ok,
this "spiked" article thing has shown me a couple of things,
one: even though in my opinion the article was, shall we say, a little weak
and mostly misstatements and misinterpretations, and on the whole not worth
replying to, it got alot of attention on the net and got people thinking and
writing in and will hopefully start some side conversations/discussions. so
in this sense this article/posting was good and in the end actually kind of
welcome. this newsgroup actually got some kind of use!
two: it reaffirmed -in my mind- how hard it is to have a discussion on the
net that is something other than a semantics battle, eg the author picks out
a line or two from a reply and trashes only those very critically, kind of
trying to make the reply poster look bad, or something. this seems to
happen alot and not only with this thing (spiking) or this author. i think
we are all sometimes guilty of doing that, and it makes it hard for me to
get into a discussion because someone is waiting out there for someone to
post something for them to ridicule. ok, enough of that silly box of tween.
anyway, i hope that none of this discourages dalton (i think thats the
author) from trying his damndest to publish his stuff, but that it also
gives him an idea of what it is like for _us_ when we have to go thru peer
review to pub something. now thats criticism.
regards ralph
Ralph M. Bernstein
Dept of Micro/Immuno
University of Arizona
Ph: 602 626 2585
Fx: 602 626 2100
