09-02-2018, 09:50 AM
This post has been triggered by two recent comments by Diane. This first of these in a recent You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. , but I did not want to disturb that discussion with something off-topic.
I would like to caution people against being misled by the following statement You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. :
Anyone writing in a blog post about their original thoughts and original work should not need to worry about this. Every blog poster knows very well what is their original work and what has been copied from elsewhere. The latter should be indicated.
It only becomes a problem if anyone says that he/she is the first to do or write a certain thing. This is almost impossible to prove, so one should be very careful in writing such things. I did not read the entire blog of "Searcher" so cannot say if this problem occurs.
If one posts original work, one should not expect to be accused of 'lifting' it. The fault lies with the person making the accusations.
Equally importantly, a "Google search" is inadequate for finding out about earlier work. This was also discussed briefly in Nick's blog, just a few days ago. As useful as it is for finding things, the result is not representative for the complete picture, and gives only a tiny fraction of relevant information.
To know the history of research in any topic, one has to do a thorough literature search. This is usually outside the possibilities of someone who is not already involved in this research, because one has to start from scratch, and most important resources are not to be found by a Google search, but only in libraries and archives. Or one has them already since one is more or less deeply involved.
For the Voynich MS there are many archives like the Beinecke, the Grolier Club, the Marshall library, and numerous other repositories of correspondence. None of these can be read through Google. Again, this is only a real problem if one wants to claim to be the first in something. Still, one misses a lot of interesting, and potentially useful information.
Therefore, the suggestion to use Google to find out about precedence is not a good one, for two reasons:
1 - you know yourself (and don't need to ask Google) what is your original work
2 - Google gives you a useless answer.
Fortunately, for the Voynich MS, these archives have already been searched by different people, and one can find bits and pieces of useful information in books like D'Imperio (1978) and Brumbaugh (1978). The first is even available on-line as a PDF, but not searchable, so again Google is no help.
All of this is true for blog posts, but a completely different regime applies for academic publications. Here, one cannot just write about a topic and not worry about what others have written. One has to demonstrate that one is familiar with the state of the art of this topic. This is especially important if one wants to present an alternative to what is 'best knowledge'. So, you don't only quote people who do the same thing, but also those you are intending to contradict, if these are important.
More often than not, demonstrating this knowledge is not an issue if the author is a known authority in the field, or, if it is a relative newcomer, by having such an authority as co-author.
The second post of the two I mentioned in the beginning demonstrates some of these points. It is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . I wasn't going to comment on it, but it fits in perfectly with this issue.
The statements:
are plainly incorrect. (I put an effort to avoid terminology that would not be in line with forum policy).
However, this could be the impression one gets from relying on a Google search, and not bothering to look at literature, some of which is easily available.
I would like to caution people against being misled by the following statement You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. :
Quote:It would also be the civil thing to do to run a google search and acknowledge the first person(s) to suggest similarities that you repeat in your paper. If only everyone did that it would save a lot of embarrassment and no-one could possibly suggest you'd just 'lifted it'.
Anyone writing in a blog post about their original thoughts and original work should not need to worry about this. Every blog poster knows very well what is their original work and what has been copied from elsewhere. The latter should be indicated.
It only becomes a problem if anyone says that he/she is the first to do or write a certain thing. This is almost impossible to prove, so one should be very careful in writing such things. I did not read the entire blog of "Searcher" so cannot say if this problem occurs.
If one posts original work, one should not expect to be accused of 'lifting' it. The fault lies with the person making the accusations.
Equally importantly, a "Google search" is inadequate for finding out about earlier work. This was also discussed briefly in Nick's blog, just a few days ago. As useful as it is for finding things, the result is not representative for the complete picture, and gives only a tiny fraction of relevant information.
To know the history of research in any topic, one has to do a thorough literature search. This is usually outside the possibilities of someone who is not already involved in this research, because one has to start from scratch, and most important resources are not to be found by a Google search, but only in libraries and archives. Or one has them already since one is more or less deeply involved.
For the Voynich MS there are many archives like the Beinecke, the Grolier Club, the Marshall library, and numerous other repositories of correspondence. None of these can be read through Google. Again, this is only a real problem if one wants to claim to be the first in something. Still, one misses a lot of interesting, and potentially useful information.
Therefore, the suggestion to use Google to find out about precedence is not a good one, for two reasons:
1 - you know yourself (and don't need to ask Google) what is your original work
2 - Google gives you a useless answer.
Fortunately, for the Voynich MS, these archives have already been searched by different people, and one can find bits and pieces of useful information in books like D'Imperio (1978) and Brumbaugh (1978). The first is even available on-line as a PDF, but not searchable, so again Google is no help.
All of this is true for blog posts, but a completely different regime applies for academic publications. Here, one cannot just write about a topic and not worry about what others have written. One has to demonstrate that one is familiar with the state of the art of this topic. This is especially important if one wants to present an alternative to what is 'best knowledge'. So, you don't only quote people who do the same thing, but also those you are intending to contradict, if these are important.
More often than not, demonstrating this knowledge is not an issue if the author is a known authority in the field, or, if it is a relative newcomer, by having such an authority as co-author.
The second post of the two I mentioned in the beginning demonstrates some of these points. It is You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. . I wasn't going to comment on it, but it fits in perfectly with this issue.
The statements:
Quote:Apart from some vague observations which were acute enough but undeveloped (such as a couple of John Tiltman's), there was no informed comment on this imagery between 1912 and 1931, when Anne Nill made a note of some offered by Panofsky. Once again there was no explanation in detail for those observations, though that doesn't lessen their importance as the first unforced, informed commentary we have.
Thereafter there appears to have been nothing recorded of any informed observation or comment on the imagery before 2008.
are plainly incorrect. (I put an effort to avoid terminology that would not be in line with forum policy).
However, this could be the impression one gets from relying on a Google search, and not bothering to look at literature, some of which is easily available.