Wikipedia can be a useful tool (I often use it to provide background details involving largely uncontested historical matters), but when partisan allegations or activists are involved, beware!

As an example, take a look at the huge difference between the current Wikipedia entry on George W. Bush, and the Google cached version.

In particular, take note of this paragraph (from the cached version), which has now disappeared:

In February 2004, Eric Boehlert in Salon magazine claimed that Bush's cessation of flying in April, 1972 and his subsequent refusal to take a physical exam came at the same time the Air Force announced its Medical Service Drug Abuse Testing Program, which was officially launched April 21. Boehlert said "according to Maj. Jeff Washburn, the chief of the National Guard's substance abuse program, a random drug-testing program was born out of that regulation and administered to guardsmen such as Bush. The random tests were unrelated to the scheduled annual physical exams, such as the one that Bush failed to take in 1972, a failure that resulted in his grounding." Boehlert remarks that the drug testing took years to implement, but "as of April 1972, Air National guardsmen knew random drug testing was going to be implemented". [7]

In despair, on July 27, 2004, I even called the Air Force. They looked and looked, but couldn't confirm the regulation. Finally I sent an email to the "Air Force Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment (ADAPT) Program Manager, Air Force Medical Operations Agency" in Leesburg, Virginia, simply asking him to confirm the existence of the regulation. It was never answered.

All I wanted to do was verify the existence of one single regulation -- Air Force Regulation 160-23. It's all over the Internet, but in a pattern which has become numbingly familiar, all the links go back to a single source -- Eric Boehlert's original piece in Salon.com.

The fact that I couldn't find the regulation, of course, does not mean there was no such regulation. But what I'd like to know is what special skills do super sleuths like Boehlert have that enable them to unearth regulations that I couldn't find after diligent searches, which even the Air Force couldn't point me to, and which a retired colonel (Joseph Campenni) said did not exist?

Blogging has its limits, and among them is the fact that it is impossible to disprove the existence of a fact that cannot be confirmed.

But when unprovable facts disappear entirely, I worry that the Internet might be developing Alzheimers.

I think this touches on the tension between "high trust" and "low trust" sources. In his discussion of Reutersgate linked by InstaPundit yesterday, Ed Driscoll quoted from a 2004 post by Glenn Reynolds about the essence of the distinction (between the traditionally "high trust" MSM, and the "low trust" blogosphere):

The Internet, on the other hand, is a low-trust environment. Ironically, that probably makes it more trustworthy.

That's because, while arguments from authority are hard on the Internet, substantiating arguments is easy, thanks to the miracle of hyperlinks. And, where things aren't linkable, you can post actual images. You can spell out your thinking, and you can back it up with lots of facts, which people then (thanks to Google, et al.) find it easy to check. And the links mean that you can do that without cluttering up your narrative too much, usually, something that's impossible on TV and nearly so in a newspaper.

(This is actually a lot like the world lawyers live in -- nobody trusts us enough to take our word for, well, much of anything, so we back things up with lots of footnotes, citations, and exhibits. Legal citation systems are even like a primitive form of hypertext, really, one that's been around for six or eight hundred years. But I digress -- except that this perhaps explains why so many lawyers take naturally to blogging).

My dark side would have me point out that lawyers are, by their very nature, untrustworthy creatures, because they are partisan advocates. Hired guns, if you will. A bit like partisan political activists. When facts are contested, they not only don't take things on faith, it is their responsibility to their client to challenge them -- just as it is the duty of their opponent to prove them. The law, like the blogosphere, thus tends to be a "low trust" environment.

Back to the Air Force regulation in question (and I think this is equally applicable to the discussion of Observer reporter Jennifer Copestake's citation of the Iraq Penal Code)...

Who has the burden of proof in these matters? The "low trust" blogger, so impertinent as to question an unsupported citation? Or the "high trust" citation itself -- of a supposedly authoritative source which can't be confirmed?

I'm not sure whether Salon.com fits into the "high trust" or the low trust category, nor do I know where Wikipedia fits in. But I do know that no blogger -- and no lawyer -- could get away with citing unverifiable statutes or regulations.

Might it be time to revive the Reagan "trust but verify" doctrine?

I think the burden of verification should be on whoever offers the "citation."

(You know... It's a little thing called a "link.")

AFTERTHOUGHT: I'm sorry to sound so cranky about all of this. Maybe it's because of my legal background, but it's hard to think of any better way to annoy a lawyer than throwing an unverifiable "law" in his face.

There's an old expression among lawyers: "If you don't have the facts, argue the law, and if you don't have the law, argue the facts."

Reduced to a similar expression, what I'm complaining about would read like this: "if you don't have the law, argue the law anyway!"

Sorry, but it violates my low standards.

Kindly show me the law, and I'll be glad to apologize.

(Until then, I'm going to have to wonder whether people who cite unverifiable laws and regulations might deserve a lower trust ranking than even lawyers.)