Is this selective argumentation? I agree that the proper assumptions need to be made for research. This is the whole reason I started posting here in the first place, and the request I made at the end of the post - help making sure assumptions are correct. What you decided to attack on the post was the defense of another researchers options of data and how current that data was. He used what was available to him at the time, end of statement. If you could you use your expertise and creativity to help the research community produce better research instead of shooting everything down after the fact, something postitive might actually come from the effort. "But misunderstanding the risks and vulnerabilities is worse because it diverts resources away from the real ones." Perhaps giving contructive advice would be away to avoid such a pitfall. Nahhhhh - it is much more fun to flame. ----- Original Message ----- From: Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com> Date: Thursday, November 28, 2002 6:10 pm Subject: Federal Reserve Risks Collapse Re: Risk of Internet collapse grows

On Thu, 28 Nov 2002 sgorman1@gmu.edu wrote:

...

That said a few things should be kept in mind with academic work. The time from when work is done until it appears in publication is

quite

...

legthy, especially when peer reviewed (the Grubesic et al article was peer reviewed). I saw his paper presented in the Fall of 2001, which> means he probably did the research in the spring of 2001, and the latest data available was Boardwatch 2000. so, you end with a lag in Internet time that seems horrendous. One of the problems with

The paper would have the same problems in 2000. It starts with bad assumptions. Age doesn't improve bad assumptions.

Suppose I wrote an academic paper about the design of the Federal Reserve Banking System. After carefull analysis of the map at http://www.federalreserve.gov/otherfrb.htm (street addresses available at http://www.federalreserve.gov/fraddress.htm) I write a fully footnotedpaper that the Federal Reserve system is vulnerable to the destruction of the board in Washington DC and twelve banks in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Richmond, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Dallas and San Francisco. The US banking system would collapse, ATMs would stop, paychecks wouldn't get cashed, checks couldn't be cleared, etc. I would miss Alan Greenspan, but that'snot how the US banking system works.

The Federal Reserve system does have vulnerabilities. So does the Internet (and the post office, and the telephone network, and ...) But misunderstanding the risks and vulnerabilities is worse because it diverts resources away from the real ones.