a ranmt from your Editor on the state of our field in research

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

More and more I hear talks and see proposals that demonstrate that the
sub-fields of computer science resist gaining insight from each other and
from work that has gone on in the past.

I have already complained about the re-discovery of distributed  computing
-- now called grid computing  ignoring almost all the work over the past 35
years. Listening to their "discoveries" shows often a disinterest in past
work and looking at the references in their papers shows either a case of
not knowing/caring  or a case of ignoring attribution -- both objectionable
in a science. This phenomena also shows itself in proposals and yet these
proposals get funded. Guess what that tells the young researcher.

The other day I heard a person in storage systems dismiss the efforts in
quality of service research being done in networking as just people who look
at packet loss. By that flip remark, he dismissed many good ideas which
would have advanced his research.

I have heard equivalent comments from the networking arena dismissing the
results of millions of dollars in good research that was done years ago in
very large distributed date bases. It is easier to try to re-invent than to
read past literature and filter the good from the not so good.

I know there are exceptions to what I have ranted about but from my
experience they are few and getting fewer. It is time for the senior people
in the field to demand that people behave like scientists. They can easily
do this by turning down proposals, by refusing to approve thesis's that show
a lack of looking and more important by making it clear that if computer
science is indeed a science we must take heed of what others have said:


If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the
shoulders of giants.
-- Isaac Newton 

Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders.
-- Gauss

Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders while computer scientists
stand on each other's toes.
-- Richard Hamming
 

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