In the Montgomery County article the writer said that of the 18 Montgomery Counties in the United States, most are named after Richard Montgomery. This is a blanket statement. It may very well be true, but is it reliable? We have only that person's word to go on. It took ma a half-hour to verify that it was true for that county in Missouri; others have questioned that eponym for the counties in Florida and Pennsylvania. Who knows about the rest? I strongly believe that a person that makes a comment using words like "all" or "most" has a responsibility for the intellectual rigour of that statement. Without that we become participants in the perpetuation of error.
A response from the writer who had originally changed "some" to "most":
In fact, I had personally checked that it was true for all the ones I had entered. It hardly took a half hour for each one for me: I had just done a Google search on "Montgomery County named" and looked at all the listings. I don't think it took as much as a half hour for me to check the totality of all the counties!!!
Since research had been done to verify this, it would have been a good idea to describe the research done and sign it.
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