Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!hubcap!Piercarlo
From: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi)
Newsgroups: comp.parallel
Subject: Re: Seeking Parallel Programs
Message-ID: <9995@hubcap.clemson.edu>
Date: 3 Aug 90 17:18:19 GMT
Sender: fpst@hubcap.clemson.edu
Organization: Coleg Prifysgol Cymru
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Approved: parallel@hubcap.clemson.edu
In-Reply-To: aglew@oberon.crhc.uiuc.edu's message of 31 Jul 90 19:22:10 GMT


"aglew" == Andy Glew writes:

aglew> Finally, several people contacted me saying that they have lent their
aglew> parallel applications to other researchers in the past, but refuse to
aglew> do it any more because they have been "burnt" by the experience - the
aglew> other researchers have "trashed" the contributed codes and attacked
aglew> the authors of the contributed benchmarks.
aglew>     This is a sad commentary on the lack of basic etiquette in the
aglew> research community.

You mean the fact that researchers can be just as reluctant as
commercial concerns to subject their work to public scrutiny, because
they fear that the often poor quality and abundance of mistakes therein
would put their results in question and harm their image?

This would be understandable, after all researchers have to pay a
mortgage too.  This is far more important than peer review and the
admittedly fairly recent (just about 300 years) idea that independent
criticism and repeatability of experiment are the cornerstones of
scientific advancement. Only people that have already made it (like the
late Feynman) are antisocial enough not to worry about the mortgage or
the shareholders.

Too bad that the constant debate about quality of benchmarking in this
newsgroup and pitfalls of benchmarks is stupidly based on such old
delusions. A lot of trouble would be saved if we stopped being nosey
about benchmark claims, and the real sadness is that this has not
happened yet.
--
Piercarlo "Peter" Grandi           | ARPA: pcg%cs.aber.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth        | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk