>I wrote: "I am off-put by Dembski's habit of "semi-referencing" papers he
>has yet to publish. "Always NEXT week the good movie will come." Maybe this
>is common practice; I don't know."
>
>Bill Hamilton replied: "In the software industry this is known as
>vaporware."
>
>As one who suffered through years of this at IBM, good analogy. Sometimes,
>of course, the software that finally appears is really good -- sometimes it
>never appears.
>
>Does anyone know if this is a common/uncommon practice? Bill does it in his
>chapter in THE CREATION HYPOTHESIS; he also does it in his NTSE paper. I
>don't see anything "wrong" with the practice; it is frustrating though.
I'm glad Burgy brought this up, as I was planning to say something
along these lines. I can appreciate the frustration since I would
really like to evaluate some of the details of specified complexity
but can't get too far as of yet based on whats in the NTSE paper.
There are some general observations that I can make though, but I'll
save those for a separate post. I think a key issue is, as Burgy has
noted, whether or not this is a regular practice. Even so, I have seen
some cases in my own field where people do something like this
regularly yet they also consistently follow up on the promise. In
this case the practice is often associated with someone who is very
productive and always has something new in the works.
Another factor to consider is the type of publication. In my experience
conference proceedings type publications are often presentations
of ongoing work which may or may not make it into a reputable
refereed journal. For this reason I get practically no credit
for such publications in tenure/promotion considerations. In other
words, seeing a "It is beyond the scope of this paper to ..." is
fairly common, in my own experience anyway, for a conference
proceedings paper.
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Applied Mechanics
Ohio State University
"Aw, Wilbur" -- Mr. Ed