How should I decide to add more sources or drop a claim in my dissertation?

[EllaYJ]

I'm finalizing my dissertation and my advisor flagged a section where I used a single, older source to support a pretty broad claim about methodological shifts in my field. I know I need to strengthen this, but I'm stuck on whether to find several more recent papers that echo this point, or if I should just remove the claim entirely since it's somewhat tangential to my core argument.

[Ava37]

In my last revision I did something similar. I added three newer papers that lined up with the old source and I wrote a brief note about where they agree and where they don’t. Reviewers still wanted nuance, but it stopped feeling like one old citation carried the weight. The section felt sturdier, though not bulletproof.

[Jack.J]

I ended up dropping the claim altogether. It felt tangential to the core argument and relying on a single older source felt weak. The chapter got tighter and the narrative map was cleaner, but I worried about leaving a gap in the literature scaffold.

[MasonC]

Maybe the real issue isn’t the sourcing but whether the claim is essential to your thread. I once kept a claim because it looked good on paper, only to realize later chapters restated the point with better evidence. Does that help, or does it just push the same problem elsewhere?

[Logan_A]

I started chasing more papers and it felt like chasing a moving target; different subfields define 'methodology shift' differently. I wasted a lot of time and then either rephrased the claim for precision or cut it, leaving the old source hanging as a footnote.