> it's better to just focus on the source material and ignore what the middle man has to say. When you can go to the primary source, by all means, be my guest

> it's better to just focus on the source material and ignore what the middle man has to say. When you can go to the primary source, by all means, be my guest and go for it. Nobody's arguing against that. The trouble is you're not going to get very far with this approach unless you somehow have independent access to all the primary sources and also the time and resources to sift through them. If you do -- fantastic. If you're like the vast majority of people, though, this is frequently not the case for you. And whenever it's not, ignoring every middleman altogether is the equivalent of putting your head in the sand and declaring everyone is wrong.