Jed points out: "They did not do that stuff back then, for the obvious reason that it would take too long. The Royal Society got letters from their members and published them verbatim. There was nothing like modern peer-review."
Yes, I understand, but that means that the paper was not even vetted and may very well have had some obvious errors when it left Boston Harbor and sailed across the Atlantic; then more time to be published and distributed to colleagues who could review the experiment; some Fellow of the Royal Society sees a flaw in the experiment or the math and writes up his critique which eventually gets published in the next issue; then that issue has to sail back across the Atlantic to Franklin before he can read the criticism!!!! It was the same process except that the 'peer review' occurred in subsequent publications instead of between peers *prior* to any publication. So a single iteration of 'review' in Franklin's time might be the same amount of time as the modern submit/review/revise/publish process we have today, but in Franklin's case, there could be one or *more* iterations of experiment, publish, criticism, before his idea was fully vetted, reproduced and established as valid. FYI, I was just using Franklin and the Royal Society as an example. not literally. But so we don't lose sight of the point: MarkI-ZeroPoint <[email protected]> wrote: - Until the advent of the telegraph and radio, the spread of knowledge was EXTREMELY SLOW. Communications across the Atlantic took months, so two scientists debating their ideas on theories, or two engineers discussing the design of a dam, consumed YEARS of time; now it happens in SECONDS! Jed rebutted with: "Discussions took time, but the flow of information was faster than you might thing. There was 6-week latency. When Franklin published new experiments on electricity, for example, news crossed the Atlantic in about 6 weeks and the experiments were replicated within months. It was no slower than replications today, because researchers do not work any faster." Well, perhaps my use of the term, "seconds" was a bit of an exaggeration, but the point is that: "The vetting of scientific ideas and reviews to establish sound (as error-free as possible?) conclusions about those ideas (theoretical) or experiments took much longer back then than now.". And finally, this is probably a pointless discussion since it's a foolish idea to even try to compare the times when things are so much more complex today. Truth is, I have some 'work' to do and am really not feeling much like doing it, so looking for diversions! J -Mark From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2012 2:55 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Vo]:Migrant Workers in China Face Competition from Robots MarkI-ZeroPoint <[email protected]> wrote: Now we have another process to go thru in order to publish: - he takes a week or two to write it up and sends it to the editor in England (6 weeks) - the editor then sends copies to peers who have the expertise to critique the paper (days (if local) to weeks) - the reviewers send their comments/criticisms/recommendations back to the editor (days to weeks) - the editor sends the suggestions/criticisms back to Franklin; he revises his paper; sends it back to the editor (2 to 3 months) They did not do that stuff back then, for the obvious reason that it would take too long. The Royal Society got letters from their members and published them verbatim. There was nothing like modern peer-review. That's a good thing, too. It might have taken an extra 200 years to launch the industrial revolution, with the dead weight of peer-review holding back progress. The Royal Soc. published his first batch of letters between 1747 and 1750. I do not recall when he became a member. It is true that long distance discussions took a lot longer. You should see the letters between Franklin and various others. You can see how they managed it. Now that we have e-mail the techniques of long-distance, long duration communication is being lost. It will not be revived for some time, because the longest distance in the solar system is several light-hours I think. I suppose it will be revised if people begin interstellar colonization. I do not recall that he corresponded with Jefferson. - Jed
