There are people who have managed to become 'authorities' without going through the established mechanisms for doing so, but they are rather few and far between.
--elijah
I think Elijah hit's something very key here. There is a plurality of modes of publication for a plurality of audience types. Two different spectrums for analysis of modes of publication tied to that are authority and expertise, one other that he indicates is popularity and one other implied by that are spaces of being a public intellectual. If we thinking about the way we construct knowledge and we think about the publics in general, we can see that not all knowledge works for all people in all situations in all times. One clear example of this is the Public Library of Science and its medical repository. It does provide material, but to whom, and for what purpose? There was a story floating around the net and I'm sure I can find it somewhere, where a doctor was reading the medical materials there in order to help his patient, however, the doctor lacked the appropriate level of statistical literacy and/or judgement to truly understand that the nuances of the argument indicated that for his case, the treatment that was being reported on was unlikely to benefit the subjects and in fact if he would have read later articles citing this article, he would have seen that this bit of knowledge about medicine was likely harmful. Science and all writing, goes through many filters to reach different audiences, the doctor in question would have been better consulting with an expert or three in his field than reading articles, but alas as the story had it, that was not an option. The question then becomes not only which papers should be public but which forms of expertise, for whom, for what reasons? Open systems aren't a simple questions to say, 'Let's boycott', as that is what i would call throwing away the baby with the bathwater... there are far more systems and conventions that have arisen in publishing and elsewhere that have arisen to help people and prevent misunderstanding than I think many people are comprehending. There is a time to boycott of course, I boycott Walmart and BestBuy for unfair labor practices as reported in media, other people boycott eating animals. Boycotts depends on your issue, in which spectrums of life you apply yourself and your political capital and the goal is to make those decisions in an informed way, but even then, it is a personal choice issue, and not necessarily one where you will find wide agreement. jeremy hunsinger Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu ) wiki.tmttlt.com www.tmttlt.com () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.stswiki.org/ sts wiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ Learning Inquiry-the journal http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series