Science > Physics > Brian Josephson's "Covert censorship by the physics preprint archive"
| Topic: |
Science > Physics |
| User: |
"OsherD" |
| Date: |
23 Feb 2005 11:58:52 PM |
| Object: |
Brian Josephson's "Covert censorship by the physics preprint archive" |
From Osher Doctorow
Some physicists outside the publish-or-perish bureaucracy or
others recently admitted thereto may doubt the intensity of my
claims that engineers, physicists, and chemists monopolize
corporate and governmental "hard" quantitative fields outside
computer programmers who basically are their "servants". An
excellent illustration is Brian Josephson's "Covert censorship
by the physics preprint archive A personal perspective from
Brian Josephson," http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/
archivefreedom/main.htm, which can also be accessed on the
internet by the title and so on. Josephson is a Nobel Laureate.
Josephson got the whole treatment, although it varied from
moderate to heavy doses at different times. I think that
readers will recognize bureaucratic tricks included non-replies,
totalitarian declarations of removing an article as "inappro-
priate for _____," moving articles to other (e.g., remote)
locations or places, and perhaps one of the most hysterically
funny incidents in which a recently retired member of LANL
(Los Alamos National Laboratory) was barred from posting
because he no longer had an academic address.
This reminds me of hearing a conversation between two upper
class women in an organization that I once belonged to. They
apparently forgot that I was listening, and one (the head of
the organization) said: "Oh, I keep _____ kind of people out by
sending them to the wrong address."
For a list of other
techniques used by bureaucrat elitists, see David Ruelle's
Chance and Chaos, which I keep forgetting to look up the date
and publisher for. Ruelle is a colleague of Mandelbrot who
"broke the publish-or-perish code" (Ruelle did) in his little
book by revealing some standard techniques of major physics
journals.
Osher Doctorow
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| User: "OsherD" |
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| Title: Re: Brian Josephson's "Covert censorship by the physics preprint archive" |
24 Feb 2005 12:06:37 AM |
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From Osher Doctorow
Here's Josephson on the power structure of the archive:
"The archive is run along the lines of a secret society/classic
bureaucracy. As noted, all communication (except with the librarian
who is officially in charge of the archive) is with people who write
anonymously under an alias. [Sound familiar?]"
I leave it for readers to read the rest of that page.
Say, my last post made it to 4th from the top immediately after
posting! Should I expect 5th next?
Osher Doctorow
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| User: "OsherD" |
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| Title: Re: Brian Josephson's "Covert censorship by the physics preprint archive" |
24 Feb 2005 12:17:36 AM |
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From Osher Doctorow
Which university "owns" the physics preprint archive arXiv.org?
Cornell U. There
are a number of other aspects in which Cornell has revealed incredible
bureaucracy,
and it seems to have given up the race with Princeton U., the Princeton
Institute,
Harvard, MIT, and even Stanford and Chicago and CalTech in favor of
competition
in the "humanities" and "indescribables". Even CUNY in N.Y. is much
better.
In fact, CUNY has produced some outstanding scholars in the "hard"
quantitative
disciplines. In general, New York is better in its colleges the lower
the level of
the college in terms of funding and wealth; its State Universities are
even too heavily
funded. If this seems like Parkinson's Law of Bureaucracy, or the
Peter Principle,
heck - life is a learning experience.
Osher Doctorow
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