From time to time, I've done one sort or another of "insight" training, for want of a better term. One of the better rules for life, at least to me, was "speak from your experience". With certain caveats, that, I think, is a good rule for editors to use in guiding authors. In this context, it's fair to speak of work being done in a field where one has competence, and cite good sources from it. There are lots of ways to become competent
Now, take two fields, that perhaps that have some overlaps in scope. It could be a single field that has several different schools of thought -- there's an old saying that if you put all the economists of the world in one line, they'd all point in different direction.
So, you have fields A and B. They may deal with the some of the subjects, but their analysis and recommendation have fundamentally different models. They may or may not use some of the same words, but they mean very different things by those rules.
I am immediately aware of one such conflict, but I can honestly say I've seen at least two such in the last couple of weeks here. Please forgive me for being hypothetical, but of these three, there's some pretty strong emotion along with the topic. I'm willing to be specific about the fields, but I think that might produce more flame than gentle illumination.
A practioner of field A can certainly say how people of his field analyze something, and the field B person can say the same of her field. Where I see a problem, and I really have seen it in multiple places, is where the field A person says "we do the same thing in A and B", and the field B person says "no, there might be a superficial similarity, but we have fundamentally different views.'" If the B person uses a word of art, and the A person says we use it too, an editor needs to be sensitive to recognize that it's important than the B person is saying something editorially important: wording has to be ambiguous. Maybe it's as simple as a qualifying adjective like A-foo or B-foo, but one side can't say they can exclusively define the rule.
It's fair to for an A to compare her outcome, in a similar circumstance, with a B outcome. It is not fair for an A to tell a B how the B works and thinks, or vice versa, unless the individual is fully trained in both.
So, I'd like to propose two golden rules of editing (and authoring):
- If a person of one field related to another says "no, we don't mean the same thing by that term", assume there really is a difference unless there's strong evidence to the contrary.
- If a person expert in one field starts to state how she does an analysis, says how the person in the other field does it, but the person in the other field says "no, there are fundamental differences in our model/our drawing conclusions/our recommendation for action, the default assumption is that the approaches are different, may not be reconcilable, but can be listed side by side.
I'm insomniac and my back hurts, but this has been part of what's keeping me awake. Am I making any sense? Can anyone see an actual example that isn't likely to trigger explosive reactions?
I bring this up because I don't think it's good for CZ to have mischaracterizations.
