Historian Wolfgang Hardtwig [de] wrote: His [Ranke's] first work Geschichte der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494–1514 (History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations from 1494 to 1514) (1824) was a great success.
It already showed some of the basic characteristics of his conception of Europe, and was of historiographical importance particularly because Ranke made an exemplary critical analysis of his sources in a separate volume, Zur Kritik neuerer Geschichtsschreiber (On the Critical Methods of Recent Historians).
Newspapers, television and the Internet were frequently used as sources of orienting information, but their credibility varied depending on the actual topic at hand" (Savolainen, 2007).
A newer position, in accordance with, among others, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Thomas Kuhn, understands both science and humanities as determined by researchers' preunderstanding and paradigms.
An example of a book that turns methodology upside-down and uses it to evaluate produced knowledge is Katzer; Cook & Crouch (1998).
Harris proposes possible causes for these distortions and analyzes the Albert study as an example of myth making in the history of psychology.
The basics of eyewitness fallibility includes factors such as poor viewing conditions, brief exposure, and stress.
More subtle factors, such as expectations, biases, and personal stereotypes can intervene to create erroneous reports.
Loftus (1996) discuss all such factors and also shows that eyewitness memory is chronically inaccurate in surprising ways.
An ingenious series of experiments reveals that memory can be radically altered by the way an eyewitness is questioned after the fact.
It is about a free press and an open society, including the protecting information sources from being persecuted (cf., Whistleblower).
A recent example is reported by Healy (2008) about North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
[8] Much interest in evaluating Internet sources (such as Wikipedia) is reflected in the scholarly literature of library and information science and in other fields.
Examples of literature examining Internet sources include Chesney (2006), Fritch & Cromwell (2001), Leth & Thurén (2000) and Wilkinson, Bennett, & Oliver (1997).
"In history, the term historical method was first introduced in a systematic way in the sixteenth century by Jean Bodin in his treatise of source criticism, Methodus ad facilem historiarium cognitionem (1566).
As written above, modern source criticism in history is closely associated with the German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886), who influenced historical methods on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, although in rather different ways.
These books provided a seven-step procedure (here quoted from Howell & Prevenier, 2001, p. 70–71): Gudmundsson (2007, p. 38) wrote: "Source criticism should not totally dominate later courses.
The empiricist movement in history brought along both "source criticism" as a research method and also in many countries large scale publishing efforts to make valid editions of "source materials" such as important letters and official documents (e.g. as facsimiles or transcriptions).
Historiography and historical method include the study of the reliability of the sources used, in terms of, for example, authorship, credibility of the author, and the authenticity or corruption of the text.
It was subsequently considerably developed by German scholars in what was known as "the higher criticism", a term no longer in widespread use.
Also related is form criticism and tradition history which try to reconstruct the oral prehistory behind the identified written sources.