Archives for category: Research

Good morning everyone.

Today’s extra credit opportunity takes us into the world of fine argument-crafting and rhetoric. Below I’ve posted a link to a great example of someone using persuasion to respectfully and creatively show why he does not agree with someone’s position. The link is a to a piece called “Dear Emma B,” which is a letter from a science educator and blogger to a creationist and member of a “young Earth” group, (someone who believes the Earth was created by God in 7 days, that the Earth is 6,000 years old, and that humans have no genetic links to monkeys). The creationist in question is a leader of a young Earth group and tries to teach children at a young age to doubt scientific facts about the age of the Earth, and the blogger is responding to these actions.

For extra credit:

  1. Read the article here: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/06/23/dear-emma-b/
  2. Respond to this post with a one page letter of your own that writes a letter to the author of an article/source/text that you do not agree with
  3. Post a link to the original source you are disagreeing with in your post

In your response, try to maintain a reasonable tone. Avoid any “bashing” of the source. You’ll notice in “Dear Emma B” that the author appears very cool and calm while taking part in what is actually a very contentious debate, creationism vs. evolution. One aspect that I really admire about the “Dear Emma B” letter is how the author in the second half of the letter details the scientific process of dating rocks; in other words, he describes the process of something he feels to be “true” as solid evidence for his claim. See if you can mimic his techniques.

Okay, so you’re writing your research project, right? What do you do if you have sources that don’t agree? Panic? Slam your computer? Delete your research project?

No! Of course, none of these.

Having sources that disagree is a wonderful thing. You must have different viewpoints, right? If all of your sources agreed on something, why would you be writing about it? If you are writing about a topic that everyone agrees on, then the topic is not worth writing about.

However, the trick is weaving your sources into coherent paragraphs so that you can clearly demonstrate how your sources are different. See the example below of a paragraph that shows there are two different sides two an issue:

I am of two minds about whether or not monogamy is “natural” or not. On one hand, religious values dictate that monogamy must be upheld in all marriages. On the other hand, documented research shows that monogamy is not natural to human behavior. As a result, [idea 1] is valuable because… At the same time, [idea 2] is valid because…

All of the text in bold is transitional or signal text that explains how I am linking ideas together. In other words, I am using clear transitions to show that there are two sides to an issue. Instead of ignoring one side of an argument, I am instead putting the disagreement into the spotlight where I can examine it, which makes for interesting reading.

If your paper is not examining a problem, you should reconsider your main argument.

Remember: all writing should create problems! (Scary, right?)