On 4/7/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Wouldn't it also count as Original Research?
I would say so. I've seen this a couple of times, when someone makes a claim, then provides a link that they believe justifies the claim. However the link is a primary source, and it is their interpretation which they believe makes it "proof". Whereas, a secondary source is usually much more straightforward.
An example was in the Safe Speed article. There were claims along the lines of "This isn't actually true, Johnson and Thomas proved in 1984 that the speed of a vehicle blah blah...[1]". Whereas IMHO you really need to cite a direct refutation of the claim, "Smith and Jackson challenged this claim [2], citing numerous studies including Johnson and Thomas (1984)".
In other words, any situation that would lead you to visit a website to verify some claim is already shakey ground. Beyond checking whether a specific sentence is readily visible on the site, I'm not sure what could be gained that wouldn't be straying into OR.
Steve
Steve