From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed 18 Dec 2002 - 06:05:23 GMT
>From: Vincent Campbell <VCampbell@dmu.ac.uk>
>Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
>Subject: RE: memetic error (?)
>Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 16:28:48 -0000
>
> <Let me just add a bit: Legal citation is fundamentally different
>from
> > scientific citation because of its adversarial nature. Scientists don't
> > get paid to attack each other's work. They make progress when they can
> > build on it. As a result they don't need to scrutinize every word as
> > closely.>
> >
> What not even getting the names of papers right?
>
Well I don't know if scientists are nonadversarial. If they come across an
idea they find mistaken they might think it necessary to point this out or
evince evidence for a competing view. Scientists might not "attack" others
as much as lawyers but they might assert their views quite vocally if
somebody is veering into their area of expertize.
A good scientist would hopefully have read and understood the articles which
they cite, especially if their work is either based on the previous articles
or if they seek to topple the hypotheses put forward by the previous
article.
Maybe in a less rigorous review (versus research) article there might be
some possibilities for getting a little sloppy here or there.
In a peer reviewed journal, wouldn't reviewers pick up on the errors before
publication and point them out?
When all's said and done it's always possible that even a rigorously
reviewed journal artcle could slip by with an error of fact or citation here
or there.
>
> Having just marked a gazillion social science essays from first year
>undergrads where the reference was, well... interesting, I think there's a
>simple explanation for this. Writing up the bibiliography is the most
>tedious of all parts of the research process, and therefore engages the
>least amount of concentration of the researcher. Still, as I tell my
>students incorrect referencing and pretending to have read something when
>you'r really getting it from some other person's description/summary is the
>easy route to misunderstanding at the least and plagiarism at the worst.
>
It would be like relying exclusively on _Cliff's Notes_ to get you through a
test on a certain book instead of reading through the book yourself. Reading
summaries in addition to the original might help clarify certain points if
the summaries are well done.
If the summarizer doesn't have much of a clue of what they're summarizing
and others rely exclusively upon that summary for their info on the subject
matter of the article or book, I could see lots of problems arising. Then
error would get propagated down the line and if somebody summarizes a
mistaken summary...oh goodness sake. If nobody actually reads the original
article for comparison to the summary that could be problematic.
There could be a tad of this which occurs with people writing popular books
on subjects where they try to condense areas of knowledge that they don't
undertand very well and explain it to their audience in a coherent manner.
If members of this audience haven't any depth in the subject, they might
take the author's mistaken summary at face value and when they start trying
to discuss the subject with folks who are more experienced while relying on
their summarized knowledge of a mistaken summary, they might open themselves
to embarassment.
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