[Foundation-l] Oral Citations project: People are Knowledge

[Thomas Morton]

>
> All sources can be cited without falling afoul of "original research"
> Original research only covers claims without sources at all, or claims made
> from yourself as the source.
> Any source, including citing to a video interviews, is never original
> research.
>
> Ideally of course, yes. However it is quite hard to work with primary
sources of this nature (i.e. ones that are not summarising a subject) and
avoid interpretation (which is at the core of OR). It is perfectly possible
to cite an iron clad reliable source and still end up doing original
research :) It's just that the risk is greater with these forms of sources.


> I don't really get by the way, why this is considered revolutionary.
> These aren't "oral citations" in the standard sense, these are citations to
> a published video.


Reliability depends on a number of factors; for a video it depends on things
like the identity of the person speaking, the publishing body, etc.

Raw footage of this sort is very much primary sourcing
with potential reliability problems.

The key thing for reliable sources is the idea of *fact checking or peer
review*. This is why the very best sorts of sources are those published in
respected scientific journals - because they have been reviewed for
mistakes, bias, etc.

Ideally these videos would be published as a primary resource, interested
parties would synthesise material and write papers (or give lectures, or
publish a book) - secondary sources - which could then be cited by tertiary
sources, such as us :)

Currently you would have to treat these videos with a modicum of care, under
the usual guidelines for primary source material.

Tom