Uncovering Mistakes in Books: William Gibson's Blunder with the Electric Chair

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The discussion centers on the prevalence of mistakes in books, particularly those by well-known authors. A notable example is William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition," where the protagonist incorrectly associates Direct Current (DC) with the electric chair, which historically uses Alternating Current (AC). This error raises questions about the author's knowledge and attention to detail. Participants also mention various books filled with typos and inaccuracies, such as V.S. Ramachandran's "A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness," which lacks proofreading, and issues in textbooks that provide incorrect answers, leading to confusion among readers. The conversation highlights the frustration readers experience when encountering factual errors in both fiction and academic texts, emphasizing the importance of accuracy in published works. Additionally, there are references to common historical myths and misclassifications in educational materials, underscoring the need for careful editing and fact-checking in literature.
TheStatutoryApe
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Mistakes in Books...

Have you ever been reading a book by an auther you enjoy and found to your amazement that they made a mistake with regard to some rather simple bit of knowledge or history?

I just remembered this while poking fun at brits in another thread. William Gibson wrote a book called Pattern Recognition where the main character starts the novel in London and is musing on the differences between the UK and the US. She notes the use of Direct Current in England and jokes to herself that the only thing in the US that still uses DC is the electric chair. And she (William Gibson really) is wrong.
The electric chair was designed to use AC. It was a manuever by Edison during the 'Current Wars' to paint AC power as dangerous. Edison had even lobbied congress to make the legislation enacting execution by electrocution specify the use of AC. It was also a great blunder since the first man to be executed by electrocution actually had to be run through with current twice before he died.

How does Gibson not know this? And why would he make a point of it not knowing? I thought it was a bit disappointing.
 
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Brain thoughts:

DC...hm...my wall doesn't have that...what the heck uses that? hmm...DC...two letter acronym relating to power...association AC...hmm, some significant memory about electric chair...details fuzzy...must be significant. What else uses DC? Practically nothing, except this electric chair thing...
 


This doesn't pertain to knowledge or history, but the book A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness by V.S. Ramachandran is chock full of typos for some reason. It was published by Pi Press, New York, for whatever that's worth. In any event, it doesn't seem like the text got proofread.
 


Last night I was reading Sunny Auyangs "How is Quantum Field Theory possible?" and on page 40 the author has this to say about general covariance:

The exact meaning of covriant is unclear. The problem is especially acute with general covariance, which has been criticised to be vaccuous.

I read the above as "no ever gave me a satisfying explanation, therefore there is none." It takes lot of nerve to write a book which explains concepts that the author does not themselves understand!
 


I'm hurt, after all it was my post you 'poked fun at'.
 


i'm thinking more in textbooks, where they give an answer section and within, there are many incorrect answers. always makes for a confusing waste of time until you realize the answer must be wrong.
 


endless06 said:
i'm thinking more in textbooks, where they give an answer section and within, there are many incorrect answers. always makes for a confusing waste of time until you realize the answer must be wrong.

I have a good textbook on engineering mathematics, not many mistakes but one or two (and always the questions I choose to do as well). I spent ages on a complex differentiation question, couldn't for the life of me get the answer at the back. The good thing about this book is their website has a solutions section with the full answers (not just the number) and when I checked there they had corrected it. Still, not until after 2 hours of attempting to get the answer in the back and convincing myself I was doing it wrong.
 


This is my site dedicated to errata. I haven't kept it up to date.
http://www.erratapage.com"
 
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I don't recall the historical work's title, but my ire was certainly roused when Ibn Hazm was classified as a Maliki scholar, rather than a Zahiri. :mad:
 
  • #10
Civilized said:
Last night I was reading Sunny Auyangs "How is Quantum Field Theory possible?" and on page 40 the author has this to say about general covariance ...

See, for example, the review article

http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0034-4885/56/7/001.
 
  • #11


zoobyshoe said:
This doesn't pertain to knowledge or history, but the book A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness by V.S. Ramachandran is chock full of typos for some reason. It was published by Pi Press, New York, for whatever that's worth. In any event, it doesn't seem like the text got proofread.

Some of my older books are riddled with typos. There was one in particular, I don't remember which, where there seemed to be one on every other page and in some instances it was even hard to tell what the sentence was supposed to be in the first place.
Yours is fairly new though which is odd. You'd think it was typed up on a computer with a spell check. Of course I usually turn mine off because it often does not know some words I use and gets annoying. Manuscripts are still submitted in hardcopy but I would imagine they take them in file form for editing and printing once they are accepted. The editor ought to have had spell check.

Jared said:
I'm hurt, after all it was my post you 'poked fun at'.
But you inspired me. Isn't that good? ;-)
 
  • #12


There are a lot of books out there to help students prep for the SAT and many other standardized tests. Most of them look pretty good, except for ones I've seen from REA (Research and Education Association). Their books are wrought with errors, and the SAT problems bear little resemblance to the actual SAT.

If you need to prep for a standardized test, get any book not put out by REA.
 
  • #13


jimmysnyder said:
This is my site dedicated to errata. I haven't kept it up to date.
http://www.erratapage.com"

A great service you do Jimmy! I'll pour over some dusty tomes and submit material. I have a book or two printed by some idiot who insisted on using 'f' instead of 's' in too many places to even count!
 
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  • #14


There are some history textbooks (along with Wikipedia) which assert that, during WWII, polish people fought Nazis on horseback in one of the battles. My history teacher told us that, according to a history book he'd read, this is a complete myth and never happened. I don't know what book that was so I can't be sure that it didn't happen but if it's a myth then it's a prevalent one.
 
  • #15


TheStatutoryApe said:
A great service you do Jimmy! I'll pour over some dusty tomes and submit material. I have a book or two printed by some idiot who insisted on using 'f' instead of 's' in too many places to even count!
Thomas Jefferson?
 
  • #16


I've seen more than one textbook claiming that Euclid's Elements was an advanced mathematics text or contained just about everything the Greeks knew about geometry. In reality, it was more of an introductory text. Euclid himself wrote a more advanced treatise on conics, never mind the works of Archimedes and Apollonius.
 

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