Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!star.cs.vu.nl!roelw
From: roelw@cs.vu.nl (Wieringa j Roel)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Comment on the "Third-Generation Database System Manifesto"
Message-ID: <7824@star.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 3 Oct 90 12:51:00 GMT
References: <1990Sep28.173803.15043@odi.com> <7798@star.cs.vu.nl> <30441@netnews.upenn.edu>
Sender: news@cs.vu.nl
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Organization: Fac. Wiskunde & Informatica, VU, Amsterdam
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In article <30441@netnews.upenn.edu> aaron@grad2.cis.upenn.edu.UUCP (Aaron Watters) writes:
>In article <7798@star.cs.vu.nl> roelw@cs.vu.nl (Wieringa j Roel) writes:
>
>>Manifestos, Beach reports and reports from invitational NSF workshops are
>>ostensively only about the objectively best definition of concepts and
>>promising research directions. In addition to this, IMHO they must also
>>be viewed as moves in a game of power and money: which projects get
>>funded, who determines which projects are worth their money, and in 
>>general who has the clout to make his definition of what is the case and
>>what should be the case stick.
>
>What is wrong with that?  

In itself, nothing. I am simply saying that the manifesto game is
a game of arguments as well as one of power.

>If the people who disagree can't 
>mount a convincing counterargument, perhaps they shouldn't be
>funded.  

Perhaps. People get convinced of things by other means than good arguments.
And the person who wins in a power game may also be the one with the
best argument, but this is not necessarily so.

>Or are you arguing that 
>administrators of funding sources are stupid
>and easily mislead?  

No, I assume they are intelligent and that you need a lot of forceful
argument to mislead them. And those who win, may really believe that
they have the best arguments and need not aim at misleading funding
administrators at all. But then it still is the case that the person
who wins the power game need not be the person with the best arguments.

>[stuff deleted ...]
>  I think a large
>number of researchers would be reinvigorated if they were wrenched
>off their tired toilings and forced to consider some hairy industrial
>problem.  There may be one or two geniuses who would not benefit
>from such an experience, but I'm willing to risk it and hypothesize
>that the overall effect would be for the better.		-aaron.

My point is not that confrontation with practical problems does not
cause new ideas -it generally does- or that such confrontation
is not in general healthy for 
scientific research -in general, it is healthy. My point is that the 
pressure of funding my divert too must energy from the research effort
to the fund-raising effort, that the closeness of commercially lucrative
results may hinder the open exchange of ideas, and that an excessive pressure
to publish results may cause the publication of immature results. None
of these dangers may materialize, but only if we remain beware of them.

Roel