Kotatsu
Phthirapterist
Hello,
A comment by a friend and colleague of mine made me curious about how often old articles and references are used by people outside my field. I am a taxonomist and systematicist, and in that line of study, you pretty much have to use all the literature there is on a taxon, regardless of how old it is. If you're making a revision or something, it can be necessary to go all the way back to Linnaeus in the mid-18th century.
However, my friend claimed that when he took a course in zoophysiology (or something related, I can't quite remember), and had been asked to write a report on something for that course, he had assumed that it worked the same way in that field. Thus, he cited several old articles --- and by "old" I think he meant the 1950's or so, so not really old... --- but his supervisor had told him not to. He even said that articles from before 1995 (or some such year) were pretty much useless, as the field (and I can't remember exactly what the specific field was either, of course) progressed so rapidly that the information in those articles were already outdated.
By contrast, my master thesis included perhaps 20 references from before 1910, the oldest, if memory serves, being from 1866 (a description of the reproductive apparatus of a certain Clitellate), not counting mere author's names, the oldest of which I think was from 1816 (which ought to be Lamarck or some one similar). As I have switched taxon now, I have had to establish an entirely new database of articles, but the oldest in that collection --- which I have seen referenced several times in more recent articles --- is Scopoli from 1763.
So I'm just curios if what my friend described is common in other parts of science, or if that supervisor's words were just a result of him knowing his field very well, thus being able to authoritatively state that older articles were less useful.
A comment by a friend and colleague of mine made me curious about how often old articles and references are used by people outside my field. I am a taxonomist and systematicist, and in that line of study, you pretty much have to use all the literature there is on a taxon, regardless of how old it is. If you're making a revision or something, it can be necessary to go all the way back to Linnaeus in the mid-18th century.
However, my friend claimed that when he took a course in zoophysiology (or something related, I can't quite remember), and had been asked to write a report on something for that course, he had assumed that it worked the same way in that field. Thus, he cited several old articles --- and by "old" I think he meant the 1950's or so, so not really old... --- but his supervisor had told him not to. He even said that articles from before 1995 (or some such year) were pretty much useless, as the field (and I can't remember exactly what the specific field was either, of course) progressed so rapidly that the information in those articles were already outdated.
By contrast, my master thesis included perhaps 20 references from before 1910, the oldest, if memory serves, being from 1866 (a description of the reproductive apparatus of a certain Clitellate), not counting mere author's names, the oldest of which I think was from 1816 (which ought to be Lamarck or some one similar). As I have switched taxon now, I have had to establish an entirely new database of articles, but the oldest in that collection --- which I have seen referenced several times in more recent articles --- is Scopoli from 1763.
So I'm just curios if what my friend described is common in other parts of science, or if that supervisor's words were just a result of him knowing his field very well, thus being able to authoritatively state that older articles were less useful.
