Re: Questions

On 25 Oct 2006 16:25:52 -0700, "Tom McDonald" <kiltmac@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


Peter Alaca wrote:
Tom McDonald wrote:
news:1161745769.799172.244620@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Inger E.(Norah) wrote:

IEJ: For the record - There are numerous works, type we call
'arbetskopior' in other word not printed to be edited in public but
to different meetings with specialists.
As it happened in 1993 I had direct contact with SGI(Statens
Geotekniska Insititute) in Linköping, not to mention that I in my
direct surrounding at that time had three of the best specialists
including one at that time working at the University, BUT I was told
to use a lower grade in my C-essay so it would be possible for
anyone reading it to go finding the referred work at a University or
major Library elsewhere. Had anyone of you gone thru the other
geologic works or for that matter the archaeologic works I have in
my ref.list you would have had same information and different
references for that information given in the ref.works!!!!!
[...]

You know, it really doesn't matter how many work products you may have
sole access to, nor how many folks have helped you out with your
papers. Ultimately, if it isn't published and available to anyone who
wants to read it, it is effectively nonexistent.

Either give the exact reference(s) that support your contention, or
*** off.

Oh hell, just cut out the first part (which you can't perform anyhow).

Note that she calls publications inferior ("lower grade")
to working papers.

Jesus! Is that what she meant? I couldn't machete my way through that
jungle of verbiage well enough to understand what she meant. I thought
she couldn't possibly mean that a person's notes were inferior to peer
reviewed publications.

Now certainly, it is vital to be able to see what the raw data are, and
how one develops one's thinking on a research topic over time. But to
claim that scientists' published work is generally less valuable than
their notes is...well, it's fucking odd.

Now it is true that some published work could benefit from access to
the raw data; and it is further true that sometimes the data are lost
or withheld. But if that is common in the Madam's experience, then I
shudder to think of the state of Swedish science.

Careful. Not being able to get access to the data is real as is even
the claim to have 'lost' the data. In another field, In another field,
no one has yet seen much of the data used by Mann when deriving his
infamous hockeystick curve and I believe he now claims that he can
neither find no reconstruct some of it.

I wonder whether she is talking about non-rigourous, more journalistic
publications. Certainly, I have often seen where good scientists
publish something for public consumption, or for non-peer-reviewed
venues that is much inferior to their own working notes. But that can't
be what Inger decided to rely on for her 'essays', is it? Is it?

Mann's work was peer reviewed by reviewers who never even asked to see
the data.

But it would help answer the question Doug and others have often
wondered aloud (or at least a-keyboard): why does Inger seem to think
well of web sites for tourists, and those dumbed-down-for-the-masses.

Because they are usually found when you are looking for a quick
refrence to something you already know. But, unless you already 'know'
you can't trust this stuff when your only source is a tourist site.
So, when someone refers me to a tourist site, I'm not really trusting
the tourist site. I'm trusting the person who referred me to it.

I think a breakthrough in understanding Our Lady of the Scornful
Haplessness may be occurring, right as we read!



Eric Stevens
.