Xan Porter, a recent member of SearchEngineWatch forums, has been blogging for several weeks on search engine and IR subjects. The blog offers some great insight into the relationships between IR scientists and the SEO/SEM community. Xan notes the biases of many researchers in IR and specifically in web search who feel they are in a constant battle against 'evil' SEOs who attempt to disrupt the natural pattern of the web in order to fool and confuse search engineers and engines. Her finer disctinction between SEOs and search spammers makes for some good reading and it's nice to see at least one member of his community being more nuanced.
I hope to see more great things from this blog, and looking back over past entries, Xan covers some of the topics that have been causing confusion of late in the SEO industry - LSA/I, Hilltop, Grid Computing, and more. I'm certainly adding this to my watch list.
I think that this constant battle between SEO people and search engine engineers forces the engineers to improve the technology behind search and this gives the user a better experience in the end. So I must give a big hand to SEO people and even blackhatters who bring out the flaws of the work that engineers do in search and motivate them to improve.