Is it appropriate to "cite" random conversations as the inspiration for a research direction? In my research internship report, I'm mentioning a successful deep learning experiment. I performed it because another researcher told me it gave them good results for a similar problem.
I need to justify why I tried this, but I can't cite something un-published like this conversation. Is it appropriate to mention it in a footnote, like &quot;according to other researchers, [...]&quot;? Should I search for a citable source that says the same thing, or just drop the justification?
You can cite it as a &quot;private communication&quot; but it's more common (at least in my field, which is physics) to mention the person in the acknowledgements, for example, &quot;We thank A. Smith and B. Jones for useful discussions&quot;. You can make the phrasing more specific if you want, for example, &quot;We thank C. Davies for an insighful discussion about deep learning that inspired our approach to this work&quot;.