Re: no Stone unturned
Francoise Herrmann (fherrmann who-is-at igc.apc.org)
Mon, 6 May 1996 09:30:07 -0700 (PDT)
>
>
> Francoise asked if my opinion that the Stone article didn't
> deserve publication in a scholarly journal wasn't a sort of
> censorship of 'free speech'.
>
> I'm coeditor of one journal and serve on the editorial boards of
> a few others. When an article is published in a scholarly
> journal, it is not simply an exercise of 'free speech' by an
> author, it is a sort of collective recommendation and endorsement
> by the editors, not of the specific content, but at least that
> the work adheres to some public standards of good scholarship in
> its methods. Readers place a certain trust in a journal not to
> publish things it would be a waste of time to read or take
> seriously. If Stone wants to offer his opinions to the world, he
> is free to do so, by vanity publishing, or just by slapping a
> homepage on the web and advertising its existence and content.
> The no one else shares intellectual and scholarly responsibility
> for what he wrote; no one else is vetting his scholarship for me,
> and if I read it, I buy a pig in a poke.
>
> There may be good pigs in some pokes, and I poke in there
> sometimes to let serendipity find me. (I even advocate adding
> random retrievals to computer database searches, with some levels
> of control and relevance.) But when I want a higher probability
> of finding reliable scholarship, I turn to journals I trust; and
> I cancel my subscriptions if they let me down too often.
>
> JAY.
>
> -----------
>
>
> JAY LEMKE.
> City University of New York.
> BITNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM
> INTERNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
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Hi Jay, I checked my dictionary for "poke" (a sac, see ---> pig!):
"pig in a poke" (buy soemthing without seeing it or knowing its value).
ANd now I think that I understand why you, Arne and Bill Blanton suggested
that the Stone article should not be published. I think that you meant
in MCA or quality journals like MCA for all the reasons that were discussed.
I was worried because I thought that you meant the article should not
ahve been published at all. I was worried because I think that articles
such as these need to be seen for how they subvert ideas and practices.
The Bell Curve, comes to mind as similar larger scale case, for example.
And to me that is the wonder of Listeserver environments and of the
CyberWorld in general. On the down side; that the article was published
and peer reveiwed indicates such discourse is alive and well. Not all
pigs are like "Babe" I suppose.
Francoise
Francoise Herrmann
fherrmann who-is-at igc.org