[WikiEN-l] Age fabrication and original research

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 12:53 AM, Durova <nadezhda.durova at gmail.com> wrote:
> Suppose for discussion's sake we can fully trust that the brother-in-law of
> Jeane Dixon's nephew has indeed commented upon the matter.  Relatives have
> been known to get their facts wrong.  The more distant, the more likely a
> mistake.

But thats not the case here: The SSDI supports the claim. True— it
could just be the kind of clerical error that you find in a primary
source from time to time, but it's a verifiable record.

We do our readers a service to point to the diversity of possibly
credible answers and to avoid presenting false confidence.

(My position would be different if it were clear that one of the
secondaries had examined the SSDI and concluded that the information
was incorrect, I'm assuming that isn't the case here)

In the case of living people I think that their own sourcable claims
about themselves are automatically notable and reasonable for
inclusion, placed against what the external sources say.  "Jim has
stated that he is X[], however sources A[], B[] and C[] cite records
X, Y and, Z and state he is Q" ...  Some version of this position
might also reasonably apply to the heirs of the deceased:  That it
might be interesting and notable that the children of someone all
insist one thing although every reasonable source is quite confident
that the truth is something else.