification - hereafter NSCC) is produced by involving all of the text samples from all known authors. This occurs twice. The first time it occurs is when a common vocabulary is built in which the vacabulary is common to every known author as well as to the unknown author. The second time it occurs is when this vocabulary is reduced by eliminating all common vocabularly elements that do not have a frequency across all of the samples of at least .1% - in other words, the additional authors tend to have a great deal of impact on the study. A clever response might be to talk about James Thurber, who wrote a book called "The Wonderful 'O'". This was a child's book written because of a bet with a friend, and in it, there are no words containing the letter 'o' (and thus the name). Imagine what including this as a sample text with a known author would do - the entire vocabulary would suddenly lose all words containing the letter 'O'. Now, obviously you wouldn't choose this text, but, as an extreme it illustrates the point beautifully. In effect, you can manipulate the vocabulary (and thus the matrix) by the selection of sample texts from known authors. This should also make it clear that the choices of texts and authors influences the study in some ways - meaning that it would be quite possible to get a different set of results simply by changing the make-up of the authors and texts - and in particular by changing the so-called control samples that get used. Since the process isn't time consuming at all, and since the authors of the essay admit that their choice of control texts was deliberate and not random in any way (based on certain features which, as I noted, otherwise seem to have no impact on the study at all), I actually do suspect that these were chosen for the purpose of influencing the outcome of the study.

A third aspect of this comes now from the nature of NSCC that they use. If we go to the website which they link to in the footnotes where the complete description of the process can be found (and there is a lot of interesting things to read there), we very quickly get to things like this:

http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~tibs/PAM/Rdist/howwork.html

"Nearest centroid classification takes the gene expression profile of a new sample, and compares it to each of these class centroids. The class whose centroid that it is closest to, in squared distance, is the predicted class for that new sample."

Do you see how this works? It compares centroids (which is a way of condensing the matrix of frequencies of disparate elements) of a known set and tells you which of the known set an unknown sample is "closest to". This is not an absolute. This is a relative comparison. It means that the results are always determined by the starting positions of the samples. When doing cancer research, this is a great tool because we have a relatively finite number of cancer types we would be using this to genetically type, and our concern is to discover which one it is closest to as quickly as possible using a wide range of data (the mapped genes) and comparing huge amounts of data very quickly. It also couldn't work with a single cancer type comparison - because, if we only have X as a sample, and we ask which sample unknown type Y is closest to, of course all we get is X. Within the cancer research, where there is a reasonable assumption that the cancer being studied is indeed one of the several types it is being compared to, this can be tantamount to a non-relative probability (that is, if we are certain that the actual identity of the type is in the set, and the set contains all possible types, then this could be a rather definite probability rather than a relative one).

In terms of demonstrating this flaw, all that has to be done (and it will take some time for me - at least a week or so), is to add some samples to the composite list - or to generate a new set of samples - and show that changing the sample sets produces a wildly variant conclusion or showing that a completely different set yields similar results with different candidates - and thus showing that there is no value to the conclusions being drawn. Since the essay seems to assume from the beginning a narrow list of possible authors who must (exclusively) be the authors of the text, this may be a logical way to deal with that question, but to me, it doesn't seem reasonable at all. And if we were to add another author to the list of authors sampled (say from my list, or by taking some of what we have from Joseph Smith), we might well get wildly divergent results. And certainly, were we to change the control texts we might find something else as well.

There are several things I would have liked to have seen. I would have liked to have seen a set of control text (several known authors) showing what they suggest we should see from a series of unconnected authors and texts - a random pattern with roughly the same number of samples being assigned to each author. I think we would see patterns of authorship that are clearly fabrications (and nothing like their figuring random distribution which it seems that they do).

Ben M.

[consiglieri]

There are several things I would have liked to have seen. I would have liked to have seen a set of control text (several known authors) showing what they suggest we should see from a series of unconnected authors and texts - a random pattern with roughly the same number of samples being assigned to each author. I think we would see patterns of authorship that are clearly fabrications (and nothing like their figuring random distribution which it seems that they do).

Ben M.

Dear Ben,

I appreciate the work you have done in researching this and posting it in such a way that even I can understand what is going on.

All the Best!

--Consglieri

[Uncle Dale]

...

There are several things I would have liked to have seen.

...

Ben, you are perhaps one of the few posters here who has the necessary

education and experience to delve into new types of "word-print" studies.

It would be very helpful for the rest of us, if you could take the time to

perform a small demonstration of how you think a proper word-print

analysis might be conducted --- as well as a small demonstration of how

the Stanford researchers could have refined and better implemented

their own methodology.

With the holidays coming up, and all, perhaps you do not have time to

engage in such stuff right now --- but, if you do so later on, would you

mind informing us of your results (and perhaps sharing a few graphics

of word-print distributions, in the BoM text, based upon your own study)?

Uncle Dale

[Ipso Facto]

Great observations, Benjamin.

The more I examine this "study" and speak with others who have begun to examine it, the more its desperate grasping becomes evident. That Criddle was (apparently) able to persuade these people and this journal to jeopardize their professional credibility in an anti-Mormon crusade is, to me, somewhat shocking.

Aside from the fact that there is no persuasive historical data to justify a connection between Rigdon and Spalding and the creation of the Book of Mormon, the methodology of this "study" is hopelessly flawed and extraordinarily ill-conceived. It's hard to believe that the authors seriously intended this as a "scientific" endeavor. It appears, at this juncture, to be little more than a somewhat tawdry propaganda ploy. Sure, it will be received willingly and unquestioningly by a certain segment of the post-Mormon world -- at least those who aren't very well versed in Mormon history, such that they can appreciate the insuperable difficulties inherent in the whole Spalding/Rigdon conspiracy gambit. But the "science" of this "study" is going to be eviscerated by both LDS apologetics and any other competent and qualified reviewer without an axe to grind.

I anxiously await to see how many others among the intellectual post-Mormon crowd will yet demonstrate the temerity necessary to hitch their wagon to this soon-to-be falling star. At least the Salamander Letter was quite well done. You could almost forgive those who were shaken by its appearance. But this?

[Uncle Dale]

...

Even if it is the case, it's still quite possible that even with Hurlbut "jogging" memories, they were still valid memories that just needed to be "jogged."

...

Obviously neither LDS apologists nor critics like myself are going to budge on this... it will take more evidence. Maybe the word-print thing will move some people. DNA moved a few.

Many things are "quite possible" -- but how we begin to make use of those

possibilities greatly determines what we end up proving to ourselves. I am

not much interested in getting anybody to "budge" away from their present

beliefs. I am more interested in sharing information and ideas with people,

even if I know I will not be changing their minds.

I think the discovery of the Rigdon mail-waiting announcement has also helped to inject some life into the

Spalding theory. And I think there is much to be said for parallels you cite between the OM and the

Joseph Smith story.

Placing Rigdon in Pittsburgh during Spalding's day is a notable accomplishment.

However, that idea is nothing new. Rigdon's own relatives recalled that he

RETURNED to Pittsburgh, at the beginning of the 1820s. Obviously he had lived

within walking distance of the city in Spalding's day, and logically would have

visited Pittsburgh now and then. So, our finding confirmation of that reality in

old newspapers helps document what we already reasonably deduced.

...John Spalding mentions: [Lehi, etc.]

Now this, to me is interesting because we have Lehi colonizing America---but Lehi is the son of Japheth.

Are we ever told in the BOM who is Lehi's father? As far as I know we are not. Next we have Lehi sailing

from Chaldea, whereas the BOM also doesn't tell us that and LDS apologists apparently have settled on

Yemen. Spalding's Lehi apparently leaves right after the dispersion whereas the BOM Lehi leaves shortly

before it and then the most interesting part of the quote, Spalding's Lehi lands "near the isthmus of Darien."

Well that certainly gives a new meaning to "narrow neck of land" which--ironically now lines up with current

LDS apologists reasoning but not with that of the early church fathers.

I'll present you with another possibility here ---

When the "Book of Lehi" was lost, due to Martin Harris' negligence, exactly what sort

of story about "Lehi" did those lost pages contain? Was it very much like the story told

in 1st Nephi? Or, was it something rather different?

We have three ocean-crossing, American colonization stories told in the BoM:

1. The Jaredite account

2. The Lehite account

3. The Mulekite account

Now, which of those three stories does John Spalding's second statement best describe?

Which of those accounts is largely missing from the 1830 BoM text?

What are the chances that John Spalding saw a different Lehite account than we now

have; and what are the chances that the Mulekite account was moved into 1st Nephi,

with a little "touching up" in order to make it fit well there?

If this conjecture is correct, the story told at the beginning of Spalding's manuscript

more resembled the Jaredite account than what we read in the Book of Mormon.

And the story of Zarahemla, as recalled by a few early witnesses, would then have

resembled the account we now have in 1st Nephi.

Just a conjecture --- but if you had to quickly replace 116 pages of storyline, and you

had the Mulekite account sitting in front of you, not yet "translated," what would be

your easiest way to come up with a replacement for the Book of Lehi?

Of course you'd have to alter passages here and there -- maybe even delete the

name of Jared's brother (Lehi?) to make things compatible throughout the book...

I find that "loyal Mormons" put more stock in their own personal testimonies than facts anyway.

Sometimes that is the case -- in other instances they can be very much concentrated

upon knowing and making use of "facts." It all depends upon the person and situation.

Agreed. I think the Rebecca Eichbaum testimony is compelling at putting Rigdon at Pittsburg at the right time (despite his denials) in light of the mail-waiting notice.

As I said before, even Rigdon's own relatives (one of them a Mormon)

tacitly admit that he was in Pittsburgh at an early date. That part of the

puzzle has long been solved. My question, is where did Rigdon gain his

tanner's apprenticeship? And where did he sell leather goods during that

apprenticeship? In 1824-25 he was a journeyman tanner/leather dresser,

selling sheepskin bookbindings to Pittsburgh binders -- but he could not

have started out as a journeyman tanner. If he was selling leather to

Silas Engles in 1824, was he also selling leather to the Pattersons (who

were Engles' cousins in Pittsburgh and had a bindery) in 1816?

UD

[LifeOnaPlate]

One blogger brought up some good points, one of which is:

You do know that is me, right?

[selek]

You do know that is me, right?

Nah...it was some guy named "LOAP".

[LifeOnaPlate]

Say it out loud, it sounds cool.

[selek]

Say it out loud, it sounds cool.

What? "LOAP"?

Isn't that a kind of exaggerated swagger?

As in, "The cowboy loaped into the saloon?"

[Uncertain]

Hi Ben,

Thanks to a kind bystander I have obtained a copy of the manuscript and have read it. I have also looked over the manuscript that describes in detail the nearest shrunken centroid method. That paper can be found here (it is open access):

http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?service=UI&...d.ss/1056397488

I have some further comments for Uncertain. I spent some time reading up a bit on the subject here, and I have come to the conclusion that NSCC is probably very problematic in an application like this. I think that NSCC would work very well in a case where we have confident knowledge that the unknown author of a text was within a certain group of suspects. But without that confidence, it is quite useless. It might be useful even in taking apart a document with several known authors and identifying pieces that each was substantially responsible for. But, in this case, even with the anecdotal evidence provided in the essay, the identification of the group is rather weak - particularly when we note that they dismiss Joseph Smith entirely as a possible author.

I do not think excluding Joseph Smith (JS) as a potential author is a serious flaw. I thought the explanation given by Jockers et al was a good one. Apparently they could not find enough material certain to have been written by Joseph Smith hence they did not include him. This seems reasonable to me. If as the authors claim they are calculating the real probability of a particular author being the unknown author of a passage. Then including additional authors should in theory make no real difference. In other words if a passage has a 80 percent probability of being written by Sidney Ridgon (SR) than regardless of how many other authors are included the 80 percent probability should not change much. For that matter if SR was the only author being compared the absolute probability should still be around 80 percent.

The study actually seems to claim to be calculating the real probability that a particular author is the unknown author of a passage. However, this isn't what they are doing. There are several ways to show that this is the case. This might be the case if they were certain to have included all possible authors in the list of known authors (which is part of the reason for the otherwise non-essential historical narrative).

So we are agreed contrary to earlier reports the authors do claim to be calculating the real probability not the relative probability.

The first point I want to make is this - if we are using a system which can produce some kind of definite probability that a text with an unknown author A was really written by known author B, then we should be able to get the exact same results independant of what additional samples from other known authors are used - and more importantly under the condition where no samples from any authors other than author B are used.

Absolutely I agree with this reasoning I make the same point above. If indeed the method is producing a real probability it should give the same result for known author B regardless of how many authors are included in the analysis. This is the reason as I pointed out I do not view excluding JS as a serious flaw.

It should be apparent to anyone that this particular method, incorporating a single author with which to compare the unknown author too, will yield that author (Author as the first choice for every sample of unknown Author A, every time. This is in part due to the nature of Nearest Shrunken Centroid Classification used (as discussed below).

You are correct as far as it goes but you are confusing rank with probabilities. Say we have three authors A,B,C being compared with a given passage with the relevant probabilities being A=.01, B=.4, C=.8. In this case the ranking would go C, B, A with C being first B being second and A being third. With C being assigned as the author of the passage. Now consider the case in which only A is being compared with the passage its probability should not change it should remain ~.01 but now it will be ranked 1st and the author of the passage will be assigned to A. The probabilities should not be affected by the number of authors considered but the ranks absolutely will be (This is actually the basis for one of my own criticisms of the article see below). Now of course the problem from an LDS perspective is many passages are assigned to SR and others with a very high probability i.e > 90% and this probability should change little with additional authors. If indeed a real instead of relative probability is being calculated.

The second issue deals with the method. The vocabulary used in the process (and thus the word-frequency matrix that is used as the basis for the Nearest Shrunken Centroid Classification - hereafter NSCC) is produced by involving all of the text samples from all known authors. This occurs twice. The first time it occurs is when a common vocabulary is built in which the vacabulary is common to every known author as well as to the unknown author. The second time it occurs is when this vocabulary is reduced by eliminating all common vocabularly elements that do not have a frequency across all of the samples of at least .1% -

Personally I have no problems using a cutoff of .1%. NSCC scales each element of each centroid by the standard deviation of the element for all samples. So for example if the frequency of a given word X varies wildly in different samples of the same authors work. The frequency of occurrence of this word would have a large standard deviation and hence the importance of this word in classifying unknown samples of writing would be greatly diminished (i.e. this word would have little impact on deciding how closely an unknown sample is to the given authors work). In order to calculate such parameters as the standard deviation you need enough samples hence the .1% cutoff I donâ??t see the problem.

in other words, the additional authors tend to have a great deal of impact on the study. A clever response might be to talk about James Thurber, who wrote a book called "The Wonderful 'O'". This was a child's book written because of a bet with a friend, and in it, there are no words containing the letter 'o' (and thus the name). Imagine what including this as a sample text with a known author would do - the entire vocabulary would suddenly lose all words containing the letter 'O'. Now, obviously you wouldn't choose this text, but, as an extreme it illustrates the point beautifully. In effect, you can manipulate the vocabulary (and thus the matrix) by the selection of sample texts from known authors. This should also make it clear that the choices of texts and authors influences the study in some ways - meaning that it would be quite possible to get a different set of results simply by changing the make-up of the authors and texts - and in particular by changing the so-called control samples that get used.

This is a valid point of contention changing which sample texts used by the known authors could change the results. In particular I noticed narrative text is primarily assigned to Solomon Spaulding (SS). I wonder if this is due in part to the fact that the samples of text we have from Solomon Spaulding are primarily narrative in content. However I noticed the probabilities of assignment to (SS) were in many cases high. If indeed Solomon Spaulding was not the author I might expect these chapters to be assigned to him because he is the best match for narrative text but the passages would be assigned with a low probability.

Since the process isn't time consuming at all, and since the authors of the essay admit that their choice of control texts was deliberate and not random in any way (based on certain features which, as I noted, otherwise seem to have no impact on the study at all), I actually do suspect that these were chosen for the purpose of influencing the outcome of the study.

I do not agree I think using random controls would be a bad idea. The ideal control is the control that is identical to your test case except for differing in the variable you are trying to test. So if I am testing a new drug I want my control cases to be identical to my test cases except for they are given a placebo. The authors tried to select controls as similar as possible to the BOM indeed they performed hierarchal classification showing the control texts were more similar to the BOM than 50 other novels from the same era. This is entirely appropriate you want your controls to be as close as possible to your test cases. I see no justification for accusing them of swapping out controls until they got the required results. This would constitute scientific misconduct and I am not going to make this accusation without rock solid evidence.

A third aspect of this comes now from the nature of NSCC that they use. If we go to the website which they link to in the footnotes where the complete description of the process can be found (and there is a lot of interesting things to read there), we very quickly get to things like this:

http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~tibs/PAM/Rdist/howwork.html

"Nearest centroid classification takes the gene expression profile of a new sample, and compares it to each of these class centroids. The class whose centroid that it is closest to, in squared distance, is the predicted class for that new sample."

Do you see how this works? It compares centroids (which is a way of condensing the matrix of frequencies of disparate elements) of a known set and tells you which of the known set an unknown sample is "closest to". This is not an absolute. This is a relative comparison. It means that the results are always determined by the starting positions of the samples. When doing cancer research, this is a great tool because we have a relatively finite number of cancer types we would be using this to genetically type, and our concern is to discover which one it is closest to as quickly as possible using a wide range of data (the mapped genes) and comparing huge amounts of data very quickly. It also couldn't work with a single cancer type comparison - because, if we only have X as a sample, and we ask which sample unknown type Y is closest to, of course all we get is X. Within the cancer research, where there is a reasonable assumption that the cancer being studied is indeed one of the several types it is being compared to, this can be tantamount to a non-relative probability (that is, if we are certain that the actual identity of the type is in the set, and the set contains all possible types, then this could be a rather definite probability rather than a relative one).

Which author ranks first second third etc. is certainly relative it depends on which authors are including in the study. But the probabilities should not be nearly as relative. If for example an unknown tumor sample is analyzed but its corresponding cancer is not included in the study. The tumor will indeed be assigned to an incorrect cancer but its probability of being of that cancer type should be very low (if the method is working properly).

In terms of demonstrating this flaw, all that has to be done (and it will take some time for me - at least a week or so), is to add some samples to the composite list - or to generate a new set of samples - and show that changing the sample sets produces a wildly variant conclusion or showing that a completely different set yields similar results with different candidates - and thus showing that there is no value to the conclusions being drawn. Since the essay seems to assume from the beginning a narrow list of possible authors who must (exclusively) be the authors of the text, this may be a logical way to deal with that question, but to me, it doesn't seem reasonable at all. And if we were to add another author to the list of authors sampled (say from my list, or by taking some of what we have from Joseph Smith), we might well get wildly divergent results. And certainly, were we to change the control texts we might find something else as well.

I think this is a good idea. If you include other authors besides the seven studied or include other samples of writing from the seven authors used and the probabilities calculated (not the rank) change dramatically I think you would have a made a good case against the conclusions of this study. But it is important to duplicate as nearly as possible the methodology in the Jockers et al manuscript. They used an R package to run the NSCC algorithm R is free so you should be able to get and use the same package after installing R. I myself am familiar with R and use it frequently it does have a steep learning curve and is primarily command line based at least the Unix/Linux versions. There is I believe a windows based version that should be more user friendly.

It might be a wise idea to run your methodology with the seven authors used in the study on the BOM to make sure you duplicate the studyâ??s results. You can then add additional authors and see how things change.

Myself I was thinking a good control would be to run their method with the seven authors on the KJV of the Bible. If authors like SR and SS are assigned as authors of Biblical chapters with a high probability this would be good evidence the method is not accurate at assigning authorship. The Isaiah/Malachi chapters in the Bible would also serve as positive controls.

There are several things I would have liked to have seen. I would have liked to have seen a set of control text (several known authors) showing what they suggest we should see from a series of unconnected authors and texts - a random pattern with roughly the same number of samples being assigned to each author. I think we would see patterns of authorship that are clearly fabrications (and nothing like their figuring random distribution which it seems that they do).

In this case I agree with the Jockers et al. If I have a set of authors that have nothing to do with a given text. It is reasonable that the pattern of authorship should indeed be uniform. That is one author should not show up as ranked first any more often than another author. If indeed the given set of authors are entirely unconnected with the tested work. The burden of proof it seem to me is on those that say an unconnected set of authors will somehow have a systematic bias such that one author will consistently show up as first. But I do think their paper would have been stronger if they empirically showed this by comparing their set of authors to an entirely unrelated text War and Peace for example.

My Criticism of the Paper:

1. The NSCC method has a shrinking parameter that could potentially affect the accuracy of the method. This parameter is calculated by cross validation which essentially means splitting the known examples up into two groups a training and test group. Training the method with a given value for the shrinking parameter on the training group and calculating the accuracy of the method on the test group. This is repeated until the value of the shrinking parameter gives the best accuracy for the test group. This approach to me seems like it could lead to over fitting (i.e. overestimating the accuracy).

What I would like to have seen is the known examples broken up into three groups testing training and validation. In which the training and testing group would undergo the process to estimate the shrinking parameter. And when the optimum value is found the accuracy of the method is estimated by using the validation set.

2. The Jockers et al. study appears to assign authorship based on rank. That is passage X is assigned to whichever author ranks highest for that passage. This is flawed given that rank is highly dependent on the set of authors being studied (as already explained above). The assignment of authorship should be based on rank plus the probability calculated for the given author. In other words you could have a case in which an author is ranked 1st but with a probability of 20%. This means the author is more likely to not be the author than he is to be the author regardless of what rank he is. For this reason I am highly skeptical of the percent breakdown of authorship in the BOM as given in Fig. 1 and Fig 2. Now it might be the authors did include probabilities in their attribution of authorship but if so I missed it when I read the paper.

All the Best,

Uncertain

[selek]

Hi Ben,

Thanks to a kind bystander I have obtained a copy of the manuscript and have read it. I have also looked over the manuscript that describes in detail the nearest shrunken centroid method. That paper can be found here (it is open access):

http://projecteuclid.org/DPubS?service=UI&...d.ss/1056397488

I do not think excluding Joseph Smith (JS) as a potential author is a serious flaw. I thought the explanation given by Jockers et al was a good one. Apparently they could not find enough material certain to have been written by Joseph Smith hence they did not include him. This seems reasonable to me. If as the authors claim they are calculating the real probability of a particular author being the unknown author of a passage. Then including additional authors should in theory make no real difference.

This rationalization makes no sense, Uncertain. If you're trying to determine who the most likely author is, then you should of course include all possible suspects.

Arbitrarily casting out suspects because they've been linked to no other crimes makes no sense from a forensics point of view.

Would you ignore the husband of a murdered woman as a suspect simply because he's committed no other crimes?

Simply rejecting Joseph because of a lack of other samples fatally flaws their arguments.

The purveyors of this study cast out Joseph in a nasty bit of a priori reasoning and then had to justify that decision. Only by casting out Joseph does thier underlying premise (that the book is an eighteenth century forgery) hold water.

Assume for a moment that the piece being analyzed was Horton Hears a Who. If they decide to test a sampling of the Golden Books authors, James Thurber, and a dozen other childrens' authors, but arbitrarily exclude Theodore Geisel (on the basis that they can't find other works under his name) is their conclusion that Thurber is the most probable author of Horton bear any resemblance to reality?

In other words if a passage has a 80 percent probability of being written by Sidney Ridgon (SR) than regardless of how many other authors are included the 80 percent probability should not change much. For that matter if SR was the only author being compared the absolute probability should still be around 80 percent.

Again....this is nonsensical. Your results are determined by your sampling pool, as outlined above.

If you arbitrarily exclude possible authors from your sample, your results are meaningless- as with the Horton example above.

[Uncle Dale]

...

Simply rejecting Joseph because of a lack of other samples fatally flaws their arguments.

...

Any future word-print study should include JS text samples.

The problem being, that verified samples of his exact "voice" are

rare. We have his letters to Emma and a few other holographs

which can be combined into a conglomerate sample -- but not much.

It would be wrong to include D&C sections (which purport to be God's voice)

or chapters from the Times & Seasons "History of the Church," by Smith,

etc. --- because these sorts of samples cannot be authenticated as his

exact voice.

Probably one of the scholars working for the Church, on the JS Papers Project,

should be able to assemble a reliable conglomerate JS sample. I do not think

that non-specialists (such as the Stanford researchers) should be assigned

that specialized task however.

UD

[Uncertain]

This rationalization makes no sense, Uncertain. If you're trying to determine who the most likely author is, then you should of course include all possible suspects.

Arbitrarily casting out suspects because they've been linked to no other crimes makes no sense from a forensics point of view.

Simply rejecting Joseph because of a lack of other samples fatally flaws their arguments.

Hi Selek,

I do not agree. If there is not enough data to estimate Joseph Smiths word print there is not enough data. If there is not enough data including him would be pointless any probabilities calculated for JS as author would have errors so large the estimated probability would be worthless.

Assume for a moment that the piece being analyzed was Horton Hears a Who. If they decide to test a sampling of the Golden Books authors, James Thurber, and a dozen other childrens' authors, but arbitrarily exclude Theodore Geisel (on the basis that they can't find other works under his name) is their conclusion that Thurber is the most probable author of Horton bear any resemblance to reality?

Again....this is nonsensical. Your results are determined by your sampling pool, as outlined above.

If you arbitrarily exclude possible authors from your sample, your results are meaningless- as with the Horton example above.

I am not sure you are following my argument. If I understand the paper correctly the authors are claiming each putative author is assigned an absolute confidence value (i.e. probability) which represents how confidently the unknown passage is assigned to the given author. For your example above yes Thurber may very well be the author that is calculated as the most probable among the set of authors tested. But if the method is working correctly the calculated confidence value would very small. That is Thurber would be one poor choice out of many poor choices. So yes the results would have a connection with reality. They would indicate Thurber was the best choice out of the available options but that given the low confidence value Thurber is unlikely to have written the tested book. This in no way refutes Jockers et al conclusions. Now if you are asserting the method is producing flawed confidence values I am listening but this must be demonstrated using solid science (like Ben is trying to do) not just asserted.

In addition suppose JS was included I dare say you would be arguing the "real" authors (i.e. Nephi, Alma etc. ) were not included therefore we should disregard this study.

All the Best,

Uncertain

[Uncle Dale]

...

This in no way refutes Jockers et al conclusions.

...

I am curious to know what his response to your assessment has been.

I'm not asking for any privileged information here -- just a general statement

on whether or not the Stanford researchers agree that you are raising some

valid points, worthy of consideration, in conducting any similar, new studies?

UD

[Doctor Steuss]

Any future word-print study should include JS text samples.

The problem being, that verified samples of his exact "voice" are

rare. We have his letters to Emma and a few other holographs

which can be combined into a conglomerate sample -- but not much.

[...]

Maybe a compilation of any letters, diaries, notes, and revelations where Emma, Reuben, Martin, Oliver, or John acted as scribe could be compiled. I imagine that if one were searching for Josephâ??s voice in a document that was purportedly dictated, then that same voice should be discernable in other dictated documents where the same scribe(s) was doing the writing.

Or not.

(Could always just compare the Book of Moses to portions of the Book of Mormon purportedly scribed by Oliver -- or maybe all we need is the good ole Kirtland Revelation Book... *shrug*)

---------

On an off-topic note, it is nice to have you posting again. Hopefully you haven't abandoned work on the biography for this lesser task.