One way to filter signals from noise in a newsgroup is to use the search 
function. If the subject is carefully thought out you can search there, and 
widen the search to the body of the posts if your interest extends that far. 
Re the comment about professionals, I think you are probably right, also I 
think that cross discipline communication is one of the main problems for 
professional scientists and the newsgroups may be a step in the right 
direction. As has been remarked, professional journals are often not freely 
accessible on the net.

"Tim Tyler"  wrote in message 
news:cnbr08$30dq$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> Maurice Barnhill  wrote or quoted:
>> Tim Tyler wrote:
>> > Maurice Barnhill  wrote or quoted:
>
>> >>There is no point in going through the effort of writing up your
>> >>ideas understandably unless you want to convince someone that the
>> >>idea is correct or at least clever.  Who do you want to convince?
>> >>  The logical ultimate target is the people who have thought most
>> >>carefully about the general area of knowledge your idea
>> >>addresses.  These people are in current times mostly (although
>> >>not entirely) professionals, and professionals are very, very
>> >>unlikely to pay attention to anything not in the refereed
>> >>literature.
>> >
>> > In my experience, this is completely untrue.  I can think of
>> > numerous highly talented individuals in their fields who have
>> > participated in usenet in their time.
>>
>> There are a few here, but how many?  Compare that to the number
>> who read any decent journal on evolution.
>
> You seem to be comparing readers with authors.  Surely not a fair
> comparison: the readers generally outnumber the authors.
>
> Also, s.b.e. may not be the idea group for this comparison.  It
> is moderated - and has a substantial posting delay - and thus it
> is difficult to hold a conversation in real time here.  Other groups
> attract greater proportions of experts.  sci.crypt and
> comp.compression spring to mind.
>
>> > I don't think professionals as a class are blind to these advantages -
>> > and I don't think its correct to say that they fail to take advantage
>> > of them.
>>
>> They are also not blind to the low signal to noise ratio.  It is
>> much easier to overcome that elsewhere.
>
> Often, I find it harder to find things I'm interested in in
> conventional journals.  They typically lack decent search facilities -
> and searching for what you are interested in is often critical.
>
>> > Even before the internet, much interaction between scientists was
>> > *not* in the peer reviewed literature.  Check the letters of
>> > Charles Darwin - for example.
>>
>> The corresponding medium is EMail, not usenet.  EMail has been
>> used a lot since even before there was an internet proper.
>
> If I want feedback about a theory, I use usenet - not email.
>
> With email, I have to mail everybody I want feedback from -
> and emails which request responses can be a bit intrusive.
>
> Usenet is much better for that sort of thing - nobody is
> obliged to reply, and many people get to look at your theory.
>
>> >>If nothing else, they don't have time to read
>> >>everything and the refereeing processes weeds out most of the
>> >>nonsense while losing very little of the valuable stuff.  Very
>> >>rarely some valuable stuff is lost, but the amount of work
>> >>required to find it elsewhere when it doesn't reach the standard
>> >>literature is impossible to undertake.
>> >
>> > Fortunately, filtering out irrelevant chaff can be done passably well
>> > dynamically by computer programs - which can track references to the
>> > document in question.
>>
>> But computers cannot filter nearly as well as referees can.
>> Referees can even filter out weak contributions from normally
>> sensible people, or even better can induce people to do a better
>> job on their writeup than they would do otherwise.  The
>> refereeing process wastes the time of 1-3 people, not hundreds.
>
> Material is reviewed on usenet as well.  You get to see who
> is critical of the theory - and often their reasoning about why
> it is wrong.
>
> Reviewers can't suppress publication of the original messages though.
> That's a very positive thing - it means nobody gets censored.
> -- 
> __________
> |im |yler  http://timtyler.org/  tim{at}tt1lock.org  Remove lock to reply.
>
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