A couple of weeks ago, Nature, the once respected science magazine, published a news feature that claimed that Wikipedia was just as accurate, if not more so, than the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Now the venerable Encyclopaedia has struck back, having conducted its own analysis of the Nature study. According to The Register,

Where the evidence didn’t fit, says Britannica, Nature’s news team just made it up. Britannica has called on the journal to repudiate the report, which was put together by its news team.

The Britannica response is here (PDF file).

Why did Nature do this? The Register concludes:

Perhaps the clue lies not in the news report, but in the evangelism of the accompanying editorial. Nature’s news and features editor Jim Giles, who was responsible for the Wikipedia story, has a fondness for “collective intelligence”, one critical website suggets.
“As long as enough scientists with relevant knowledge played the market, the price should reflect the latest developments in climate research,” Giles concluded of one market experiment in 2002.
The idea became notorious two years ago when DARPA, under retired Admiral Poindexter, invested in an online “terror casino” to predict world events such as assassinations. The public didn’t quite share the sunny view of this utopian experiment, and Poindexter was invited to resign.
What do these seemingly disparate projects have in common? The idea that you can vote for the truth.
We thought it pretty odd, back in December, to discover a popular science journal recommending readers support less accurate information. It’s even stranger to find this institution apparently violating fundamental principles of empiricism.
But these are strange times–and high summer for supporters of junk science.

Ah, that “consensus” thing again…