Marked up to be included in the ACH/ALLC 2005 Conference Abstracts book.
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This paper discusses the controversy over the authorship of twelve of the "Federalist" papers as seen and studied by over twenty non-traditional authorship attribution practitioners. The "Federalist" papers were written during the years 1787 and 1788 by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. These 85 propaganda tracts were intended to help get the U.S. Constitution ratified. They were all published anonymously under the pseudonym, "Publius." The general consensus of traditional attribution scholars (although varying from time to time) is that Hamilton wrote 51 of the papers, Madison wrote 14, Jay wrote 5, while 3 papers were written jointly by Hamilton and Madison, and 12 papers have disputed authorship — either Hamilton or Madison.
In 1964, Frederick Mosteller and David Wallace, building on the earlier unpublished work of Frederick Williams and Frederick Mosteller, published their non-traditional authorship attribution study, "Inference and Disputed Authorship: The Federalist." It is arguably the most famous and well respected example from all of the non-traditional attribution studies. It is the most statistically sophisticated non-traditional study ever carried out. There even has been a 40 page paper explicating the statistical techniques of the Mosteller and Wallace study (Francis). Since then, hundreds of papers have cited the Mosteller and Wallace work and over two dozen non-traditional attributiion practitioners have analyzed and/or conducted variations of the original study.
These practitioners wanted to test their statistical approaches against the Mosteller and Wallace touchstone study. Mosteller and Wallace set the boundry conditions for the subsequent work — e.g., not using the Jay articles as a control. Their experimental design and overall report is never questioned. Most of these later practitioners do not select or prepare the input text as rigorously as Mosteller and Wallace — whose own selection and preparation was not as rigorous and complete as it should have been.
This section discusses the way the Federalist papers were
originally published (76 in newspapers and 8 in the book
compilation) and which editions the practitioners chose
for their non-traditional studies — how 84 papers became
85 and how some papers had different numbers in different
editions. The effect that the lack of Hamilton and Madison
holigraphs had on the studies is discussed. The choice of
edition has the potential of profoundly changing the results
of the studies.Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created
from multiple editions, all of which are in the
Public Domain in the United States, unless a
copyright notice is included. Therefore we do NOT
keep these books in compliance with any particular
paper edition, usually otherwise.
The compounding problem of down-loading texts via the internet
is explicated — e.g., one of the texts includes every variant
of every paragraph. It is shown why none of the Federalist
studies used a
This sample cannot contain questionable Hamilton writings. This sample must also fulfill the other criteria of a valid sample — e.g., same genre, same constricted time frame. There also should be a sub-set of this sample set aside for later analysis in order to guard against the charge of cherry picking the style-markers. This is not the same as the Mosteller and Wallace "training sample."
In addition to discussing the way the Madison sample was constructed, what was said about the Hamilton sample will be applied here.
Does the lopsided number of Hamilton papers over Madison papers (51 to 14) pose a problem for the studies? Were the Hamilton and Madison control texts from outside the Federalist papers chosen correctly? Why are these "outside" controls not used by most of the other practitioners? This section goes on to discuss the control problems that arose with the Mosteller and Wallace study and have been perpetuated through the subsequent studies. This section also discusses the other control problems introduced in these studies.
The cumulative effect of NEARLY A THOUSAND
SMALL CHANGES [emphasis mine] has been to
improve the clarity and readability of the
text without changing its original argument.
In the Mosteller and Wallace study, a "little book of decisions" is mentioned. This "book," originally constructed by Williams and Mosteller, contained an extensive list of items that Mosteller and Wallace unedited, de-edited, and edited before beginning the statistical analysis of the texts — items such as quotations and numerals. Unfortunately, neither Williams and Mosteller nor Mosteller and Wallace published the contents of this "little book of decisions" and only mention five of their many decisions in the published work. [Mosteller and Wallace 7, 16, 38-41] The little book has been lost and cannot be recovered or even reconstructed [Mosteller]. This paper goes on to discuss the many ramifications of the "little book" on their study and the subsequent studies. Also, how the loss of the "little book" casts a shadow of "scientific invalidity" over the Mosteller and Wallace work — i.e., it cannot be replicated. Their "little book" was not used by any of the following studies — making meaningful comparisons moot.
This section goes on to list many of the unediting, de-editing, and editing items that need to be considered. It lists several of the mistakes made by the many practitioners and what these mistakes mean to the validity of the studies (e.g.):
Are practitioners (statisticians and non-statisticians) so blinded by the statistical sophistication that the other elements of a valid non-traditional authorship study are ignored?
Do professional historians accept, deny, or show indifference to the body of work that supports the Mosteller and Wallace study? Why did I spend hours searching for a Mosteller and LAWRENCE study of the Federalist papers?
Is the case put forth by Mosteller and Wallace and buttressed by the other non-traditional practitioners nothing but a "Monument" built on sand? What effect does showing the flaws in the Federalist studies have on non-traditional studies in general — i.e., if the best is suspect, what about the rest!