Posted by Dr. Bob on August 27, 2000, at 14:37:38
In reply to Re: please be civil, posted by Adam on August 26, 2000, at 12:56:15
> It might be possible for someone to provide convincing evidence of their credentials without revealing their specific identity. Or they could simply say "I am a board-certified doctor of psychiatric medicine," and respond to questions they felt comfortable addressing appropriately. I am willing to believe Cam is a pharmacist without searching for his publications, and his posts by themselves provide a certain amount of evidence of the truhfulness of his self-identification. There's little way to know anything with complete confidence online, so perhaps the easiest way to deal with that is to accept it.
It's tricky.
"Convincing" I guess is in the eye of the beholder. On the one hand, I think to some extent posts can stand on their own and readers can judge for themselves what to make of them. Especially if they're from a regular poster. And at the top of the main page, I do link to some information on the quality of information:
http://www.dr-bob.org/quality.html
which I hope increases awareness of the issues. From this perspective, good information is good information, and credentials are secondary. Someone could not have credentials and provide good information, or someone could have credentials and provide bad information.
The problem with someone simply saying they have certain credentials is that they might not. Though it would be easy just to accept what they say, it could be risky, too. To me, to be convincing, credentials would need to be verifiable, and to be verifiable, the person's identity would be necessary.
I think if someone says they *don't* have certain credentials, however, there's less risk in just accepting that, and that does clarify the situation.
Bob
poster:Dr. Bob
thread:42703
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000822/msgs/43832.html