[split] Authority and the Appeal to it.

[Oscroft]

But, were I an academic, I would rather not waste time by reading and responding to any and every casual piece published in my field (suppose it's VMS research), most of it will be trash. I'd stick to read, analyze and eventually respond only to peer reviewed papers. I think this is normal.

There almost certainly wouldn't be enough hours in the day, even just judging by the volume of nonsense that has to be filtered out of this forum alone (now that everyone and their dog can work AI chatbots).

I feel for the real experts whenever I hear someone complaining that professor someone-or-other or Lisa Fagin Davis "didn't reply to my emails"... especially when even I can tell their proposals are not worth reading.

If the experts didn't have anyone (assistant, secretary, etc) to filter out the nonsense, they'd never be able to get any real work done.

(PS: I should probably note that I'm not referring to anyone in this discussion  )