[WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR

[jayjg]

On 12/17/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/17/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/17/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Of course that's ok. Original research in that scenario would be to
> > > say "the consensus among legal scholars is A, but they haven't
> > > considered C, and therefore D is the correct position."
> > >
> > > Original research is about posing new theories, or making new
> > > inferences, or drawing new conclusions that are your own opinions and
> > > involve some element of analysis or synthesis. Fundamentally, original
> > > research is introducing your own original thought into articles.
> >
> > And, of course, drawing your own conclusions and stating that there is
> > a "legal consensus" on this matter, based on your own research into
> > what various legal scholars have said, is a prime example of original
> > research. Quote the scholars, list their names, state that there are a
> > number of them, but don't introduce your own original thought that
> > these selected sources have created a "legal consensus".
>
> I was speaking to the particular example given, where there are two
> popular positions on the subject held by lay people, while all expert
> accounts support only one of those positions. In this context, where
> all experts who have written on the subject have agreed with the same
> position, surely it is not original research to say so.

On the contrary, it surely is. All of the people that this particular
investigator has found, and consider to be legal experts, have one
view, so it's fine to state something like "Legal experts have stated
Y", with a series of footnotes. However, one cannot go from that step
to stating "All legal experts believe that Y", since we have no idea
what *all* legal experts believe, only the statements of the ones we
happen to have surveyed. Even worse would be an insistence that we
must conclude that "the law is Y", since the law is complicated,
malleable, and context specific, and one often has no idea which way a
judge, panel of judges, or jury will rule.

Jay.