Spam Filtering and Academic Research

1 October 2007 at 10:46 am Peter G. Klein 2 comments

| Peter Klein |

You may or may not like the discussion of sexual identity spawned by Nicolai’s post, but our spam filter definitely does not like it. Quite a few of the comments on that thread have been recovered from the spam queue; presumably anything with the word “sex” or its derivatives is per se suspicious. (If you posted a serious comment and it didn’t appear, let me know; it may be stuck in the queue.)

So I’m wondering: What if someone is doing legitimate academic research on erectile dysfunction, refinancing, lottery tickets, or the inheritance practices of Nigerian dictators? How do such people communicate their research results to colleagues? How do they send emails to grant agencies, conference organizers, and journal editors? “Dear Bob: Here is the latest draft of my paper on Ci@li$.” Perhaps such papers deserve extra credit for degree of difficulty.

Entry filed under: - Klein -, Ephemera.

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2 Comments Add your own

1. Per Bylund | 1 October 2007 at 12:27 pm

They encrypt their e-mails using e.g. PGP. None of them would consider sending research materials on postcards, would they? So why send non-encrypted e-mail that literally anyone who happens to intercepts it can read?
2. Michael R. Bernstein | 20 October 2007 at 11:27 am

This is actually a potentially interesting problem.

How can interested parties communicate (without prior arrangement) clear signals in a marketplace so entirely dominated by noise that most good-faith parties have simply moved to other markets?