How Bias Happens When Nobody Means Harm

This is an excerpt from a chapter in my upcoming book on LDS apologists and narratives, which will be released in October 2026.

Chapter 4
How Bias Happens When Nobody Means Harm

When this book uses the word bias, it does not mean a conspiracy, plot or scheme. It means confirmation bias: the habit of noticing what fits the story we already believe and setting aside what does not fit.

The story may be directionally true, supported by accurate sources. The habit still operates. Historians select some sources, omit others, paraphrase, and connect the dots. They usually do that without intending to mislead anyone. The sentence sounds right to them. To them--and to the people who review their work--it sounds like they are being faithful to the record because that is how they understand the record.

That is why bias is hard to see from the inside.

A settled frame

Once you have read, heard, discussed, and even edited a hundred statements that fit a picture, the hundred-and-first statement that does not fit within the frame sounds like noise.

The “noise” may be Oliver Cowdery’s full 1834 sentence, including the part about the Interpreters. It may be a title page that still says “Translated by Joseph Smith.” It may be a sentence about Cumorah that Joseph had republished. The frame does not delete those sources on purpose. It files them under “we already accounted for that.” Hence, no need to quote it.

But if readers (and reviewers) never see the sentence, they don't know it exists and they cannot tell that a decision--conscious or not--was made to omit it. To the readers (and the reviewers), the source is not “accounted for.” They see only the narrative, not what exists outside the frame.

This is ordinary confirmation bias. We all do it. The questions are whether we catch it before we publish, and whether we correct it when brought to our attention.

Deadlines

Church history is produced on a schedule, on a budget, and with layers of review. Essays have to lock. Manuals have to ship. A glossary has to fit on a screen. In that setting, a familiar phrase is convenient.

Most Latter-day Saints already know the phrase “Urim and Thummim.” Fewer know the Book of Mormon term “Interpreters.” In the current conversation, many people know the phrase “seer stone in the hat.” Each of those can be typed faster than a careful distinction with dates attached.

Speed is not malice. But speed is how a synonym turns into a source. The writer thinks the terms are interchangeable. The reader never sees that the original sources used different words for a reason.

Glossaries and footnotes

A glossary looks like a neutral list of definitions. It is not. When two different historical objects share one entry—or when one entry quietly absorbs the other—readers are being taught what the words are allowed to mean.

That teaching may turn out to be correct. Or it may not be. Either way, it should still be labeled as a decision. Conflating Joseph’s nouns with a later scholar’s nouns is not a convenience. It is an argument that does not look like an argument.

A footnote is an argument that did not make it into the main text. Sometimes that is humility. Sometimes that is focus and avoiding distraction. But sometimes it is how a contrary source is stored where an ordinary reader will never go.

Chapter 2 offered a simple test. If the best quotation on the other side is not in the paragraph, and is not in a note a reader can actually open, the omission is not only about space.

Images

Paintings and films do the same work, only louder.

An image of a young man with his face in a hat, plates covered on the table, will last longer in a child’s mind than a three-page historical introduction. An image of Mesoamerican ruins will last longer than a sentence that says the Church has no official geography.

The painting is not a lie just because it exists. It becomes unmarked evidence when the caption does not say “one reconstruction” or “one tradition.” The artist made a connection. Connections are one of the four acts from Chapter 2. They should be identified as connections.

Small phrases that do a lot of work

“Now known as” is a small phrase with a large effect. It tells readers that a name is a later label. Sometimes that is accurate. Sometimes the early record already used the name, and the phrase teaches a before-and-after sequence that the documents do not support.

Interchangeable terms are a related problem. If a writer moves back and forth among “Urim and Thummim,” “seer stone,” and “Interpreters” as though the original sources did the same thing, the sources should be shown doing it. If only the commentary does it, the commentary is talking, not the documents.

No need for bad faith

None of this requires us to assume bad motives.

The Church History Department has published a set of cultural beliefs that every organization could, and should, emulate: be accountable, listen, work together, speak up, invite and respond to feedback. Those statements assume the people doing the work want it to improve. This book takes them at their word.

Improvement, in that setting, is practical. Restore a clause. Put a date on a reminiscence. Split a glossary entry. Add a caption under a painting. That is not criticism of the men and women who met a deadline. It is the kind of feedback their own cultural beliefs ask for.

Scholars and Church employees are not one group with one motive. Motives are hard to prove and easy to invent. What we can see is the mechanism on the page:

• a paraphrase that replaces the original noun
• a paragraph that quotes Emma but never quotes Oliver
• a classroom map offered as “what educated people think,” with no label that it is a theory

What readers can do

The reader’s job is to "trust, but verify." Recognize terminology that signals opinion presented as fact. Check references. Ask questions when something is unclear or contradictory.

The job is not to psychoanalyze the author. The job is to keep the layers from collapsing: separate what the source says from what we assume, what we infer, and what theory is being presented.

When a sentence leans, ask which of the four acts produced the lean: selection, omission, paraphrase, or connection. Then ask whether a more precise sentence would stand up straight.

This is how each of us as readers can improve our history.

The next chapter demonstrates all of this by reviewing a short book written for faithful readers. The habit of suggesting improvements is easier to learn on a friend than on an opponent.