Cornell (honest end of thread)

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

This is an old problem and those of us who have experience tend to be VERY
careful of what we say on record. I remember in 1973 when Business Week ran
a story on our Distributed Computer System ( the first actually running
distributed systems} research effort (copis available on request) I sweated
till publication . 

Dave

Ps BW did a very fine job with minimal hype.


------ Forwarded Message
From: Paul Francis <paul () francis com>
Date: Sat, 26 Apr 2003 15:21:17 -0400
To: ip () v2 listbox com
Cc: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Like a Swerving Commuter, a Selfish Router Slows Traffic
-- Is this another case of PR science?


Come on...you guys should have enough experience with media folks to know
that 99% of the time it is them, not the researcher, who
blows a story out of proportion.  Eva and Tim are theoreticians...I don't
know Tim, but I know Eva and she definately knows the
extent to which theory does and, more to the point, does not apply to
practice.

In this case, the work she and Tim did is a legitimate theory result.  Here
is an account of the whole affair from somebody in
Cornell:

It seems that Tim gave a talk on his result (which is a legitimate result)
at the Symposium of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science and the magazine Science picked it up and ran a very
short piece.  Tim tried to dress up his talk and
mentioned the tragedy of the commons (a well known essay on economics) and
this resonated and found its way into the article.  The
NY Times then did an article - they interviewed Tim and Eva and wrote a very
exaggerated story that horrified all concerned.

PF


------ End of Forwarded Message

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
  http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/