Archaeological and Historical Evidence

 A study done by;

 John Hilton and the Berkeley Group

A more sophisticated approach was taken by John Hilton and non-LDS colleagues at Berkeley.  The "Berkeley Group's" method relied on non-contextual word patterns, rather than just individual words. This more conservative method was designed from the ground up, and required works of at least 5,000 words.

The Berkeley Group first used a variety of control tests with non-disputed authors (e.g. works by Mark Twain, and translated works from German) in an effort to:

demonstrate the persistence of wordprints despite an author's effort to write as a different 'character'

demonstrate that wordprints were not obliterated by translation (e.g. two different authors rendered by the same translator would still have different wordprints).

The Berkeley Group's methods have since passed peer review, and were used to identify previously unknown writings written by Thomas Hobbes.

The Berkeley Group compared Book of Mormon texts written by Nephi and Alma with themselves, with each other, and with work by Joseph, Oliver, and Solomon Spaulding. Each comparison is assessed based upon the number of "rejections" provided by the model. The greater the number of rejections, the greater the chance that the two texts were not written by the same author. Tests with non-disputed texts showed that two texts by the same author never scored more than 6 rejections; thus, one cannot be certain if scores between 1–6 were written by the same or different authors. Scores of 0 rejections makes it statistically likely the two texts were written by the same author.

However, seven or more rejections indicates that the texts were written by a different author with a high degree of probability:

# of Rejections Certainty of being

different authors

7 99.5%

8 99.9%

9 99.99%

10 99.997%

Results:  The results are striking:

Recall that any test over 6 indicates different authorship; 1–6 or less is indeterminate; 0 is same author. Each x represents one test

Furthermore, each "rejection" is statistically independent—this means that the chance of two different authors being the product the same person can be determined by multiplying the chance of each individual failure.

Thus the chance of Nephi and Alma being the same author is found by:

chance of 7 rejections x 8 rejections x 9 rejections x 10 rejections

= 0.005 x 0.001 x 0.0001 x 0.00003

= 0.000000000000015

=1.5 x 10-14

This is a roughly 1 in 15 trillion chance of Nephi and Alma having the same author.

Authors                             Cumulative chance of being the same author

Nephi and Alma             1.5 x 10-14

Joseph Smith and Alma             2.5 x 10-5

Joseph Smith and Nephi less than 2.7 x 10-20

Oliver Cowdery and Alma 6.25 x 10-17

Oliver Cowdery and Nephi less than 8.1 x 10-19

Spaulding and Alma             less than 3 x 10-11

Spaulding and Nephi             less than 7.29 x 10-28

 
Conclusion:

As John Hilton put the matter, if wordprinting is a valid technique, then this analysis suggests that it is statistically [defenseless] to claim that Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, or Solomon Spaulding wrote the 30,000 words in the Book of Mormon attributed to Nephi and Alma.

The Book of Mormon contains work written by more than one author.  Those authors were not Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, or Solomon Spaulding. 

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Source & Additional Information. 

...  What Can Stylometry Tell Us about the Book of Mormon Authorship?  #389

...  Is it Possiable that a Single Auther Wrote the Book of Mormon?  #399