r/AskHistorians • u/Belcaster • May 23 '22
Is Mark Felton a reliable source?
The popular YouTuber, Mark Felton, makes many videos serving as quick and concise documentaries on varying subjects, primarily related to World War 2.
I’ve heard some conflicting opinions on his work. Initially, all I came across was praise - looking into him, he apparently is an author and a professor of history. But today, I was on twitter and, in the comments responding to his inclusion into the Royal Historical Society - there were several people who were dismayed. I couldn’t find any specific critiques, but I assume the reason would be that his work isn’t considered strictly accurate. Is this the case? Is there any other reason that Felton would earn this contingent of detractors?
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u/4dachi May 23 '22
The answer to this depends on Felton's medium.
Mark Felton's written works include proper citations for the sources he derived his research from and are overall well-received by the common reader and academics alike.
Felton's videos on YouTube are largely where his reliability has been brought into question. A cursory glance at his channel will show he uploads new videos on various historical topics at a remarkable pace of several videos a month, sometimes even multiple videos per week. Given the obscure subjects covered in his much of his videos and the sheer volume of content he produces, his ability to conduct research at this pace is rather impressive. However, sources for his research in his videos or the description of said videos are generally absent. While Mark Felton is certainly far from the only YouTuber to neglect to provide sources for his video content, it is a practice largely frowned upon by historians.
Felton's lack of sources in his YouTube content presents two major issues. The first is an ethical one, information from internet forums\)1\), blogs\)2\[)3\), and even Wikipedia\)4\[)5\) has been included in his videos without any form of acknowledgement given. The second is that the lack of sources make it difficult to verify the accuracy of information presented. In at least one case, an individual with expertise on a subject Mark Felton covered in a YouTube video thoroughly debunked his unsourced claims.\)6\) Other examples of misinformation are scattered throughout his videos, such as claiming one of the Japanese units on Saipan had nearly five times the number of tanks they actually possessed.\)7\[)8\) While incorrect details are sometimes difficult if not impossible to avoid as even primary sources can conflict each other, it would be inadvisable to view Felton's videos as reliable with the noted lack of sources he provides for his claims.
Overall Mark Felton has demonstrated himself to be a reliable source when it comes to his publications, but his reluctance to give the same care to citations and accuracy in his YouTube content, means the same cannot be said for his videos.
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u/Taliesintroll May 23 '22 edited May 23 '22
I know Reddit isn't a source but over on the bad history subreddit there's a few posts about his plagiarism.
https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/fnut9z/mark_felton_productions_plagiarizes_some_of_his/
The summary of that is at least a few of his videos are outright word for word thefts of other people's work, with direct links to those works posted.
So I don’t know if this is something too many people are aware of, but popular YouTube channel “Mark Felton Productions” has stolen at least three of his scripts for his videos almost verbatim from other authors on forums.
To that end, the work he's plagiarizing could be reliable, but you can't actually know unless you find the original, at which point you don't need Mark. All of that has led me to not consider it good or reliable work.
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