The new trend to omit notes and bibliography/references
William von Hippel, Social Paradox (2025):
For those of you who would like to take a deeper dive into the data than I provide here, there is a reference section for every chapter listing the research articles with the findings I discuss. Keep in mind, however, that I haven’t listed the dozens (and occasionally hundreds) of additional articles that provide background and meaning to this original research. So please consider the reference section for each chapter a starting point rather than a complete list. Additionally, I don’t include footnotes linking specific ideas in the text to their references, as I find such footnotes distracting when I read books like this one. Rather, I’ve used footnotes to highlight details and tangential ideas that might interest some readers but not others. ("Introduction")
Robert Wright, The God Test (2026):
For some time now, information technology has been eroding the logic behind footnotes and bibliographies. Thirty-five years ago, if an author provided only a fragmentary reference—like “a 1986 paper on back-propagation”—the average reader had little hope of figuring out the full reference, much less tracking down the source. But today if you enter that sequence of words in a good search engine, you’re one click away from reading the paper.
This helps explain why, though several of my past books have devoted more than fifty pages to footnotes and bibliography, this book devotes zero pages. I’d guess that 95 percent of the passages in this book that would normally carry a footnote provide enough information for readers to google their way to the source.
And what about the other 5 percent? Well, I’d guess that 95 percent of those sources can be found via a good large language model. Just show the chatbot a passage from the book and ask it what source it thinks I’m referring to, or what sources might back up what I’m saying.
I know what you’re thinking: But what about the 5 percent of the 5 percent—the handful of references (1 in 400 if you do the math) that can’t be found even through the magic of the latest technology? That’s one thing this note on sources is for. Below I list five sources that underlie specific parts of this book and that might be hard to find on the basis of those parts alone. Then, after that list, I name some sources that I found generally valuable as I researched this book. ("A Note On Sources")
I find this trend of not including footnotes and references in recently published books disappointing. Granted, these books are not meant to be academic, and the lay readers they target may not care about the fine print. Personally, though, I read academic-adjacent books hoping they will connect me to trustworthy, expert-vetted information through authors with a baseline reputation for rigor. I rely on these authors to have performed quality control on the information they are communicating. Not having footnotes and/or a bibliography makes it much harder for readers to dig deeper into specifics, which is often a major reason to pick up a book to begin with.
Admittedly, web search and now LLMs have eroded the need for the meticulous curation of sources traditionally found in bibliographies. Still, the trend, it seems to me, degrades the quality of learning. It also runs counter to what methods like Zettelkasten encourage: rigorous citation and a clear separation between sources and one’s own thoughts.
Who is with me on this?
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Comments
I have seen LLMs dream up references that did not exist. The more LLM generated content floods the world, the less reliable is what we will read. I fully support to give proper, correct references where used.
So: Yes, I am with you on this. 👍💯
I agree more or less about references and citation. Most footnotes have been replaced by page notes at the end of the book and I'm all right with that. I appreciate it when the author can cite an on-line reference instead of a book or published paper that cannot be gotten over the internet, or is behind a paywall.
It is hard to type URLs by hand while reading a book that's not online. Searching by title is probably what most readers will do. Still, I would prefer the URL to be included, if only so that the work can be found in the Wayback machine if necessary.
I am. Footnotes are the best part of "academic-adjacent books". :-)
The texts you quote confuse several issues. First, there are more ways to present footnotes, if one dislikes having too many footnotes.
a) Some authors hide note references in the running text and use a short literal quote in the reference section instead. Here's an example from a reference that points to page 41 of Baumeister's Willpower (2011):
b) Edward Tufte places side notes in a separate column on the side of the running text. It has precedents like medieval glosses.
c) If you reference literature, you don't need a footnote for each reference. Notations like Baumeister (2011) are sufficient, if you resolve them in the references. That's how most of academic writing works. Some authors add a page number in this short notation, if they need more precision. If readers want to look up something, they don't have to search the whole internet, they only need to search within one clearly identifiable source.
Second, a commented reference section after each chapter is an excellent service for readers, but it doesn't replace footnotes.
Third, some authors make it difficult to google stuff, because they don't quote the source literally. Some don't want to be accused of plagiarism, so they disguise the source. Other don't know the literal quote, because they use a note-taking technique that discourages them from saving literal quotes.
Fourth, some authors are inconsiderate of their readers. They have the references, but they don't share them, for whatever reason.
Fifth, some authors don't provide references because they don't have them. They make stuff up.
I consider non-fiction books without easily verifiable sources slop. You don't need AI to create slop. Humans can be sloppy too. :-)