Re: Colloid photosensitivity

----- Original Message -----
From: "Katharine Thayer" <kthayer@pacifier.com>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 2004 9:12 AM
Subject: Re: Colloid photosensitivity

> Katharine Thayer wrote:
> >

  Lots of snipping....
>> THEN, I went back to the citations and traced sources
back, and sure
> enough, all four citations can be traced back to one
source, Brintzinger
> and Maurer, 1927. Get out the banner Judy, it's time to
march for the
> cause --- NO CITATION WITHOUT EXPERIMENTATION! Obviously
this is just
> one of those things that's been passed on without being
tested. If it
> were a replicable observation, more than one person would
have noticed
> it in 150 years, for heavens' sake.
>
> Sign me Annoyed in the Northwest,
>
> kt
   I think this is a pretty good example of the sort of
thing Ryuji Suzuki has warned about old literature. I've
found the same thing in both photographic literature and in
my researches into sound recording some years ago. One must
try to trace statements back to original sources. Sometimes
those sources are mis-quoted, sometimes the those citing the
work haven't really read it (meaning it doesn't really say
what the citer thinks it does), and sometimes the original
work is just plain wrong. I'm afraid this sort of sloppy
scholarship is not confined to old publications, one can
find all sorts of examples in more recent popular work.

---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@ix.netcom.com