The reason for differentiating original research from POV material is that original research may be removed entirely while to satisfy the Neutral Point Of View policy POV material must be included and attributed if there are reliable references which take that point of view or comment on it. It is never of question of cleverly "neutering" POV material, that would be a POV violation itself.
I realize this viewpoint is at considerable divergance with the way some folks interpret NPOV, but if you go back and read the policy, it provides for inclusion in articles of all points of view which can be established by reliable references.
Fred
From: "Charles Matthews" charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 08:12:52 -0000 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The 3RR policy should not always be blindly followed
JAY JG wrote
However, most of the original research inserted in these articles is more on the order of "George Bush knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but he lied to the American public and invaded anyway, in order to finish the job his father started, and to restore his family honor".
When something is already unverifiable, highly partisan POV, I wonder why it needs to be labelled 'original research' as well. That's not what OR was initially about, really, i.e. personal speculations/crank theories. The cited instance is more naturally treated just as POV; it can be 'neutered' by a specific citation of someone writing the thought (which we've all read 100 times) somewhere.
In any case, concentrating on contentious politics/contemporary history in the making is not necessarily going to produce a good set of general encyclopedia-building principles. NPOV rules; otherwise one is back to source-criticism and imputing motives.
Charles