Well, I'm torn. I generally like Ian's videos. A Youtube video is not meant to be held to the standard of a reference book, but like a reference book it "last forever" once you publish it, and bad info is thereby released forever. 40 years from now someone will find their exact Krieghoff Luger they found at a yard sale on video and it will convince them its real.
As to books that don't cite sources, or aren't footnoted properly, its a tough thing - gun books aren't really academic papers imo. Generally you write a book to be both useful factually, but also entertaining. What we tried to do was start from scratch on our books and dismiss older works from the start - we used original documents as sources, many of which we just reproduced in the book as evidence and if an older book lined up with our findings we included notes to point that out. Much of 98k source info is collector observation as well - serial studies, data sheets, etc. What Bruce and I did was actually listen to collectors around the world who have collected and discussed this stuff for years. Many authors I have met are very narcissistic and not open (generally) to input from people they consider beneath their level of study on a subject - maybe thats what makes someone heady enough to write a book. This is where you get those weird theories that turn into "collector fact" later, from those old books. Bruce and I are each half narcissistic I guess, but together we were narcissistic/dumb enough to do the series. Really though, we tried not to present "theories" in the books either, but if we did we clearly labeled them as such instead of presenting them as facts. A few will bear out in the future as correct as the next generation of collectors writes books and improves on what we did - some will be reworked as almost right. So far none have been completely wrong..... so far. But I'm open to being wrong, halfway.
As to books that don't cite sources, or aren't footnoted properly, its a tough thing - gun books aren't really academic papers imo. Generally you write a book to be both useful factually, but also entertaining. What we tried to do was start from scratch on our books and dismiss older works from the start - we used original documents as sources, many of which we just reproduced in the book as evidence and if an older book lined up with our findings we included notes to point that out. Much of 98k source info is collector observation as well - serial studies, data sheets, etc. What Bruce and I did was actually listen to collectors around the world who have collected and discussed this stuff for years. Many authors I have met are very narcissistic and not open (generally) to input from people they consider beneath their level of study on a subject - maybe thats what makes someone heady enough to write a book. This is where you get those weird theories that turn into "collector fact" later, from those old books. Bruce and I are each half narcissistic I guess, but together we were narcissistic/dumb enough to do the series. Really though, we tried not to present "theories" in the books either, but if we did we clearly labeled them as such instead of presenting them as facts. A few will bear out in the future as correct as the next generation of collectors writes books and improves on what we did - some will be reworked as almost right. So far none have been completely wrong..... so far. But I'm open to being wrong, halfway.
