(Contemporary Studies in Information Management, Policy, and Services.) Edited by Ellen Altman and Peter Hernon. 206 pp. Greenwich, Conn., Ablex, 1998. $73.25. ISBN 1-56750-340-3.
Everyone who engages in research, whether original scientificinvestigations or scholarly studies, knows how easily errorcreeps into the process. It takes just a momentary diversion,a hidden bias, a casual acceptance of unsubstantiated claims,or a neglect of proper controls for entropy to take its toll.Disorder, not orderly truth, is the default state. Althoughit should not be surprising that errors enter the productionof knowledge, it is generally accepted that science, as distinguishedfrom other forms of fixing belief, is self-correcting. But howmuch of published scientific results needs to be corrected,what percentage of the erroneous . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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