Quote Originally Posted by marct View Post
Furthermore, I totally agree that a lot of citations and footnotes are, in all probability, an interference with an FM as a training document. This is one of the reasons why I totally agree with Adam's comment that there should have been two versions - one with and one without citations.

The thing is, though, that by far the major source for doctrine is the collective experience of the community of practice, not the work of scholars. The primary method of establishing validity in document is the extensive vetting process, not reflection of an existing body of published scholarship. So I'm just not sure what the value of a "critical edition" would be.

To beat my dead horse a little more, for Dr. Price to criticize the doctrine for a paucity of citations would be the same as the doctrine writers criticizing him for not vetting his critical essay with them. It would be unreasonable for doctrine writers to expect a scholar to follow their method of establishing validity just as it is unreasonable for Price to expect doctrine writers to follow his method of establishing validity (while again noting that Price's questioning the scholarship of the manual was a red herring since what he was really concerned with was propagating his personal political ideology).

I suspect that the lesson future doctrine writers may draw from this little episode is that the "value added" of trying to integrate scholarly work isn't worth the hassle.