Issue



Beware of


01/01/2003







by Richard A. Matthews

Some of you may remember the Dragnet television series with Sergeant Joe Friday's immortal line: "Just the facts, ma'am." Unfortunately, the Internet does not have a Joe Friday designated to police its vast information resources.

We are left to decide which information is valid, invalid, fact or fiction without much help. There can be a serious disconnect over the validity of information found on the Internet and members of the cleanroom community are certainly impacted—positively and negatively.

Respected magazines have historically been a reliable constant for the dissemination of technical information. Some are peer-reviewed and appeal to a limited audience. Others are broader in scope and appeal, offering balanced cross-referenced articles based upon multiple resources.

However, poor and erroneous cleanroom information can be found all over the Internet if you're not careful. Beware of unaffiliated online forums where self-appointed cleanroom gurus put forth less than factual information in response to inquiries. These sites can ultimately do a disservice to people seeking answers to serious problems and the "gurus" could end up being salespeople looking to peddle their wares.

There are commercial Web sites that share the same level of half-truth responses and are usually governed by the particular prejudice of the Web site owner. For some reason, people who have not participated in the creation of peer-reviewed recommended practices and standards find it convenient to use the Web to tear down the work of these cleanroom community groups who do participate.

These participant groups have developed valuable factual documents, which represent many hours of hard work and incorporate all aspects of the cleanroom community. This is certainly true in the development and promulgation of the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology (IEST; Rolling Meadows, Ill.) Recommended Practices (RPs) and the ISO cleanroom standards—both activities subject to strong peer review.

Unfortunately, the Internet does not have a built-in police function. There are no red light cameras on the Internet to catch the purveyors of erroneous and prejudiced information.

Internet surfer beware

How can an Internet user be assured that information on the Internet is factual, and therefore, useful and beneficial? Go back to information checking basics.

To help you figure out if an Internet source is valid, I suggest that you:

  • Know the validity of your source.
  • Explore multiple sites on the same subject.
  • Check with your contemporaries for valid references.
  • Use factual sites such as professional society and industry-reviewed sites.

At IEST's Web site (www.iest.org), you can obtain factual documents such as the IEST RPs and ISO cleanroom standards. Peer-reviewed documents represent broad cleanroom industry involvement, input and review. They have been through the crucible of time-tested experience.

Do not take someone else's mere opinion as gospel. After all, only you are responsible for your actions and judgements. Learn to separate fact from fiction, truth from conjecture, pontification from participation. III

Richard A. Matthews is chairman of ISO Technical Committee 209, a member of the CleanRooms Editorial Advisory Board and Technical Director of Filtration Technology Inc. He can be contacted at [email protected].