copyright and watermark

[Jonathan Brecher]

>Despite the understandable need for protecting own data, I find it a little
>bit doubtful that published data are not the correct data - addition of that
>watermark mentioned by Frank Oellien. That goes in the wrong direction. That
>resembles the practice of some people/companies to "not tell everything" in
>published procedures in patents (and also publications).
>
>In my oppinion, published data need to be true and reliable. Otherwise we
>will come to the situation where we publish an abstract and a sentence like
>"Send me a cheque and I will send you the real data." (Exaggerated, I hope.)

Note that this might not even be intentional.  Suppose you synthesized
Engelanol and reported its synthesis with a melting point of 87.9 degrees.
Unfortunately, sometime between your lab and the printing press, a pair of
digits get swapped and the published value ends up being 78.9 degrees.
Given that the real melting point *isn't* anything close to 78.9 degrees,
you (and the publisher, and any court of law for that matter) can be fairly
confident that anyone who reports that value took it directly from your
paper.

Jonathan Brecher
CambridgeSoft Corporation
jsb2 at camsoft.com


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