Introductions to academic papers will be like "everyone knows that the sea is cold (citation), as well as salty (5 different citations). Things live in there (citation) and the environment is important to that (2 citations)"
these tags gave me thesis writing flashbacks
the thing about writing history. Is that you get used to this. And sometimes, some of us get too comfortable and so we're writing shit like
"Murder is bad. In the time period discussed, people sometimes committed murders (2 citations). And most people agreed that murder was bad, but it was widely known that murders still happened."
And your advisor goes, "Did most people agree, though? Was it widely known?"
And you go (sigh.). Okay. And do twelve hours of going back through your readings. And rewrite.
"Murder is bad (4 citations). In this time, people sometimes committed murders (6 citations). People did not all agree that it was bad (2 citations). There was disagreement about exactly how bad (3 citations)."
And you look at your draft. And you go. But. But we all — I mean, the archival sources from the time are in fact QUITE CLEAR about how widely known it was! Like–! I've read hundreds of letters and a third of them mention murder! I've talked to so many historians of this time and place and we ALL talk about the murder thing!
And you look at the twelve goddamned hours of searching you did. And you write several increadingly desperate emails to colleagues. And after another few days, you come to the agonizing realization that, in fact, there are no citations of published work establishing that people knew murders occurred despite them being bad and against the law. And then you spend another week looking up those archival sources. And you rewrite again.
"Murder is bad (6 citations). In this time, people sometimes committed murders (6 citations). People did not all agree that it was bad (2 citations). There was disagreement about exactly how bad (3 citations). While no conclusive study has been done, from communications in this time, we can say that at least a significant number of people knew that murders still occurred (18 citations)."
I currently have exactly this problem.
"Everyone knows that [reaction A] works like this and [reaction B] works like that". Very common way to start a paper or thesis in this field. Everybody knows this, we can carry on with the more interesting stuff about [reaction C].
Huh. These 73 citations all cite each other in a ouroboros and the only original source in the lot is a popular science book which is indeed worth citing, but it's a memoir, which I have read repeatedly, and the author of the memoir just threw this out there as another example of "things everyone just knew in those days".
...I am now doing a PhD on "Hang on just one second, we have no concrete evidence for how [reaction A] or [reaction B] work and even whether they're different at all."
[Image ID: Tumblr tag reading: #and you just know someone spent like 12 hours trying to find those goddamn citations /End ID]
