[WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)

[Ray Saintonge]

Ken Arromdee wrote:

>On Thu, 21 Dec 2006, jayjg wrote:
>  
>
>>Read your own words; "Seems like an obvious conclusion to me..." You
>>are drawing your own conclusions, rather than quoting others who have
>>drawn those conclusions. In addition, by definition it is a *novel*
>>conclusion; if it weren't novel, then you'd be able to quote someone
>>who had come to the same conclusion.
>>    
>>
>That only applies if *any conclusion whatsoever* is original research.  But
>that's not true.  Otherwise it would be original research to say that someone
>is more than 5 feet tall if the source just said they are 6 feet tall.
>
>So you can't just say "that's a conclusion, so it's original research".  You
>need to figure out exactly what types of conclusions are and aren't allowed,
>and then show that this particular conclusion falls into the prohibited
>category.
>
>I would argue that an *obvious* conclusion falls into the permitted category.
>The whole reason we accept conclusions like "he is 6 feet tall, therefore
>he is more than 5 feet tall" is that they don't require specialist training
>to make, and that nobody could seriously deny they are true--in other words,
>we accept such conclusions because they are obvious.
>
Of course what requires specialist training is debatable.  I have just 
encountered an interesting (if perhaps trivial) example.  I have to-day 
finished reading the light murder mystery "Ambrose Bierce and the Trey 
of Pearls".  This author likes to build his stories around historical 
persons in the San Francisco of the 1890s.  This particular novel is 
written in the style of a journalist's notebook with a series of dated 
entries.  Two successive entries are dated Sunday, February 28, 1892 and 
Monday March 1, 1892.  The problem is that he ignored the fact that 1892 
was a leap year..  Would anybody consider knowledge of the calendar 
specialized knowledge?

Ec