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Archiver > APG > 1999-12 > 0944493956


From: "Everett B. Ireland" <>
Subject: [APG] More comments
Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1999 07:25:56 -0800


I can't help but consider if there isn't some parallelism between what
we
are talking about and what is done in the scientific community. There
the
name of the game is publish, publish, publish as it is in many other
disciplines, I believe. When a new theory
or phenomena is observed, the proponent publishes in one of the
scientific
journals after a suitable referee screening. The theory is then out for
extensive peer review over a period of time. Isn't that somewhat what we

genealogists are doing? Our
experiments are looking at family relationships and our laboratories are

courthouses, archives, libraries and cemeteries, to name but a few.
Perhaps what we need to do is publish more and review more of our peer's

findings.
I can not resist observing how there has been a tremendous explosion of
technical journals in the last 50 years or so. The Physical Review has
gone
from one physics journal to countless journals for more professional
divisions that one person can read.
Although we have some excellent professional journals in genealogy,
maybe
it is time to recognize that we have to expand to more divisions of what

has become a complex field. The Internet and proliferation of CD-ROMs,
some
perfect and many flawed or
incomplete, have not changed the field directly, they have just flooded
us
with more information and noise than we can resolve the way we have been

working in the past. Endorsement of a particular data source would be
risky
for any agency. I can't see
Stanford claming that their scientific research is any better than UC
Berkeley - we can only say they are both very good and we should try to
emulate their research procedures. Am I making any sense here?
Everett B. ireland

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