In a message dated 4/7/2008 5:27:04 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, ritzman@gmail.com writes:
Would the phrase "all research is original" be a simple way of stating the above?>>
------------------- No. When I go to the library and read the newspaper I am not doing original research. I am doing source-based research. They are not the same thing.
Original research means I am *creating* the statements of fact, not that I'm looking them up in another source.
So "all research" is not "original" since people use the word "research" to cover looking things up in other sources.
Will Johnson
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On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 12:36 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 4/7/2008 5:27:04 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, ritzman@gmail.com writes:
Would the phrase "all research is original" be a simple way of stating the above?>>
No. When I go to the library and read the newspaper I am not doing original research. I am doing source-based research. They are not the same thing.
Original research means I am *creating* the statements of fact, not that I'm looking them up in another source.
So "all research" is not "original" since people use the word "research" to cover looking things up in other sources.
Will Johnson
The issue is that presenting that research is always somewhat original - that is, the statement "This presentation of statements is substantively equivalent to the statements in this source" is not a trivial one - it's an argument that does not come directly and transparently from the original source. Summary is original research.
-Phil
On 4/7/08, WJhonson@aol.com WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 4/7/2008 5:27:04 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
ritzman@gmail.com writes:
Would the phrase "all research is original" be a simple way of stating the above?>>
No. When I go to the library and read the newspaper I am not doing original research. I am doing source-based research. They are not the same thing.
Original research means I am *creating* the statements of fact, not that I'm looking them up in another source.
So "all research" is not "original" since people use the word "research" to cover looking things up in other sources.
I wasn't trying to argue that it was. I was asking if the phrase "all research is original" summed up the following paragraph in the original post.
"Indeed, the opposite is increasingly widely accepted. One of the major composition texts these days is called _Everything's an Argument_, and makes the case, essentially, that one cannot organize information without advancing an argument. Research is always an interpretive and synthetic process, and any presentation of research advances a position."
On Apr 7, 2008, at 8:00 PM, Ron Ritzman wrote:
I wasn't trying to argue that it was. I was asking if the phrase "all research is original" summed up the following paragraph in the original post.
"Indeed, the opposite is increasingly widely accepted. One of the major composition texts these days is called _Everything's an Argument_, and makes the case, essentially, that one cannot organize information without advancing an argument. Research is always an interpretive and synthetic process, and any presentation of research advances a position."
That's not a bad summary - it suffers a bit from the ambiguity in the noun "research" where it can refer both to the process of reading sources and to the process of drawing conclusions about the sources. But if you're careful to note that all conclusions drawn from sources are original then you're pretty much spot on.
(Which, incidentally, does not mean that all conclusions drawn from sources are novel or unique or unusual. When I read a source I may and likely will come to the same conclusion as other people who have read the source. But I came to that conclusion on my own, not by lifting it clearly and transparently from somewhere else.)
-Phil