In 1999, David Dunning and Justin Kruger published their paper, "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Leads to Inflated Self-Assessments" (pdf). Their research for this peer-reviewed paper shows that people who are unskilled or lacking academic or professional qualifications in a particular field have a tendency to over-estimate their knowledge and skills in that field.
This is an important paper, especially in light of certain critics (e.g., Jeremy Runnells) who over-estimate their abilities in various fields, such as history and theology, in comparison to those with the proper academic and professional qualifications in those fields, and such often results in a mishandling of actual scholarly resources, too.
Dr. James McGrath, a New Testament scholar, did a pretty good job at refuting David Fitzgerald, a Christ-myth enthusiast, in this article. One of his criticisms was that "even though there is obvious dependence on scholarly findings, there is little evidence of awareness of scholarly methods." At the end of this article, McGrath offered a very good solution to this problem, which I will edit slightly to make it a bit more a propos to LDS studies:
This is an important paper, especially in light of certain critics (e.g., Jeremy Runnells) who over-estimate their abilities in various fields, such as history and theology, in comparison to those with the proper academic and professional qualifications in those fields, and such often results in a mishandling of actual scholarly resources, too.
Dr. James McGrath, a New Testament scholar, did a pretty good job at refuting David Fitzgerald, a Christ-myth enthusiast, in this article. One of his criticisms was that "even though there is obvious dependence on scholarly findings, there is little evidence of awareness of scholarly methods." At the end of this article, McGrath offered a very good solution to this problem, which I will edit slightly to make it a bit more a propos to LDS studies:
If you are genuinely interested in the question of [LDS theology/history/Scripture], you should go straight to sources with genuine expertise in this area. You can get everything that [Jeremy Runnells; John Dehlin] offers and more, without the blatant factual errors, and as a result, with more satisfying historical conclusions being drawn.
