re: #1 lawhawk

It appears as if there is a rash of problems with not citing sources:

Endarkenment now

[…]

But not all critics are trolls, and not all disagreements are matters of opinion. I don’t think the degree of flubs that are coming out in Pinker’s work can be explained away as inevitable results of public exposure, and I don’t think he is uniquely targeted by critics with politics that disagree with his. Any writer who aspires to have his work read by hundreds of thousands of people, whose words may influence political and business leaders, should be held to the highest standard of accuracy.

For me, the bottom line is that the kind of money harvested by Pinker’s books should support a few fact-checkers and research assistants to check the footnotes and provide additional sources.

[…]

See original at: Steven Pinker’s fake enlightenment: His book is full of misleading claims and false assertions