lwall@sdcrdcf.UUCP (05/17/84)
Relay-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site dcdwest.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 beta 3/9/83; site sdcrdcf.UUCP Message-ID: <1086@sdcrdcf.UUCP> Date: Thu, 17-May-84 11:12:40 PDT racy> <3819@utzoo.UUCP> Reply-To: lwall@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Larry Wall) Organization: System Development Corporation, Santa Monica Lines: 35 In article <3819@utzoo.UUCP> azia@utzoo.UUCP (Anton J Aylward A/S) writes: >Suppose you are a university professor writing a textbook on your >subject. You have invested somthing like 10 years in getting to know >the subject, another X years on the text and so on. You have cross-referenced >with articles and papers. If you screw-up, make ridiculous assertions, >or mangle a reference you get laughed at and you book fails to become >a standard reference. (Unless you take a very Fun-damn-mentalist approach >and are willing to settle for it only being sold in Texas :-)) Actually, I had this linguistics professor who studied under Noam Chomsky, and became suspicious of Chomsky's magnum opus (Chomsky, 1965), the one that set the whole of linguistics on its ear, and from which linguistics is just now recovering. Definitely a "standard reference". My professor went through said book, and stated that he found that ~30% of the references were bogus. Not just misspelled, or in error. Bogus. Non-existent. Unreal. Fantastic. Bovine fecal material. Now maybe my professor had a chip off the old block to grind, but if what he said is true, this would seem to contradict the sentiment expressed above. I don't think academia is the rigorous topia it is made out to be, with the possible exception of people checking to see if their OWN works are correctly referenced in other people's works. Larry "When We've been Buffaloed and the Chips are Down" Wall {allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdcsvax}!sdcrdcf!lwall References Chomsky, Noam, 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. MIT. P.S. Yes, linguists do references differently than computer jocks. They key them on author and year. Linguists would get tired of chasing [1] down to find that what was really meant was (Chomsky, 1965), which they all know what means already, already. (Put that one in your parser and smoke it.)