Hugh Woolner's US evidence is highly unreliable

B

Bill Wormstedt

Member
The above listed 'article' seems to be buried inside Hugh Woolner's biography, however, appears to be far more of an 'opinion' piece, than what is normally refered to inside a biography. Why wasn't this posted as a regular ET article? If Molony had posted the WHOLE newspaper article he quoted from, without his opinions, it would fit in the biography.

Yes, this is an 'opinion' piece. Molony is again trying to prove that Hugh Woolner could have not done what he stated in his Inquiry testimony. But reading of the article shows that this is NOT a quote from Woolner, as Molony alleges, but actually quoting someone else telling what Woolner had told them. Why else would Woolner refer to himself as "Woolner", if it was a quote from him? Add in the newspaper reporter who wrote the article, who could put his own spin on it, and we have a third person account at best. And - just curious - who is actually being quoted here, because it isn't Woolner.

Given a choice between a third person account, and Inquiry testimony given under oath several days later, I'll pick the Inquiry.
 
Hi Bill, how are you? Interesting that this article is buried on the website. I am not going to spend a lot of time on this, because Senan's claims about Woolner as presented in this article were conclusively disproven quite some time ago. I refer readers to the following threads, particularly the last one:

https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/discus/messages/5665/101305.html?1136150855


https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/discus/messages/5665/77838.html?1155494978


https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/discus/messages/5811/102419.html?1144017886

It is also worth noting that in addition to the accounts mentioned in the above threads, I have several press accounts and one lengthy private interview held in the archives of a university, which were given by Bjornstrom Steffanson, and which confirm the details of Hugh Woolner's accounts.

Thanks for pointing this out Bill, I hope that the bride to be and you are both doing well! :0)

Take care my friend,
Tad
 
Yes Paul, Hugh Woolner wrote a private letter aboard the Carpathia, which matches his later inquiry testimony, and even gives a few more details. This letter was written before the newspaper article which is not even a first-hand account, which Senan gives more credence than Woolner's inquiry testimony and other accounts, and more credence than Steffanson's corraborating private and public accounts, which Senan is unaware of, or omitted. Thanks for reminding me about this Paul, hope all is well.

Kind regards,
Tad
 
It certainly was not the intention to 'bury' this item. It was added as normal and is on the "What's New" page and was sent out with the daily email updates to hundreds of email subscribers.

The item was never submitted as a Research Article for ET Research and I never thought to consider it for that section, it's really too short for ET Research anyway.

This is an opinion piece and the original article accompanies it. There isn't really a section for just opinion pieces... other than the message board itself and in the absence of anywhere better it seemed appropriate to add it to the biography section. I would add other opinion pieces to biographies where they are relevant to a particular passenger or crew member but not many get sent in. Having said that, such a category could be created to differentiate opinion pieces from transcribed articles and pictures etc.

I would certainly welcome more pieces of this kind... at least they get people talking!

Phil
 
Phil:

Thanks for the explanation.

I do like the idea of a separate category to segregate opinion pieces such as this, from the basic re-printing of historical news article. Depending what a researcher may be looking for, they could go after specifically what they wanted (if looking for purely the historical material), and ignore the rest. Or vice versa.
 
Perhaps such articles should be peer reviewed before they are allowed to be accepted? I know this site isn't a scientific journal, but anyone could log into the site, see articles such as this and accept it as fact rather than an opinion piece. >
 
I would credit our readers with a little more discernment.

In principle, peer review is a very good idea, especially for research articles but we have explored it in the past and have never found a practical way to do it. Realistically (and unlike the scientific comparison) the pool of peers for a particular theme would be rather too small to be anonymous and this would likely deter rather than encourage contributions to the site. But in theory I favour it!

On being asked about this particular item I have indicated that I'm more than happy to post a counterpoint to the original if it can be put together and submitted in the usual way.
 

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