Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 6/2/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>
wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 5/31/06, Ray Saintonge
<saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
And we
haven't even mentioned the usefulness of the yellow pages in
establishing the existence of a business over a time frame.
>It's even easier to put false information into the yellow pages section.
>
>
So? That doesn't mean that every entry has false information.
No, it doesn't. However, it does mean that a phone book isn't a
*reliable* source.
That conclusion is not logical..If you are going to be imposing such
strict criteria on one kinde of publication you should be applying these
criteria to them all. Very few publications would pass your test of
reliability.
What other reliable publications are there that are easy to put false
information into? I don't think we should consider as reliable
sources wikis, or random Internet websites, or the newspaper
classifieds sections either.
There are millions of academic publications - ones that actually
attempt to verify the information they publish. To call that "very
few" is ludicrous.
I am perhaps less willing than you to idolize the "peer-reviewed"
academic publications. There have certainly been recent instances where
medical publications with very high repute like the New England Journal
of Medicine have had to print retractions because of bad material that
was supplied to them. Doing a full scale peer review, especially in the
sciences can be an expensive undertaking. Who pays for that? Even
sending someone to review the author's source data is expensive. Once
you have somebody there, establishing that the data was cooked amounts
to undertaking a forensic audit. Even governments prefer to believe the
self-evaluations provided by pharmaceutical companies. If things are so
shaky in such a crucial area as medicine, one can only wonder about less
important subjects. Maybe the whole peer review process is a myth, and
wikis have a greater potential for effective peer review.
At least if the "National Enquirer" reports that as a result of a
Hollywood startlet's friendliness with her German shephard she gave
birth to a "humadog" I know that they are the ultimate authority on such
matters, and I better not waste my time looking for peer reviews.
Ec