How do citations support information in a scientific article?

[PainterGuy]

Hi,

I was reading the following Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Georg_von_Soldner . The excerpt below is taken from the section "Light bending".

I understand that the references are used to back up what is being said using reliable sources. In other words, using reliable sources establishes a chain of proper information flow. I'm confused about the use of citations when it comes to back up the information being presented.

Question 1:
The information contained in Para 1 is backed up with citation [2]. Does it mean whatever is being said in Para 1 is backed up by the cited reference?

Question 2:
For Para 2, you can see that there are three citations, [3], [4], [5].

Likewise, for Para 3, two citations are used, [6] and [7]. Does it mean all the information presented in Para 3 is supported by the mentioned references? But what if the text highlighted in green has no mention in the reference [7]?

Thank you for the help, in advance!

 

[DrClaude]

I think you are correct, but this is a bit sloppy. References should be closer to the relevant information. I wouldn't accept such end-of-paragraph references in a student paper.

 

[PainterGuy]

Thank you, @DrClaude!

Below, I've edited Para 3 to make some supplementary queries.

The text in red has been added by me. Let's assume all the information provided by the text in green is supported by reference [6] and the same goes for text in blue which is supported by reference [7].

A reader might be misled into believing that all the information provided by the text, both red and green, is supported by reference [6] but this is actually not the case. The text in red is author's own understanding and possibly an interpretation after reading several random pieces of literature from that era.

How are such cases handled or what's the best to get around such issues? Thank you!Soldner was the first person who came to the definitive conclusion that light is affected by gravity though he had his own doubts about Newton's corpuscular theory of light. Soldner did not publish his work and did most of his research in thermodynamics. Albert Einstein calculated and published a value for the amount of gravitational light-bending in light skimming the Sun in 1911, leading Phillipp Lenard to accuse Einstein of plagiarising Soldner's result. Lenard's accusation against Einstein is usually considered to have been at least partly motivated by Lenard's Nazi sympathies and his enthusiasm for the Deutsche Physik movement. [6] Einstein's 1911 calculation was based on the idea of gravitational time dilation. In any case, Einstein's subsequent 1915 general theory of relativity argued that all these calculations had been incomplete, and that the "classic" Newtonian arguments, combined with light-bending effects due to gravitational time dilation, gave a combined prediction that was twice as high as the earlier predictions. [7]

 

[DrClaude]

Here are some comments:

Soldner was the first person who came to the definitive conclusion that light is affected by gravity though he had his own doubts about Newton's corpuscular theory of light.[ref.?] Soldner did not publish his work and did most of his research in thermodynamics. [awful sentence with two unrelated ideas] Albert Einstein calculated and published a value for the amount of gravitational light-bending in light skimming the Sun in 1911, [ref.?] leading Phillipp Lenard to accuse Einstein of plagiarising Soldner's result. [ref.?] Lenard's accusation against Einstein is usually considered to have been at least partly motivated by Lenard's Nazi sympathies and his enthusiasm for the Deutsche Physik movement. [6] Einstein's 1911 calculation was based on the idea of gravitational time dilation. In any case, Einstein's subsequent 1915 general theory of relativity [ref.?] argued that all these calculations had been incomplete, and that the "classic" Newtonian arguments, combined with light-bending effects due to gravitational time dilation, gave a combined prediction that was twice as high as the earlier predictions. [orig. ref.?] [7]

If necessary, references can be cited many times to detail where each idea comes from.

Most of the citations are to second hand material. References should be given to the original research.

 

[PainterGuy]

Thank you, @DrClaude!

Most of the citations are to second hand material. References should be given to the original research.

I don't get it. Could you please elaborate a little? I had thought that a citation and a reference are very much related. Please see the following. "When you quote from, or refer to, another source of information in your assignment, you must provide a citation to it, which then leads to a reference giving the full details of the resource." Source: https://www.managers.org.uk/~/media/Files/PDF/Study Support/References-and-Citations.pdf .

[awful sentence with two unrelated ideas]

I should have been more careful and at the same time English is not my first language.There are times when, in my opinion, some statements do not need any references because they are part of common knowledge or the support for those statement could be found in every other piece of related literature. For example, please have a look at the text below . I don't think that I need any references for it.

Newton was an English scientist born in 16th century. He is almost universally considered to be one of the most important scientific figures who made major contributions to many different fields of science.

Soldner was the first person who came to the definitive conclusion that light is affected by gravity though he had his own doubts about Newton's corpuscular theory of light. [ref.?] Soldner did not publish his work and did most of his research in thermodynamics. [awful sentence with two unrelated ideas] Albert Einstein calculated and published a value for the amount of gravitational light-bending in light skimming the Sun in 1911, [ref.?] leading Phillipp Lenard to accuse Einstein of plagiarising Soldner's result. [ref.?] Lenard's accusation against Einstein is usually considered to have been at least partly motivated by Lenard's Nazi sympathies and his enthusiasm for the Deutsche Physik movement. [6] Einstein's 1911 calculation was based on the idea of gravitational time dilation. In any case, Einstein's subsequent 1915 general theory of relativity [ref.?] argued that all these calculations had been incomplete, and that the "classic" Newtonian arguments, combined with light-bending effects due to gravitational time dilation, gave a combined prediction that was twice as high as the earlier predictions. [orig. ref.?] [7]

I have updated the text a bit. I hope you could see what is confusing me. I'm only trying to learn the basics of how to use citations and properly present the information in scientific writing. Thanks a lot for your help!

It could be said that Soldner was the first person who came to the definitive conclusion that light is affected by gravity though he had his own doubts about Newton's corpuscular theory of light. Soldner did not publish his work and the reason might be that he didn't think that his work was of any significance. He did most of his research in thermodynamics and made very important contributions. It's possible that he was not confident about the validity of his work in a field such as theory of light which had not much to do with thermodynamics. [author's own opinion] Albert Einstein calculated and published a value for the amount of gravitational light-bending in light skimming the Sun in 1911, [ref.?] leading Phillipp Lenard to accuse Einstein of plagiarising Soldner's result. [ref.?] Lenard's accusation against Einstein is usually considered to have been at least partly motivated by Lenard's Nazi sympathies and his enthusiasm for the Deutsche Physik movement. [6] Einstein's 1911 calculation was based on the idea of gravitational time dilation. In any case, Einstein's subsequent 1915 general theory of relativity [ref.?] argued that all these calculations had been incomplete, and that the "classic" Newtonian arguments, combined with light-bending effects due to gravitational time dilation, gave a combined prediction that was twice as high as the earlier predictions. [orig. ref.?] [7]IMHO, I don't think that I need two separate references, [ref.?] and [ref.?], to support what is being said. All the presented information is coherent - Einstein calculated the value in 1911 and it prompted Lenard, a known Nazi sympathizer, to accuse him. Any good reference, such as [6], would naturally cover these three points. Or, perhaps, as suggested by you, reference [6] could be cited multiple times in this case.Perhaps, by "[orig. ref.?]", you want me to give me a reference to the original paper of Einstein. Could you please confirm it? Anyway, what if citation [7] already covers and supports what is being presented. Or, Perhaps, I could use two citations where the other citation is to the original paper of Einstein.It would be a lot easier if one could enclose all the related information with citation markers, [], to show where the information is coming from. For example, in the text below I show that first part of text comes from citation [6] and the remaining section comes from citation [7]. Is it done or allowed in the academic writing?

[6]Albert Einstein calculated and published a value for the amount of gravitational light-bending in light skimming the Sun in 1911, leading Phillipp Lenard to accuse Einstein of plagiarising Soldner's result. Lenard's accusation against Einstein is usually considered to have been at least partly motivated by Lenard's Nazi sympathies and his enthusiasm for the Deutsche Physik movement.[6] [7]Einstein's 1911 calculation was based on the idea of gravitational time dilation. In any case, Einstein's subsequent 1915 general theory of relativity argued that all these calculations had been incomplete, and that the "classic" Newtonian arguments, combined with light-bending effects due to gravitational time dilation, gave a combined prediction that was twice as high as the earlier predictions.[7]

 

[PainterGuy]

I'd really appreciate it if you could help me with some of the queries in my previous post. Thanks, in advance!