On this blog we propose adjustments and improvements to historical narratives to make them (i) more accurate, (ii) more transparent, and (iii) less biased.
This is all in the pursuit of clarity, charity and understanding.
The most obvious examples involve content regarding the origin and setting of the Book of Mormon, including the Gospel Topics Essays, the notes in the Joseph Smith Papers, and the Saints book, volume 1.
All these and other content should be easy to correct, particularly where the errors and bias are obvious, such as the omission of references to Cumorah and the Urim and Thummim.
Instead of seeking to accommodate (if not promote) SITH* and M2C**, the authors of these materials could simply include the actual historical sources and enable readers to make informed decisions.
Instead of omitting what Joseph and Oliver taught by emphasizing what their critics said, the materials should focus on and emphasize what Joseph and Oliver taught.
While it is not feasible to recall printed material, changes to electronic versions is easy and should be done promptly. Most Latter-day Saints, especially non-English speakers, rely on the electronic versions already.
This type of adjustment is common in the secular world.
The Church History Department should follow this example, described in an article in the Wall St. Journal that points out how a scientific manual for judges recently removed inaccurate and biased material regarding climate change.
In December [2025] the Federal Judicial Center, the research and education agency for the federal courts, published its latest edition of the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. A joint product with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the manual is billed as a resource for judges deciding complex scientific cases.
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The guide advises judges on how to handle a case of disagreement between scientific experts. Judges should consider, “Is this a case of truly unsettled science?” the guide poses, “Or is it a case of relatively settled science, in which one party has recruited experts who interpret the evidence differently than most of the community?”
In case judges didn’t get the hint, the paragraph concludes this “sometimes occurs as a result of strategic manipulation from stakeholders who stand to be harmed if the public were to understand the true state of scientific consensus” such as in the cases of “tobacco, ozone depletion, and climate change.”
That trio gives the game away: Anyone who disagrees on climate is akin to those who deny that cigarettes cause cancer, A footnote to the section refers readers to “Michael E. Mann, The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back our Planet” and “Naomi Oreskes, The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change.” These are polemical texts.
The manual’s Reference Guide on Climate Science was written by Jessica Wentz and Radley Horton of Columbia University. Ms. Wentz is at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, whose “core mission” is to “develop and promulgate legal techniques to combat the climate crisis and advance climate justice.” She also works with the Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project, which says it helps judges “understand the scientific and technical evidence before them.”
The good news is that this one-sided advocacy caught the attention of House Judiciary Committee members Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) and Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), who wrote to the Judicial Conference of the United States. The “scientific” contributions to the manual “appear to have the underlying goal of predisposing federal judges in favor of plaintiffs alleging injuries from the manufacturing, marketing, use or sale of fossil fuel products,” they wrote. Why are taxpayers funding an exercise in judicial indoctrination?
Twenty-seven state Attorneys General—including from West Virginia, Florida, Idaho, Montana, New Hampshire, Texas and Wyoming—also objected to the manual’s bias and asked that the chapter be withdrawn. Article III of the Constitution “guarantees every litigant . . . the right to an independent and impartial tribunal,” the AGs write.
And, what do you know, on Friday Judge Robin Rosenberg, director of the Federal Judicial Center, wrote to West Virginia Attorney General John McCoskey saying “the climate science chapter” has been omitted from the revised Reference Manual. The letter offered no explanation, but you can guess.
This might be a case of all’s well that ends well, except that someone on the Judicial Center was either asleep or tried to slip ideology into what should be “a dispassionate guide,” to borrow Justice Kagan’s words. A public accounting of how that happened would be useful.
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* SITH = stone-in-the-hat narrative that contradicts what Joseph and Oliver taught about translating the plates by means of the Urim and Thummim that came with the plates
**M2C = the Mesoamerican/two-Cumorahs theory that contradicts what Joseph and Oliver taught about the hill Cumorah/Ramah in western New York.
