Loyalty to Source

You're writing a paper on solar energy, and a lot of the articles you've found keep referring to this gigantic study the Department of Energy did in the 1970s. It looks really great – but it's 700 pages long, really technical, and only available on microfilm, and the paper's due Tuesday. The articles summarize what it says – can't you just put in a citation of the Department of Energy study without going to the trouble of hitting the library again?

• It's dishonest to cite a source without actually having read it – or at least read the relevant parts of it. It might not really say what everyone says it does. Shouldn't you judge for yourself, anyway?

• If you aren't able to look at the original, you can still refer to it. Just do so by citing the place where Smith's article refers to the original study, like this: "Smith characterizes the discussion of solar cell technology in the Department of Energy study released in 1979 as groundbreaking (Smith 1984)."

• If Smith quotes from the Department of Energy study, you can use the same quote, but clearly note in your citation that you have taken the quote from Smith's article (Department of Energy 1979, cited in Smith 1984, p. 37).