Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard

Welcome to the no original research noticeboard
This page is for requesting input on possible original research. Ask for advice here regarding material that might be original research or original synthesis. Include links to the relevant article(s). Make an attempt to familiarize yourself with the no original research policy before reporting issues here. You can also post here if you are unsure whether the content is considered original research. Sections older than 28 days archived by MiszaBot II. (For help, see Wikipedia:Purge) If you mention specific editors, please notify them. You may use {{subst:NORN-notice}} to do so.
Additional notes: "Original research" includes unpublished facts, arguments, speculation, and ideas; and any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position. Such content is prohibited on Wikipedia. For volunteers wishing to mark a discussion resolved, use {{Resolved|Your reason here ~~~~}} at the top of the section.
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Question re archival personal data

I am new to Wikipedia, did look through the original research rules, and wonder whether I should delete the following (which I wrote--no dispute here) as original research. This is the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Draft:Julian_D_Steele_(Social_Worker,_Public_Citizen)&action=edit&section=1 Thanks for any adviceWest Newbury (talk) 16:34, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

What part of this are you concerned might be taken as OR? You cite a large number of sources, clearly not written by you. You also do not appear to have put any personal opinions in, nor drawn any conclusions or interpolated any data. Looks like a normal article to me... Will (talk) 17:13, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Steele's paternal grandmother, Gertrude Elizabeth Winkler Steele, was the child of a Free Person of Color and a slaveholder whose ancestors were among the early Scots-English settlers in New Hampshire.

References

Fraud category on Cupping Therapy

The discussion is at Cupping therapy#Consumer_fraud. No sources could be found to justify the health fraud tag. Alexbrn argues based on this source that fraud and quackery are synonymous and then cites sources calling cupping therapy quackery. However, the source cited does not actually state that fraud and quackery are synonymous. --Wikiman2718 (talk) 15:56, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Anybody out there? --Wikiman2718 (talk) 23:25, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

RfC on original research in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act article

There is a request for comment on original research in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act article. If you are interested, please participate at Talk:Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act § RfC: Recent additions. — Newslinger talk 04:56, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

RfC involving possible OR/SYNTH

There is a request for comment about the article Kate Dover. The third question relates to WP:OR / WP:SYNTH. If you are interested, please participate. Thanks! — MarkH21 (talk) 00:33, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

List of paramilitary organizations

Many if not most of the entries are original research. There is no lead and no definition. There's been a discussion on the talk page but it died out and I forgot about it. Any suggestions as to how to fix this? Doug Weller talk 13:37, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Is a secondary-source ref that _begins_with_ copying a company merger PR announcement OK if it also quotes/paraphrases the CEOs of the merged businesses and gives analysis?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

The refs are to TechTarget.com, to ChannelBuzz.ca, and to BlockAndFiles.com articles. Cris Mellor, the author of the BlocksAndFiles.com article, is also an editor for The Register, which is a Situation Publication sister website.

I would think the answer to this question would be an obvious "yes". Even primary-source refs are OK for an article about a business given the caution that "The organization's own website is an acceptable (although possibly incomplete) primary source for information about what the company says about itself and for most basic facts about its history, products, employees, finances, and facilities." In this case the ref'd articles start with a PR announcement of the merger of Retrospect Inc. and StorCentric. However all three articles includes direct quotes and paraphrases of the two CEOs' remarks about those same basic company facts, as well as the CEOs' reasoning behind the merger. The BlocksAndFiles.com article includes analysis by Chris Mellor of where the merged companies would fit into the industry, which one would expect in a secondary-source ref.

However Guy doesn't think so. He deleted the entire fourth paragraph of the former History section of the Retrospect (software) article because for the entire article “There is clear consensus on ANI and elsewhere that the level of detail here is excessive, the content promotional, and the sources lack intellectual independence”.

I'll discuss Guy's claim of "consensus" for the entire article in another section on this page. However IMHO it's clear that any "consensus" should not be used as an excuse for the deletion of a paragraph about the merger using the above three references. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 05:56, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Gold toilet or just gold-plated?

Your input is welcome at Talk:America (toilet). Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 07:08, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Mistaken identity in sources

While trying to improve our article on Andreas Joseph Hofmann (a German professor and politician who proclaimed the first republic in Germany in 1793), I noticed that my sources claim he was educated by an uncle called "Franz Xaver Fahrmann", a person who does not appear anywhere except in articles about Hofmann and who seems not to exist. Actually, the uncle's last name and profession (he was a professor who became auxiliary bishop in Würzburg after 1780) clearly uniquely identify him as Andreas Joseph Fahrmann (the German Wikipedia article is my own). My hypothesis as to what happened is that one author (Friedrich Otto), the earliest author I could identify who names the uncle, made a mistake (the book he cites on bishops of Würzburg does not mention Fahrmann's first name, but was written by someone called Franz Xaver von Wegele, and somehow this became "Franz Xaver Fahrmann" when writing the article), and then most of the authors that followed simply copied this from Otto's article without verifying it against the list of bishops of Würzburg. My question is how to best cover this in the article. I would like not to repeat an obvious error but stay on the right side of our prohibition against OR. Could any of the OR experts here give me a hint on what to do? Is my footnote OK or is the only way out to completely avoid talking about this uncle? —Kusma (t·c) 13:27, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Let me make sure I understand your question:

1. Andreas Joseph Hofmann is a well documented person;
2. You have sources that he was educated by an uncle;
3. Sources say the uncle became auxiliary bishop in Wurzbug;
4. Previous drafts state that uncle was named Franz Xaver Fahrmann, but no individual by that name is documented;
5. You have studied Hofmann enought that you have a personal opinion, you think Human Error by earlier contributors inserted Franz Xaver Fahrmann - you found Andreas Joseph Fahrmann is the only candidate for uncle who was also a bishop...

Okay, one approach, if you are confident RS say he was educated by an uncle, change the article so it only says that, that he was educated by an uncle, don't name him.

If you are confident RS say the uncle who educated him became a bishop, change the article to say that, don't name him. Geo Swan (talk) 02:57, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

I have sources that say he was educated by "his uncle, the professor for moral theology Franz Xaver Fahrmann" (for example [1]) and sources that say that "his uncle Franz Xaver Fahrmann, who was professor of moral theology and became auxiliary bishop". I am confident the sources name him incorrectly (and so did earlier versions of the article, which I wrote essentially on my own), as both university professors and Catholic auxiliary bishops of the time are very well documented. The problem is that Hofmann's early life is documented only in a few contemporary sources, and interest in him only picked up significantly since the 1970s. Most sources since then have copied the error without checking (the main biographical reference works ADB and NDB do not mention the uncle at all, but confirm the maiden name of the mother to be Fahrmann). I have removed the uncle's name to the footnote for the moment, and will try to get hold of even more sources. Thank you for having a look! —Kusma (t·c) 12:20, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Does policy only restrict original research and point of view comments from article space?

I sometimes get challenges from other contributors that I think are based on misconceptions about our policies.

NPOV is a simple example. WP:NPOV prohibits us from inserting our own interpretations, in article space. But when good faith contributors don't agree on what a the sources mean, it can be essential for each party to try to explain their own personal interpretation of the controversial source. If we don't do this the other good faith contributor can innocently draft a passage that uses that source, that they think is neutral, but is not only not neutral, but is also incorrect. We really needed to explain our interpretation, on the talk page. Of course it has to stay on the talk page. But complying with NPOV, in article space, can, sometimes, require stating our POV, in talk space or a fora.

I have received challenges from other contributors over passages I drafted, in userspace. Just like NPOV, WP:OR prohibits putting original research, in article space.

Those of us who work intensely on covering a developing field can think we reached a genuine understanding of that field. I have notes, in userspace, that help me keep my eyes open for new developments in the fields I follow. When those notes state, or imply, a development I anticipate, so I can find the RS that documents it, as soon as that is published, I don't think this is original research, at all.

I'd welcome others opinions on this. Geo Swan (talk) 02:44, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

I've seen similar arguments, and they are wrong. You are right. There are editors who would have us take a hear-no-evil see-no-evil sort of attitude where we just accept sources on blind faith because they have the right publisher and stick that content in the article; but if articles are supposed to not be trash, it's simply not workable that way. It's impossible to evaluate whether a source is reliable without doing a little original research. It's also impossible to know what the neutral point of view is without discussing the points of view of individual sources. This is actually very important given that articles are supposed to be summaries of available information. How can you accurately summarize an author's lengthy critique of a subject in just a sentence if you refuse to discuss what the author is trying to say? Anyway, those are my, I guess, three or four pence on that question, without having any idea what the underlying issue is. I'd also add that there are people who insist all discussions of a subject must be free of anything resembling an opinion, even in choice of language. But there's no rule against that, certainly not NPOV. As long as it's not disruptive it is not a problem. More often I think people bring that up in order to tone police rather than substantively engage, possibly while insisting they cannot be accused of POV pushing because they never overtly expressed a personal opinion. It's annoying. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:48, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Oftentimes there are source conflicts so one has to judge/weigh sources to determine which is right. I don't have a problem with internal comments explaining processes/judgments in this way. WhisperToMe (talk) 23:05, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

NOR only applies to articles. OR is acceptable on talk pages if it is designed to improve article content. Sometimes our own knowledge of subjects tell us that facts reported in reliable sources cannot be true. For example if a source says that Caesar liked to watch Game of Thrones, we would know that was untrue. While such an obvious error would be unlikely to occur in reliable sources, many less obvious errors can be. TFD (talk) 23:28, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes, NOR only applies to article space. Talk pages and userspace are not covered. BLP does apply to all of Wikipedia, except for editors. Editors can be slandered, often with impunity, but NPA still applies. Lies which are not presented as personal attacks seem to be immune. I once had an editor create an elaborate gaslighting story about me and get away with it. No admin would do anything, not even allowing me to remove the lies. I was told that BLP does not apply to editors. -- BullRangifer (talk) 00:00, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

• WP:NOR applies in all namespaces, however applicability varies. In mainspace, there are strong sourcing requirements to demonstrate that information is not coming from editor opinion or synthesis. In userspace and draftspace, it is OK if there is an intention to achieve that objective, and in userspace there are no time limited on getting there. At MfD, it is standard to delete the most extreme OR, for example inspired physics and cosmology divinely inspired reimagining, which is exactly the sort of thing early Wikipedia attracted, and still does to a small extent. In category space, NOR applies, although it can be argued as applying via the mainspace arguments. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:12, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Terrorism and controversies section of Islam in Houston

Hi, guys! Someone added this section Islam_in_Houston#Terrorism,_Violence,_and_Controversies. Each individual act/incident is verifiable, but there seems to be an unstated assertion that there is a recurring problem with the Houston Muslim community. Would this be original research? WhisperToMe (talk) 20:18, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

People's Salvation Cathedral

Resolved

 – He admitted doing sheer original research Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:54, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

It seems to me that comparisons with other icons from People's Salvation Cathedral are sheer WP:OR (i.e. unverifiable in WP:CITEd WP:SOURCES). I'm am not an expert in this matter, so I welcome the community to chime in. Previously the article choked with WP:SPS sources (WP:BLOGS) and with self-references to Wikipedia and Commons (WP:CIRCULAR). So I find it highly suspicious of ventilating the mere opinions of editors, instead the opinions of WP:RS. So, yes, I suspect that MIHAIL has filled the article with his own musings. Tgeorgescu (talk) 00:45, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

[2] Solved our dilemma. MIHAIL recognized that It's my work and that he got the information directly from the painter D. Codrescu, instead of consulting WP:RS. I'm not saying that what he did was bad quality information, but WP:NOTESSAY denies his right to perform original research inside Wikipedia. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:54, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Benson, Arizona

I would appreciate input about whether this edit at Benson, Arizona is original research. User:DJ Jones74 used personal correspondence with a city employee to support an edit, and now that editor and I differ on whether this is original research. I searched online for a published source to support this edit but have not located one. Thank you. Magnolia677 (talk) 14:22, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

FWIW, I don't think that this will qualify as a valid source, simply for the reason that WP has no way to know if the document was tampered with or altered in any way. Also, the editor says they "Provided pdf copy of scan from City Manager of resolution from city records. Cannot scan to Wikipedia." Which means we basically have to take the editor's word that they received this information. Now, I understand WP:AGF, but I think that is taking the concept a bit far. As such, I think it fails WP:VERIFY. Clearly, if a city underwent a change like that, there must be a verifiable source which can be used: a local newspaper?Onel5969 ^{TT me} 16:47, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

I cited the date (Jan 1985), where it was received from (Benson), when it was received (10/1), and from whom (the City Manager). I cited the resolution, which is not available online because there is no way a town of that size has the resources and manpower to put up documents from long-ago council meetings (and same goes for trying to find an article from a tiny town newspaper from that long ago). The whole point of CONTACTING the City Manager was because that information wasn't available online ! I've been making edits and contributions for 12 years almost explicitly on this subjects of cities, towns, villages, ghost towns, et al. Still not enough. Yes, because someone is going to tamper/alter with a document of an almost 34-year old resolution of a town council and the set date the election was held to upgrade the status from town to city. You bring paranoia and silliness to a whole new standard... and with the standards you boys set, you're going to have to delete 90% of what's on this entire website because -- guess what -- it's "original research." Perhaps 95%. Good job, kids. DJ Jones74 (talk) 04:10, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Sedimentary isostasy

As far as I can make out, the article sedimentary isostasy is almost all original research. The exact term is used exactly 15 times in research papers according to Google Scholar. All of these are referring to the isostatic effect of sedimentary loading and none of them mention the accommodation of the paired areas of erosion/uplift and sedimentary loading/subsidence by movement of a "mobile granitic melt" within the lower crust, as proposed in the article. I have attempted to discuss this with the article's creator User:Geologician on the article's talk page, but have got nowhere. Links to this article have been added to several other geology articles and the time has come, I think, to address this problem. Mikenorton (talk) 11:26, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Based on Geologician's own comments on the talk page, it is exceedingly clear that he is engaged in original research. Most especially his explanation of essentially daisy chaining papers over the course of decades to materialize a lineage of ideas that he himself admits is not acknowledged in the literature. I mean, he literally admits that he is deducing things by synthesizing knowledge from numerous sources, so there's not even really a dispute over whether this is original research as defined by policy - he just doesn't seem interested in that policy. Someguy1221 (talk) 12:57, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

That's a succinct analysis, thanks. So what is the next step? I assume that I should take the article to WP:AfD, but what about the editor in question? Mikenorton (talk) 14:36, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

[Edit conflict] Before bringing this here, Mikenorton reached out to me as a research-university professor who has written academic papers on isostasy. This is something that I have never come across in any of my professional career, in agreement with Mike's search through the literature. At risk of diving into the rabbit hole: The "hypothetical mobile magma" invoked by the article is incorrect: no major part of the Earth above the outer core, except for the oceans, is liquid; even in "magma chambers", which are few and far between, there is a mix of melt and solid rock, and zones of volcanic activity typically include 1-2% melt that slowly migrates upwards. From the talk page, I also read some confusion about a "fluid layer" within or directly below the lithosphere. The proposal that there is sudden sinking of an entire package of rocks is inconsistent with seismic observations and laboratory experiments that determine the rheology of the mantle. Most importantly, it seems that an enthusiastic author is synthesizing some scattered information to create and push forward an idea. I would be happy to discuss with the article's author how we know that flexural isostasy works and would support his/her moving it to some other part of the internet where such ideas are discussed, but in my professional opinion, this is WP:OR and Wikipedia cannot be the platform for such an article. (Finally, even outside of my professional opinion, the lack of support found by Mikenorton for this is enough, I believe, for this article to be nominated for deletion; not sure yet about the author's ability to be a good contributor to WP; I will take a look at their contribution history.) Andy Wickert (talk) 14:57, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

User:Geologician significantly edited Migmatite in ways that they may have hoped to be helpful. However, they added some confusion of terminology at the top and rewrote quite a bit in the style of a research paper, but using very outdated references. Therefore, the key ideas are now obscured a bit by some of the synthesized history of thought. They also added support for "sedimentary isostasy" to this article.

Talk:Mathematics/Archive_9, from long ago, demonstrates a further disconnect between their activities and an understanding of topics, and seems like advocacy. I could disregard this due to the time, except that it seems that the general tendency is the same.

Recent changes to Saprolite seem relatively benign though not very helpful (photo a bit too general, grammar).

Changes at [3] seem helpful as well, though there is an uncited reason about the spelling of isostasy. I did not check this for WP:WEIGHT.

This extension to Unconformity is WP:OR and is incorrect at multiple points unrelated to "sedimentary isostasy". I will revert it: https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Unconformity&type=revision&diff=919614702&oldid=914539554.

In short, this editor has the ability to produce useful contributions, but seems to see Wikipedia as co-authoring a volume of WP:OR and WP:SYNTH rather than the perhaps less exciting but quite useful task of faithfully collating global knowledge.

Andy Wickert (talk) 15:21, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

I have now nominated the article for deletion here, linking to this discussion. Mikenorton (talk) 10:13, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Mike Norton has just informed me of this discussion of Sedimentary isostasy, Migmatite and Unconformity, which I welcome. I shall consider the points raised carefully and revert later with constructive responses. Geologician (talk) 16:38, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

Response to Sedimentary isostasy criticism

Wikipedia’s own definition of an encyclopedia states: An encyclopedia or encyclopaedia is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either from all branches or from a particular field or discipline... encyclopedia articles focus on factual information concerning the subject named in the article's title.

Information in traditional encyclopedias can be assessed by measures related to such quality dimension as authority, completeness, format, objectivity, style, timeliness, uniqueness. —If required, I shall defend my compliance with each of these parameters.

Fundamentally, all encyclopedia articles are reviews of existing knowledge distilled for readers by experts in each field. The history of geology is replete with examples of alternative interpretations held with quasi-religious ferocity. Agreeably, the format of Wikipedia allows for different interpretations to be discussed under a common heading, as I did when comparing cyclothems with chronosomes. If Wikipedia were to insist that all entries follow a single ‘canonical’ interpretation, then who will be the canonical pope for each geological discipline?

Objections to the Sedimentary isostasy-Migmatite-Unconformity trilogy suggest that individually or collectively they amount to original research. Yet in real life, many statements are too obvious to be labelled original research. Thus I might say ‘water is wet’ or ‘the fire is hot’ and easily avoid being accused of making original deductions. Likewise, on a technical level, I might state that granulite never appears at the surface in molten form, so there must be some combination of temperature, pressure and facilitating fluids that allow it to exist as a melt at some depth in the crust. The required conditions for the crystallization of associated metamorphic minerals such as sillimanite, andalusite and garnet have been established in the lab, so we know that we are talking about depths of 10 to 15 km. It is quite unnecessary to burden the Wikapedia reader with a rundown of lab procedures. There is no reason to suspect that geothermal gradients are much different today from what they were in the Dalradian, so there is no logical cause for supposing that granulite melt, today, is not still widely present at some equivalent depth. Also, regarding seismic evidence, with which I have some experience. Love waves propagate by multiple internal reflections of horizontally polarized S-waves and develop near the surface, constrained by a wave guide that could coincide with the migmatite-granulite transition.

I am well aware that some statements in the trilogy, (all supported by attached authoritative references) are at variance with some supposedly canonical academic views. I am able and willing to defend all such statements with other experts in these fields.

In my opinion it would be a disservice to the Wikipedia reader if alternative interpretations of fairly tenuous geological and geophysical data is not given a fair and equable public airing. Thus the public might gain some insight to the issues we all have to address. Geologician (talk) 19:28, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

@Geologician: I'm sure you have the best of intentions, and it is admirable that you want to help expand the knowledge published by this project. However, what you have just described is explicitly outside the scope of Wikipedia, as it conflicts with The Five Pillars. The goal is to summarize the significant aspects of notable subjects from the point(s) of view of reliable sources written by relevant experts in a given field. A subject, point of view, or conclusion, that does not appear in those sources, therefore does not belong.

Wikipedia was designed this way deliberately. Since we are "democratizing knowledge", there is no validation of expert credentials, and even those experts whose credentials may be validated are not given any special privileges. Therefore we are all treated much as "random people on the internet". Rather than assure readers that the editors have thought about it and are pretty sure articles are correct, the goal is to simply point them through citations directly to the reliable sources that back up any content. If we have to provide an original argument or explanation for why the text matches the sources, we have already failed.

Ultimately, if your dispute is not with the claim that you are engaged in original research (as defined by WP:OR), but with the original research policy itself, the proper path for you would be to suggest a change to the policy at Wikipedia talk:Original research, although I can tell you now from almost 13 years of experience that the chance you successfully lobby for a change is almost 0. Someguy1221 (talk) 21:31, 5 October 2019 (UTC)

I respect the intentions of Wikipedia and desire to comply fully with the standards expressed in the 5 pillars. However I regret that have not been given a fair opportunity to respond to the opaque criticism of Mike Norton, Andy Wickert or Someguy1221 before the articles in question were reverted, mainly for reasons of original research. I do accept that the Stacked unconformities article lacked references but it was intended simply as an extended caption for the accompanying uncontroversial illustration.

However the specific criticism and reversion made by Andy Wickert seems to be based on the Field POV principle that “Wikipedia reports what people familiar with that field consider as having been reasonably enough established by the original research.” However, it can be argued in response that Andy, who is a glacial geomorphologist with experience of running flexural isostasy computer models, lacks the broad geological background needed to take on board the issues supported by my citations. — I watched his 2011 YouTube CSDMS video last night and noted some common points between his interpretation and mine, although he uses ice rather than sediment as a load and prefers to put the source of isostatic buoyancy deeper in the crust, which is an easily modified model parameter.

By an extraordinary coincidence it emerged that there is an overlap in our educational backgrounds. When I was at Colorado School of Mines, Golden, many years ago, I took an extracurricular 600 course for credit at INSTAAR, Boulder, where Andy gained his PhD. That semester course, ‘Computer applications for geologists’, was taught by John Andrews, who went on to publish about the vast thickness of the Laurentian Ice-sheet and to co-operate with Peltier in his papers on Global glacial isostatic adjustment and coastal tectonics, etc. This is not the proper place to recount how that research team led down a whole series of blind alleys, via Fairbanks in Barbados through Lambeck to Mörner, to eustatic sea level reponses, forebulges and host of speculative papers about climate change all over the world. Consequently, there remains today a broad institutional bias which ensures that modern published papers such as I have cited get ignored if they do not agree with that persisting canonical status quo.

For the above reasons I’d respectfully request that these issues are reviewed by some other qualified editor, preferably a geophysicist well versed in geology —and that the reversions are reinstated in the meantime, to allow a breath of fresh air into this musty corner of earth science. Geologician (talk) 11:49, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with the papers that you have cited. It's your use of them to support a previously unpublished concept that's the problem. Mikenorton (talk) 13:12, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

I am away from home at the moment, so I don’t have access to my files, but a Google scholar search for ‘Westaway uplift and subsidence’ lists six papers that may allay Mike Norton’s concern that this process (not then called Sedimentary isostasy) is a previously unpublished concept. Amongst these is a 2006 paper by Morley and Westaway in Basin Research that describes a deep basin in SE Asia which is particularly relevant. The abstract says “…the depth (and thus, the pressure) at the base of the brittle upper crust subsequently varied over time. Following such a perturbation, thermal and mass-flux steady-state conditions took millions of years to re-establish. In the meantime, the lateral pressure-gradient caused net outflow of lower crust, thinning the crust beneath the depocentre by several kilometres (mimicking the isostatic effect of greater crustal extension having occurred beforehand) and thickening it beneath the sediment source region.”

This process is analogous to glacioisostasy so it seems reasonable to dub it ‘Sedimentary isostasy’. Naming an established process for convenience falls a long way short of submitting original research.

Morley and Westaway’s concept is not much different from those described originally by Herschel or more recently by Doré and by Japsen but perhaps their 2006 paper addresses more directly any remaining concerns about activity at the base of the rigid crust and the response of the melt that occurs below that boundary. There has never been any dispute, of course that migmatite occurs at the base of the rigid crust. Geologician (talk) 18:07, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

That is helpful. Morley and Westaway's paper, following on from a series of papers by Westaway, attempts to explain anomalously high post-rift sedimentation in a rift basin by appealing to flow in the lower crust. That is solid-state ductile flow not as a magma. Wikipedia could usefully have a page on Lower crustal flow, I think, as it comes up a lot. The term being used (by Westaway, Bridgland and Marra) is "erosional/sedimentary isostasy", because it particularly relates to the formation of river terraces linked to climatic change - a high rainfall period leads to increased erosion of uplands and sedimentation in nearby basins, which leads in turn to small (but detectable) amounts of uplift/subsidence linked to lower crustal flow, giving the observed river terraces. Note that there is still a very small level of usage of this term. It's also pretty clear that this mechanism lacks widespread support, although this may well come. I can see having a section in the proposed "Lower crustal flow" article relating to this. This would, however, not include anything about chronosomes (another term that doesn't get much use in the literature) because there are no papers that I know of that support their linking to that mechanism. Also Westaway's mechanism is certainly similar to Herschel's, but he doesn't mention Herschel once, that I can find, so we can't point out the similarity unless someone has published it, however strange that may seem to you. Finally, when Japsen et al. (2018) describe the uplift and exhumation history of the Scandes they do not mention a mechanism, and no-one, as far as I'm aware, has linked this to Westaway's mechanism, so that means that Wikipedia can't make that link either. Mikenorton (talk) 09:55, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

I've just found a paper in which Westaway acknowledges Herschel's idea - Dependence of active normal fault dips on lower-crustal flow regimes https://doi.org/10.1144/gsjgs.155.2.0233 , so I've stricken that one sentence above. Mikenorton (talk) 11:02, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

I appreciate your further research and valid concern about fundamental issues.

Morley and Westaway’s paper goes part of the way towards deeper understanding, but to assign ductile flow to “solid state ductile flow” shows that they lacked thorough knowledge of metamorphic and igneous geology. This is a common limitation in the background of most competent stratigraphers and geomorphologists. Likewise, most metamorphic /igneous geologists haven't thought much about isostasy, cyclic sedimentation or river terraces. Fortunately (or unfortunately!) I gained an in-depth understanding of all three disciplines, so I have difficulty getting draft papers past the journal referee stage. A few years ago I submitted a paper describing topographic evidence, including river terraces and lower crustal flow to the JGS but it was rejected, presumably because it exceeded their reviewers’ scope of competence. Thus I was aware that submitting articles to Wikipedia might require extended patience.

Moving on, I strongly recommend the following references to stratigraphers who want to understand what is happening deeper down.

1. Shelley D. (1993) Igneous and metamorphic rocks under the microscope. Chapman & Hall, London, 445p , particularly ages 226 to 244. This book provides a thorough grounding in granite crystallisation, textures and structures

2. Fournier RO. (1999) Hydrothermal Processes related to the movement of fluid from plastic into brittle rock. Economic Geology,Vol.94 No.8 pp 1173 – 1211. This paper gives a detailed description of the processes operating at the brittle-ductile transition and the role of supercritical fluid.

3. Brown M & Solar GS. (1998) Granite ascent and emplacement during contractional deformation in convergent orogens Journ. Stuct. Geol. 20, 1365 -1393. This discusses the emplacement of magma in horizontal tensile fractures, lopoliths and sinking of the floor etc.

4. Pitcher,W. & Hutton D. (2003) A Master Class Guide to the Granites of Donegal. Publ. Geol. Surv. Ireland. The description on p7 – 9 of the Thorr granite indicates that this pluton, and probably the entire Donegal Batholith provides outcrop experience of Granulite generation from a migmatite roof, differentiation and emplacement in various styles that imply lateral displacement of the initial magma.

I have drawn on a much wider range of sources before submitting the thoroughly researched articles on Sedimentary isostasy, Migmatite and Unconformity to Wikipedia, so I hope we can agree on a suitable list of references to support acceptable encyclopedia style articles therein.Geologician (talk) 14:55, 7 October 2019 (UTC)