Dear Stephen, 

 Chris said: "The most rigorously reviewed and reputable
 expert source will be completely pointless if it does not
 actually support your particular argument."


Instead of "support" here, I like to use the word sustain, as
in "uphold, affirm, or confirm the justice or validity of",
and I also like the implied notion of sustenance to be in here
too: "food and drink regarded as a source of strength and
nourishment."

And I mean this to cover your point of when not everything
agrees with your argument or research outcome.

You're right, of course, good research reporting should
identify any known (reliable and robust) argument or outcome
that contradicts that being presented, as well as anything
that diverges from it in some important way too.  If this is
done well, treating such contradictions or divergences will
tend to strengthen the communication of the research outcome,
not take away from it.

And, like you, I think this is just a different way of saying
what Chris was meaning in the above.

Best regards,

Tim
Donostia / San Sebastián
The Basque Country

========================

On Aug 8, 2012, at 10:41 , Stephen Boyd Davis wrote:

> Chris said: "The most rigorously reviewed and reputable expert source will
> be completely pointless if it does not actually support your particular
> argument." 
> 
> A problem with much student writing and even that of many experienced
> academics lies in that word "support". Frequently authors cite only sources
> that support their argument - in the most obvious sense of "support" that
> the two are in agreement. It is essential that authors also cite significant
> opinions and evidence that are *against* their argument. The task of the
> argument is to deal with this apparently opposed material and show that it
> is poorly evidenced, illogical, or in some other way not fatal to the
> author's case. In that broader sense, even counter-evidence "supports" the
> argument (and I suspect that was the sense in which Chris meant the word).
> The counter-evidence needs to be of the same quality (ref. the present
> discussion) as the evidence with which the author agrees.
> 
> Support is a slippery word.  :-)
> 
> Stephen
> ............................................................................
> ..............................................
> Stephen Boyd Davis | Research Leader, School of Design | Royal College of
> Art
> Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU, United Kingdom
> 
> Telephone 
> Inka Hella (School Administrator, Design) 44 (0)20 7590 4274
> Wanda Polanski (School of Design) 44 (0)20 7590 4352
> Personal extension 44 (0)20 7590 4343
> 
> www.rca.ac.uk
> ............................................................................
> ..............................................
> 
> From:  Chris Rust <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To:  PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and
> related research in Design <[log in to unmask]>
> Date:  Wednesday, 8 August 2012 08:35
> To:  <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject:  Re: [PHD-DESIGN] An authoritative source for using citations
> 
>> On 08/08/2012 04:00, Ken Friedman wrote:
>>> Your colleague should be a bit careful about citing information posted
>>> on Billy Bob's Design Research Clam Shack or the G'Day Mate Happy
>>> Vegemite Research Methods Lexicon.
>> 
>> There's another issue about this question that worries me. While
>> agreeing with what has been said so far I am reminded that I spend quite
>> a lot of time explaining to students that you must take responsibility
>> for the relevance of your sources. I deeply dislike the widespread habit
>> of 'declaiming' sources with no contextualisation, presumably in the
>> hope that tagging your assertion with a reference to a reputable
>> authority will put an examiner or critic off the scent. It may work for
>> unambiguous findings from quantitative research but everything else
>> should be justified, however briefly.
>> 
>> So Billy Bob's website might be a reasonably reliable source for what
>> Billy Bob wanted to say at a given time. The most rigorously reviewed
>> and reputable expert source will be completely pointless if it does not
>> actually support your particular argument.
>> 
>> However, let's take a simpler case. Imagine you find two sources that
>> contradict each other, one in a highly respected journal, the other an
>> online conference proceedings with unclear reviewing standards. Should
>> you simply take the journal article as definitive? There could be a host
>> of factors that influence the relevance and reliability of each source
>> for your case and unless you take responsibility for working that out
>> you cannot claim any authority in your own work. Prior peer review is
>> only part of the picture. Authority is slippery stuff.
>> 
>> Best wishes from Sheffield, home of Olympic Heptathlon champion Jessica
>> Ennis.
>> Chris
>> .............................
>> Prof Chris Rust
>> Director, Sheffield Institute of Arts
>> Sheffield Hallam University, UK
>>