Perishing publishing: “Pre-printing” scientific papers electronically is a good idea. But it has its perils [...]
On the face of things, pre-printing is a good idea. It exposes a paper to wider scrutiny than the old system did, which should improve its accuracy—as happened in this case. But it also suggests that the price of getting one's ideas into the public domain rapidly is a need to keep them continuously revised in order to avoid criticism, however moderately or immoderately expressed. Like the Red Queen, in “Through the looking glass”, today's physicists need to rush faster and faster merely to stay in the same place.
