In a message dated 3/25/2008 11:14:44 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, saintonge@telus.net writes:
This all assumes that the "source" says what it is claimed to have said. No source at all is preferable to sources that support specious original research. Strung together these sources, which may each individually be valid, can support a "Da Vinci Code" style of reasoning. Properly sourced from second-rate sources is still better than poorly sourced from first-rate sources.>>
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Several unrelated concepts (imho) are linked together here. If the source doesn't say what it is claimed to have said, that is a very different animal than "original research by synthesis" which you then advance in the third sentence. I wouldn't call this sort of research specious, but it is something we frown on. However these cases are very tenuous and borderline and *each* one should be taken to NPOV seperately.
The other extreme which I'm sure you wouldn't want to champion, would be that we don't allow synthesis at all. That position would of course, make the project pages essentially unreadable. All editors do synthesis at some level. The synthesis we frown upon is that which "serves to advance a contentious position."
If Saint Louis is a city in Missouri, and Saint Louis has a million people, we can certainly say "there is at least one city in Missouri with a million people".
Will Johnson
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