In a message dated 4/23/2009 7:33:02 PM Pacific Daylight Time, oldakquill@gmail.com writes:
What if there had been more than one person imprisoned that year who had been a member of the French Foreign Legion? This is not inconceivable, since many people are imprisoned every year, and it is possible that they may have been members of the Legion. If so, what if the person identified was the wrong person? If the wrong person had been identified, what you claim to be valid research would have produced incorrect claims.>>
------------------------- That's right. That doesn't make the research original in the sense with which we use it in Wikipedia however. We have many cases where two different sources conflict, or where sources are entirely silent or confused on some matter and we can still cite what they say.
Using some data to find more data in some source isn't original research. That is source-based research. If you are creating the data, as opposed to reading it, that would be original research.
In the example we just had, I found four boys who could be the target. I could certainly in that article say, "he himself states that he was born in Lancashire, and there are four boys born in Lancashire with his name and approximate age". That's not original research, it's an observation based on some source which anyone else can validate and with which they can agree. If I were to choose one, based on asking his granddaughter, that would be original research because I am creating a new source not currently existing. A person is not a source, but her statements to me, writen down, is the creation of a source.
That's my opinion of the matter.
Will
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