Inline... On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 9:21 AM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Jeff Berkowitz <pdx...@gmail.com> wrote: > > >> Scientific publication approach or commercial enterprise approach: choose >> one. >> > > Why choose one? They are not mutually exclusive. Mainstream companies > routinely publish information that meets scientific standards of > reliability, although details are often missing to protect trade secrets. > Companies such as IBM that do a lot of fundamental research often publish > scientific papers. > Scientific papers published along with breakthrough product innovations, as you point out, are often missing key details to protect trade secrets. But "experimental" (as opposed to "theoretical") scientific publications are, in principle at least, supposed to contain sufficient detail about protocols to allow replication of the results. So I tend to see this as an example of the commercial side compromising the scientific side. To put it differently, the ability to buy a working product that implements a principle can legitimately replace publication of certain details about the principle without loss of credibility. I wasn't making a value judgment, I was just observing. More generally, companies like IBM that do this "for real" usually try to establish some kind of clear organizational separation (e.g. Watson Lab) between their scientific side and their industrial side. Despite that, scientific research conducted in industry is a common subject of criticism for bias. This is a hotly debated issue in the pharmaceutical industry right now, for example. In any case, these are huge industrial corporations that can afford to segment themselves, at least to some extent, in an effort to give their scientific publications the required degree of impartiality. It hardly applies to this situation (or for that matter to any start-up commercial enterprise) because both the internal segmentation and the actual process of scientific publication are very expensive. Start-ups can never have too much working capital, and scientific publication usually doesn't play a big role in directly returning the capital to the investors. So overall I stand by what I said: strong factors work against mixing commercial enterprise with scientific endeavor. > Rossi has chosen to ignore scientific standards, and to conduct what I > consider a tawdry sales campaign. I think it makes him look bad. I do not > think it will work. > I have a relaxed attitude about this. He's free to conduct his enterprise any way he sees fit. I don't intend this comment to be argumentative. > I agree that believable testimony from a real customer would make his case > better than anything else. I doubt he has any customers, but who knows. > There are several threads around the net that suggest more than one person has seriously tried to make a purchase and been unable to do so. I agree the truth is hard to know. > > - Jed > >
