Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Validation
by use
Facts
Data
Information
Knowledge
Errors
Processing
Interpretation
Figure 12.1. The process of knowledge development from data in plant disease epidemiology.
12.3 THE WORLD ACCORDING TO 'GOOGLE'
“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can
find information upon it. When we enquire into any subject, the first thing we have to
do is to know what topics have treated of it. This leads us to look at catalogues and the
backs of topics in libraries” (Boswell, 1960, p 558).
Increasingly, people approach acquiring information and knowledge by searching
the internet. Search engines are powerful and valuable tools. However, like most
powerful tools, they can be dangerous in inexperienced hands for the following
reasons: (1) searching databases is a skill in which few people have training or
experience, and requires an understanding of the database content and search
software to be used efficiently (for reasons noted above); (2) the information in the
search engine database is likely to be a biased sample of the information available, if
for no other reason than because; (3) it is limited to that available on public access
servers on the world-wide-web, and (4) there will be a variable level of quality
control over on the information, ranging from none to excellent, but probably with
little or no indication of what level of credence the user should give to the source.
There are many more reasons why information obtained from web searches should
be treated cautiously, but we hope that it is apparent that search engines, by
themselves, are not a way to obtain an objective assessment of any subject. Perhaps
most importantly, whether information is available from direct web searches will
depend on a complex set of interacting factors which balance the institutional and
personal objectives of the responsible scientist(s) for knowledge transfer with the
precedence of peer-reviewed publication and the need for the costs of publication to
be recovered.
Much epidemiologically valuable data is made available through the institutions
of scientific publishing. Whilst the knowledge published in many epidemiology
papers will have been paid for by public funding, and a scientist's usual aim is to
disseminate the information free to as wide a constituency as possible, the
publishing process has costs which must be met. Furthermore, the requirement to
protect originality and precedence in the primary scientific literature leads to time-lags
between data being collected and being made widely available. Of course, some of
these restrictions are overcome by the use of subscription services for journal access
and/or database access. However, even in cases where such access is available, users
