On 13/04/06, Guettarda <guettarda(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Unpublished primary sources can only be valid sources
about the content they
contain ("his birth certificate says..."). In the hands of an amateur, they
really can't be taken to say anything more, we can't evaluate how good the
source is, we can't determine how much weight to give to one source as
opposed to another...
I like your approach here. Proposal for NOR summary: "Leave original
research to the experts. If you are an expert, leave it to a different
expert."
Seriously, that's the basic problem isn't it - amateurs trying to do
the work of experts. That was exactly the issue at [[Safe Speed]] -
editors were attempting to debunk the claims of this group themselves,
by digging up scientific papers and applying them directly to the
data. Which wound up with a Wikipedia amateur scientist going head to
head with a Safe Speed amateur scientist - totally pointless. The few
"professional" refutations of their claims were totally acceptable and
encyclopaedia-worthy, of course.
Steve