On 12/19/06, zero 0000 nought_0000@yahoo.com wrote:
On the other hand, even though "Legal experts have stated that Y [cite][cite]" is clearly valid, it doesn't properly convey what the sources indicate. There ought to be some way to record that a standard legal database did not provide ANY contrary opinions. Given how much lawyers love to argue with each other, this is a highly unusual situation.
I think a better way to handle some of these issues is to accept that straying into the grey area of OR is unavoidable, so let's come up with good ways to do it. "The consensus of academic opinion in X database appears to indicate that" is better than "The consensus of academic opinion in X database is that", for example.
"Appears that", "is probably" etc are key words that indicate to the reader that the interpreter is us, and therefore not very reliable. We have a similar situation when we need to indicate that *we* (the nameless, voiceless writer) don't actually know something: "Whether there are other species with these characteristics is not known" can be a bit ambiguous (who doesn't know it - scientists, or us, the laypeople).
Steve