:::I've had a look at the review listed at top. (I have to say their layout is unclear & confusing, & I didn't notice this one at first.) What book is it talking about? It describes 3 volumes: vol 2 corresponds to vol 1 in the set we have here; vol 3 corresponds to our vol 2; there are only 2 vols mentioned in the listing of contents. Why should a review in Cahner's Business Information of a book about religion be considered superior to the other 3, which at least are in relevant periodicals? Are Google &c; good judges of this sort of thing? 

 :::"OUP will not have the staff to check even a tiny fraction of this stuff, which is why so much dubious content has clearly not been caught." True. However, this actually applies to all "reliable" sources, to a greater or lesser extent. This is a large part of the problem with Wikipedia. The only way to get round it is by a thorough search of all reliable sources on a particular point. You can then analyse them to find why they disagree & try to reach conclusions on the state of scholarship. You can find an example of where I've tried to move towards this at , but even that covers only English-language sources & is probably incomplete even among those. In conclusion, the whole thing's probably impossible.  

 :::Your last remarks are simply repeating what you said earlier & don't require a reply.  

 :::Richard, I agree with what you say. I wasn't really criticizing the article on this point: you can see it wasn't on my original list of points. The reason I raised the issue was that Xandar cited a review criticizing WCE statistics as "anthropologically useless". I was pointing out that the statistics in the article, along with those in articles on other religions, are open to the same criticism. They're basically statistics of nominal adherents, regardless of actual belief & practice. On primary sources, just remember that, even if you phrase carefully to say simply that the primary source says such-&-such, without committing yourself to whether it's true, you're still always selecting, which may be POV in itself. That's a general point; I'm not saying it's relevant here.