From: Katharine Thayer (kthayer@pacifier.com)
Date: 12/19/01-03:16:46 AM Z
Carl Weese wrote:
>
But it's completely
> unfounded to assume someone did that just because one's personal tests fail
> to confirm.
>
> ---Carl
I've been offline for a couple days and can't possibly read through all
the mail that's waiting for me, but my eye did fall on this post and
read it with greatest bewilderment. If that's what you got out of what I
said, something has gone very wrong in the communication.
I agree with you exactly, (that was my whole point!) that (1) one's
personal tests cannot serve as Universal Truth for everyone and should
not be presented as if they were, and I certainly did not present my
tests as if they disproved anyone elses test, I only presented them as
an argument against someone else's test being presented as universal
truth. I even made a specific statement to that effect, lest someone
might leap to that unwarranted conclusion. I said "our data differ,
that's all"! and (2) what works here works here, and what works there
works there, and if what I know contradicts what you know, that doesn't
mean I'm right and you're wrong, it only means that neither of us has
failed to discover a universal rule, we've only figured out what works
for our own situation, and (3) the more information the better! Since
none of us is about to do the massive experimention, testing every
possible combination of variables against every other possible
combination of variables, the closest we're likely to get to an
understanding of how gum printing works is if we all get together as a
community and pool all of our data and see what we have. When whole
sections of the community are not welcomed here, and when disconfirming
data are misconstrued as personal attacks, it is unlikely that enough of
the community will speak up to give us a complete picture.
The whole dustup here came about because David Scopick, a major figure
in the field of gum printing, was disrespected and an attempt made to
discredit his authority; when Pete objected to the disrespect, the
argument was made that it was necessary to question Scopick as an
authority because he had cited that pigment test that was useless and
worthless and had been proved so wrong by Judy's tests. My point was to
provide some balance by presenting my own disconfirming tests and saying
the pigment test had been useful to me. I debated a long time before
doing so, and if this post is any indication of the typical response, it
will be a long time before I do again.
Katharine Thayer
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