Posted on 12/14/2002 12:59:17 PM PST by vannrox
Have you heard of Conway, who wrote standard texts on analysis, real and complex? (Another well-known author is Lang, with a series of texts used in many universities).
Or Halmos, whose measure theory book was a standard undergraduate text and is still recommended in most schools?
Or Arnold, whose book on differential equations is standard? Or Massey on Algebraic topology?
In physics, similarly, Dirac's book on quantum mechanics and Landau-Lifschitz series are still standard. Go check the contributions of these authors before you start saying such nonsense.
Not only is you statment is not based on fact, but you base is on a completely wrong premise, suggesting that inventors of ideas should be the ones writing the textbooks. They do not: these two activities requuire different talants.
Now, which of the above mentioned textbooks have you actually read?
Hmm. Did this semi-phrase mean "care to list 5 counter-examples?" BTW, Dirac isn't my fav physicist. The world isn't pretty.
There is a weakness that was discussed on a thread a while back, perhaps a sub-thread there it was noted that in published papers it is common to list several names as co-authors while often the co-authors didn't have much to do with the article. The lead scientist or the lab assistant down the hall might be listed as co-authors without contributing substantially to the paper, or sometimes without seeing the paper. This practice varies with the publishing house and with the institute.
Dirac isn't my fav physicist
Most scientists do not have "favorites," which tells us about you quite a bit.
Most importantly, you have not read a word written by him. Why don't you learn to read before you make more silly statements.
Now, who is being silly?
a dysfunctional response ...
The story clearly states:
A cunning statistical study has exposed scientists as sloppy ... . When they write up their work and cite other people's papers, most do not bother to read the original.What has this to do directly with "Publish or Perish" (OTHER THAN it may be the result of the pressure to 'P and P', but, that was not the *subject* of this story now was it ...)...
They noticed ... that misprints in references are fairly common, and that a lot of the mistakes are identical. This suggests that many scientists take short cuts, simply copying a reference from someone else's paper rather than reading the original source.
THere is also a self-correcting mechanism: if the results of a related paper are in contradiction with one's own, then the author typically reads it thoroughly. When to do that and to what extent to read --- that is why (in part) you go through a doctoral program.
WHat remains is misprints and inconsequential errors. The authors of the "study" make something out of nothing. Compounding of errors and all that. Perhaps the underlying paper made some assumptions that the 2nd paper doesn't accurately account for and you're making totally different ones in your own paper. Its the academic version of Telephone.
I agree with your concern, and every scientist I know does. That is why it does not happen: as I mantioned earlier, there are self-correcting mecjanisms of which the authors of the study do not show awareness.
When the "error" persists, as a version of Telephone, its was not an inadvertent error but a limitation of knowlege of the whole community. Correcting such "errors" is just what progress is.
{ There is no difference, incidentally, between not reading Newton's papers and those written in twenty years ago. In hard sciences, excellent reviews appear almost immediately. Having the benefit of time, they are usually better written than the orinal papers, and it is more effective to learn from them. In contrast, less scientific disciplines, such as economics and sociology, still insist on reading the original papers. Precisely because this cannot be done well, they are more likely to have Telephone-like results.
Is that why PH keeps posting that link to the Sciam article that has Hardison's joke in it? This article doesn't mention creationists.
I would bet the vast majority of the scientists who do not read the source material are Darwininians. I would have said exclusively, but I suppose random chance would allow a few attentive Darwininians. It would also seem that natural selection favors the non-reading Darwininian. It makes for more interesting just-so stories.
If true that's really scary. Say it ain't so!
I wonder if this has anything to do with evolution?
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