How can and does the sub and the academy deal with the influence of the political opinions of authors in their production and reproduction of academic material and answers here?

by loefferrafael

Basically the title. The more obviously politically charged questions in the sub, like the ones about anything related to the USSR, got me thinking about it.

WholesomeWhitney

I'm currently an undergrad, so at the moment I'm also trying to tackle political leanings and so forth in the books I read. I'm not sure my word on the matter is the consensus on the subreddit, but its generally how I've been advised to tackle such issues in my own work.

My answer is you realistically can't eliminate politically charged answers entirely.

For instance, Chistopher Hill is a famous left-wing (Marxist) historian. His works are obviously influenced by Marxist ideology, but that's also part of the reason they are very useful. I go to Christopher Hill to read a Marxist perspective on the English Civil War or the Russian Revolution. Historians usually try to treat their evidence fairly of course, but generally the interpretation isn't meant to be 'objective' and 'unbiased' as that's not really possible.

“The facts are really not at all like fish on the fishmonger’s slab. They are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean; and what the historian catches will depend, partly on chance, but mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use – these two factors being, of course, determined by the kind of fish he wants to catch. By and large, the historian will get the kind of facts he wants.”

- E. H. Carr, What is History?

Carr is basically saying here that every historian will catch something different, will have a different interpretation and have different biases and that's okay, because you can't use every single fact or expect every historian to come to a 'politically neutral' perspective because that's not how it works.

On the side of the moderators and historians writing, the only realistic way to mitigate 'politically charged' answers is to ensure everyone is treating their sources fairly, and interpreting them in a reasonable way.

The only real way to combat this on the reader's side is to read very widely. Focusing back on your question, OP, it's not really possible to police how left/right wing the answers here are. The best way to tackle this is to read carefully and critically, and read widely to become acquainted with the various schools of thought (political and otherwise) that surround a particular topic.

Hope this helps.

rhodyrooted

Is this a Meta question or are you looking for sources specific to addressing bias in historical works?

TallyHo__Lads

Can you provide any examples of this questions or of answers you think might be inaccurate due to political bias?