20th February 2006, 09:41 PM
Tile Man-Hi, hope your well? I`m afraid there are those who can fake data very convincingly.
No faking data convincingly is not easy ? as I have said archaeological data is very structured which is how mistakes can be spotted in published material. This is not to say that the standards of reports couldn?t be improved by public and indeed academic scrutiny, such as that carried out by Richard Bradley. However I have seen, and get to see a lot of reports at all levelsthrough my professional and research activities, and I wopuld say that standards have tended to improove over the last 20 years, with honorable and dishonorable exceptions...
If you have evidence of faked data then please report it to the relevent authorities
In the retrieval phase and the publishing phase.One of my main points here is that a priori, curators largely (some almost exclusively) rely upon published reports as an indicator of the unit/individuals competence and professionalism.Not quite good enough I`m afraid.
Please can you supply the reference and evidence for this ? are you aware of a survey of how curators work which has quantified this attitude?
There are also some curators that allow some truly shocking garbage onto the archive.
Such as? I think that you can indicate an opinion about public domain literature and as mentioned above increasing amounts of reports are available on the web for public scrutiny, which is always a good way of keeping high standards..
While curators are as under-resourced as they are and, tethered to the political agendas of elected representatives, standards will be breached/ignored/misinterpreted.I think that as members of the public, we all have the right to question where our money is going.We all have the right to question "best value" too.
I like the way that you have seperated elected representatives from 'the public' whom they represent...
Well according to many local representatives ?best value? means having no curatorial service at all, after all it isn?t a legal requirement. given the continued friction over council tax rises then I doubt that within 5-10 years we will have anything recognisably like a curatorial service anywhere unless this problem is tackled at a national level.
No faking data convincingly is not easy ? as I have said archaeological data is very structured which is how mistakes can be spotted in published material. This is not to say that the standards of reports couldn?t be improved by public and indeed academic scrutiny, such as that carried out by Richard Bradley. However I have seen, and get to see a lot of reports at all levelsthrough my professional and research activities, and I wopuld say that standards have tended to improove over the last 20 years, with honorable and dishonorable exceptions...
If you have evidence of faked data then please report it to the relevent authorities
In the retrieval phase and the publishing phase.One of my main points here is that a priori, curators largely (some almost exclusively) rely upon published reports as an indicator of the unit/individuals competence and professionalism.Not quite good enough I`m afraid.
Please can you supply the reference and evidence for this ? are you aware of a survey of how curators work which has quantified this attitude?
There are also some curators that allow some truly shocking garbage onto the archive.
Such as? I think that you can indicate an opinion about public domain literature and as mentioned above increasing amounts of reports are available on the web for public scrutiny, which is always a good way of keeping high standards..
While curators are as under-resourced as they are and, tethered to the political agendas of elected representatives, standards will be breached/ignored/misinterpreted.I think that as members of the public, we all have the right to question where our money is going.We all have the right to question "best value" too.
I like the way that you have seperated elected representatives from 'the public' whom they represent...
Well according to many local representatives ?best value? means having no curatorial service at all, after all it isn?t a legal requirement. given the continued friction over council tax rises then I doubt that within 5-10 years we will have anything recognisably like a curatorial service anywhere unless this problem is tackled at a national level.