The Limitations of Research – It’s about Learning More than Knowing

The Limitations of This Research – It’s about Learning More than Knowing

No sooner did I launch my site this week than I received a message from a noted Franco-American genealogist and historian disputing a point in one of the articles on this site: I had lumped Lewiston in with Waterville, Maine among the earlier Franco-American communities in New England. It was a point made in passing and didn’t affect either my original research or its conclusions. My inclusion of Lewiston was based on a secondary source, and that secondary source had a source that I have not had a chance to check. Since I never claimed to be an expert on Lewiston (if, indeed, I’m an expert on anything) and the genealogist in question claimed his information came from an examination of primary sources, I eliminated my reference to Lewiston.

Still, I made the change based on trusting a source at second hand, and not through an independent verification of the facts with my own eyes – which is the only trustworthy approach. And even then, I’ll check again. I didn’t make a change to please anyone else, I made the change because I wasn’t sure. What Nietzsche termed “the intellectual conscience” told me it was best to err on the side of caution. I’m well aware that one of the drawbacks of Internet publishing is that sources and details generally do not get the complete and independent vetting and critical examination they receive in standard publishing. Any crank can (and does) say anything he or she likes and pass it off as fact. May I never be numbered among them!

However, the Lewiston example demonstrates the limitations of the type of research on this site. It requires a firm attitude that it is more about learning than it is about knowing. Or, as my sister has said, in this type of research you know something – until you don’t. It’s not just likely, it is definite that new research will come to light which will importantly alter at least the interpretation of the facts in evidence on this site. It is possible to see the primary sources with our own eyes, to reason logically, to check the facts and check again – and still get it wrong.

For example, suppose in 150 years a researcher were to try to reconstruct the facts of my life. He or she would find that in the 1970, 1980 and 1990 censuses, David Gerard Vermette lived in Plymouth County, Massachusetts. In the 2000 census, our researcher-of-the-future would find me living in another county elsewhere in the State. Our researcher might conclude that I had lived in Plymouth County for nearly thirty years before I moved to another part of Massachusetts, and that I had lived in Massachusetts my entire life. And our researcher would be dead wrong.

In 1982 I moved to Maryland and lived there for five years. I went to college there and I met my future wife there. After that, I lived in Western Massachusetts, about 100 miles west of my hometown, where I got my first post-college job, which began my career as a researcher. Then I returned to my hometown, where I lived for a couple years, before moving again, to the place where our hypothetical researcher would find me in 2000. (Even this account is simplified, since it leaves out assorted not unimportant side trips and numerous adventures.) In lieu of some other datum telling our researcher to look in Maryland, he or she might form a completely wrong view of my whereabouts, and therefore of my life. I choose this example since those years in Maryland and in Western Massachusetts were formative and vitally important to the person I became and am becoming.

The point of this example is to show that a superficial view, even of primary sources, not to mention secondary ones, even if we reason logically from our sources, can yield false conclusions, even with care and good intention. This is especially the case with my subjects who were obscure working folks who lived long ago. These are the people, not only researched, but also celebrated on this web site and, in terms of documentary evidence, the footprints they left are small and blown by the wind. (However, the footprints they left on the world, in our skills and talents, and in our minds and in our hearts will never be effaced.) Since I seem to have an intellectual conscience, I try, nevertheless, to get the details right. I care about getting them right; I worry over them and correct them when I find they’re wrong.

But this investigation of mine is not simply genealogical. It is cultural, it is personal and it is ongoing. It is a reconstruction of the past, in order to inform the present and the future. It is a living thing, active, fluid, subject to change, subject to error, subject to subjectivity.

April 14, 2006