On Thu, 26 Jun 1997, Jordan Reiter wrote:
> At 6:07 PM -0000 6/25/97, [log in to unmask] wrote:
> > The First International Workshop on
> > Cooperative Research Information Systems in Physics:
> > CRISP97
> One issue that immediately comes to mind, most pertinent in the areas of
> science, but in other areas as well, are questions of validity. Is there
> any way to verify that a webpage contains scientific accuracy, or not?
At the risk of stating the obvious, there's no reason for everything a
search engine finds to be indexed without being validated. I presume that
an online journal could use metadata and agents to automate the indexing
and checking of relevant pages, but still go through a process of peer
review. If one can trust the online journal (a matter of establishing or
porting a reputation), one can trust the links in the journal. These might
be automatically verified against the source documents on a regular basis
by checking checksums to guard against post-submission data tampering or
other fraud, or formally accepted papers might simply be uploaded to the
trusted site. The problem then reduces to the normal secure transaction
one.
Andrew Daviel
> Couldn't a mischievous physics student, say, make a page claiming that
> matter can go faster than the speed of light if you wrap it up in tinfoil
> first (or a less obvious lie)?
>
> In other words, is their any way to have a page that claims (in its
> metadata, for example) that it is a factual paper about HAARP (you know,
> that weird high-frequency radio transmitter in Alaska that will be used by
> the FBI and CIA in a giant conspiracy to affect weather patterns in the
> mid-west) when in fact it the paper is nothing more than a paranoid ranting
> (conviently summarized in the preceding parentheses)?
>
> Most articles instructing people on getting information off the web that
> they shouldn't trust what they read because anyone can go online and
> publish just about anything. Is there any way or should there be any way
> to ensure that a document really *is* what it says it is.
>
> I suppose this goes in the same category as boring websites that put "sex,
> free, hot, fun, great, warez" as keywords just to get more people to their
> site.
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> [ Jordan Reiter ]
> [ mailto:[log in to unmask] ]
> [ "You can't just say, 'I don't want to get involved.' ]
> [ The universe got you involved." --Hal Lipset, P.I. ]
> --------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
Andrew Daviel mailto:[log in to unmask]
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