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Case Study: Source Use & Citation - Stanley Milgram's Obedience Experiment

Alexander Grelier
9/3/18

Case Study: Source Use & Citation
Stanley Milgram's Obedience Experiment
https://psmag.com/social-justice/electric-schlock-65377

1.  From analyzing Bess' work with his sources, what standards or rules does he seem to be following for citing his work? What information is provided the first or second or third (etc.) time a source is noted? 

- When Bess sites the work he is taking examples or inspiration from, the first time he sites the title, author, publication date, and the publisher. When siting the same work a second time, he only uses the author and title in his sources. If he ends up having to cite it three times, he will use the term "Ibid", which means that it already been cited in a previous note.

2.  Bess' work provides us with example of "Annotated" notes. (Examples: 3, 5, 6, 8, 11, 25). Based on these examples, what do you understand annotated to mean?

- My understanding of the word "annotated" in this context is Bess stating his opinion on a certain controversial topic, or needing to add further explanation. For instance, if there a controversial statement and he feels that the reader might be confused or offended, he will add an explanation on why the excerpt is necessary for the full understanding.

3. Which notes do not have a page number citation? Why might that be? There is more than one explanation. Compare the notes pages with the reading passage itself.  (Make sure you consider how notes 10-14 are different, and why the author used so many specific notes, instead of one, even though he is dealing with just one work (Milgram)!

- Lots of his citations don't have page numbers because in those cases, specific location of that page isn't needed. Some occasions where a page number isn't needed is when he is referencing the text as a whole, and a specific spot isn't necessary. Some notes that don't have page numbers include notes 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 15-19, 24, & 25. 

4. How did Bess credit his sources in the text to make it obvious when he is working with the words of other authors? In other words, if we lost the notes pages and the bibliography, why would we still know the sources Bess was using? What would we not know about his use of the source if we didn't have the notes pages?

- Bess credited the authors of works he was taking words from and made it obvious by including their names and quotation marks. For example, in note 2, he states "In Ordinary Men, Christopher Brown provides. . . ". He makes sure to use the author's name in addition to the notes. Although, if we didn't have the notes page, we wouldn't get URL's and substantial descriptions needed for Michael Bess' work.

5. In the passage you read, Bess is working with many primary and secondary sources, but makes extensive use of one in particular. Given how extensively he is using the work of other historians or researchers, what makes his argument original?

 - Although he uses work from lots of other historians and researchers, his argument is original because he takes specific incidents and uses the evidence gained from that to come up with his own ideas, interpretation, and opinion.

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