[WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

[Brian Salter-Duke]

On Wed, Mar 21, 2007 at 01:44:21AM +0000, Thomas Dalton wrote:
> >> Scientific papers are primary sources.
> >
> >Scientific papers are secondary sources. The experimental or
> >observational data that the papers draw on are the primary sources.
> 
> The data is usually published in the paper, so the paper is the primary 
> source.

This lack of agreement has come up on WP talk:Notability recently and is
clear evidence that the distinction that some policies and guidelines
make between primary and secondary sources is meaningless. As someone
else said, this distinction is not used by scientists. I make a
distinction between journal articles and review articles, but even the
latter increasingly contain new research from the authors group. We
should be very carefull about building anything on the distinction
between primary and secondary sources. At best some of us will not
understand the difference. At worst it is meaningless.

Brian.

-- 
          Brian Salter-Duke            b_duke at bigpond.net.au  
               [[User:Bduke]]  mainly on en:Wikipedia.
           Also on fr: Wikipedia, Meta-Wiki and Wikiversity