On Sat, Dec 14, 2002 at 12:25:45PM -0600, The Fool wrote: > http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993168 > > The pattern suggests that 45 scientists, who might well have read the > paper, made an error when they cited it. Then 151 others copied their > misprints without reading the original. So for at least 77 per cent of > the 196 misprinted citations, no one read the paper.
Here is a major flaw in their reasoning that the article did not addresss. They assume that because someone copied the reference from another paper into their bibliography, that they did not read the paper. Poor assumption in my case, and I guess in many cases. If I have a reference already typed up in the right format that I can copy and paste, rather than digging through my collection of journal articles, then pulling out this and this and that number, and then formatting those parts correctly, guess which one I will usually choose? I've already read the paper, and remember it, but I don't remember the citation information so I copy that from an article that is handy (preferably on the computer already). -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
