Friday, November 14 and Monday, November 17
Evaluating Scientific Argument: Peer Review
IPHY 3700 Writing Process Map
Conventional Rhetorical Goals for Introduction Sections of Position Papers
1. Identify the issue that motivates your position paper, helping
readers understand why the issue is currently unresolved.
2. Convince readers that your issue is important and worth resolving.
3. Explain your conceptual approach to resolving your issue,
convincing readers that the approach is novel and unique.
4. State your claim and present a comprehensive and detailed
overview of how you'll support it in the body of your position paper.
Rhetorical Goal 1: Identify the issue that motivates your position paper, helping
readers understand why the issue is currently unresolved
1. Directly present the research issue—that is, the real-world problem(s) and/or
research question(s) that motivated your position paper (top of the mountain!).
2. If your issue was motivated by problems in society, explain them and present
evidence for their existence and their negative implications.
3. If your issue has not been definitively resolved due to conflicting results in previous
studies, summarize the key methods and outcomes of the contrasting research.
4. If your issue was motivated by contrasting concepts and/or theories, present the
conceptual and/or theoretical debates.
5. If your issue was motivated by a knowledge gap in the scientific field, present what
is known and what is unknown.
6. Explain why your issue has not been resolved sufficiently through previous research.
7. Present the qualifiers for your issue to define its scope.
8. Present the essential background information to help readers understand your issue.
Position Paper Draft
Rhetorical Goal 2: Convince readers that your issue is important and worth resolving
1. Focus readers on the importance of the core issue.
2. Relate the importance of the issue to your specific audience, considering their
interests and scientific knowledge.
3. If you're dealing with a real-world issue, discuss its importance to society.
Who is affected? How are they affected?
4. If you're dealing with a basic research issue, discuss its importance to the
scientific field: How do problems that define your issue currently limit the
advancement of science?
5. If your argument issue involves diseases or disorders that affect large
populations, present statistics that demonstrate incidences and costs; then
speculate on how potential outcomes of your study will improve the negative
conditions.
6. Discuss the implications of failing to resolve your argument issue.
Position Paper Draft
Rhetorical Goal 3: Explain your conceptual approach to resolving your issue,
convincing readers that the approach is novel and unique.
1. Describe previous experimental and conceptual approaches to
resolving your issue, pointing out their shortcomings and
explaining how they have limited scientists from resolving the
issue.
2. Present an overview of your novel and unique approach to
resolving the issue.
* Hint: Don’t use this goal to try to convince readers to accept
your claim; instead, use it to convince readers that you have a
sound conceptual approach to resolving your issue, which you’ll
follow through on in the body of the paper.
Position Paper Draft
Rhetorical Goal 4: State your claim and present a comprehensive and detailed
overview of how you'll support it in the body of your position paper.
1. State your claim directly
2. Present qualifiers, or delimiters, for your claim: to whom your
claim applies, under what conditions your claim applies, and under
what conditions your claim does not apply.
3. Provide a fairly comprehensive and detailed overview of your
lines of support, the limitations you'll address and how you'll
respond to them, and the counterarguments you'll address and
how you'll refute them.
Position Paper Draft
Conventional Rhetorical Goals for the Body of Position Papers
1. Present data-driven lines of support, to convince readers to accept
your claim.
2. Present concept-driven lines of support, to convince readers to
accept your claim.
3. Present the necessary warrants, to show readers how your claim and
lines of support are connected.
4. Argue for the methodological strengths of studies that support
your claim, to convince readers that the data derived from the studies
are valid.
5. Acknowledge limitations to your argument and respond to them so
that readers don't dismiss your claim.
6. Acknowledge and refute counterarguments, to convince readers
that you're considering all sides of your issue and that your argument
is stronger than alternatives.
Rhetorical Goal: Present data-driven lines of support,
to convince readers to accept your claim.
1. If you’re presenting numerous studies that support your claim, synthesize them.
2. Present the specific research questions that motivated your supporting studies, and
show readers how the research questions are relevant to your issue.
3. Present the most relevant details about the supporting studies' methods, to help
readers understand how the most important results were obtained.
4. Present the most relevant results from the studies that support your claim, including
the actual data (e.g., means, correlations, measures of variability), and values that
reflect their statistical significance. Use graphics to present large amounts of
supporting data in a synthesized, organized, and powerful way.
*5. Explain how the data support your claim. That is, present necessary warrants and
discuss the practical significance of the data.
*6. Argue for the methodological strengths of the studies from which you've derived
data.
*7. Acknowledge and explain methodological weaknesses and shortcomings associated
with your supporting data.
Position Paper Draft
Example Peer Review
Author: Selena || Reviewer: Larry || 261 words
My review focuses on the data-driven line of support for your claim that acupuncture effectively treats low-back
pain through direct effects rather than placebo effects. The data that you are using from the Manheimer meta-
analysis are definitely relevant to your claim. Subjects' self-reported pain severity/intensity and disability reflect
logical dependent measures. However, readers may not be convinced that the data reflect practically significant
effects of true acupuncture on low-back pain reduction. Consider, for example, your argument for the VAS data.
You write that a 10-mm difference between treatments is considered to be significant. In addition, you report that the
effect size calculated by Manheimer corresponded to a significant difference of 14.5 mm on the VAS, which
indicates that the pain severity/intensity was 4.5 mm less in the subjects treated with true acupuncture. However, the
content of your draft does not include an argument for the practical significance of a 4.5-mm difference. The
problem is that the draft does not explain the basis by which Manheimer determined that a 4.5-mm difference
between treatments has any real-world practical value. Readers will expect evidence that a 4.5-mm difference on
VAS test corresponds to positive functional outcomes for low-back pain suffers. For example, that difference might
correlate with an impressive number of work days recovered or with evidence that the patients were able to begin
exercise programs. Without a convincing argument for the practical improvement in function and health associated
with a 4.5-mm difference, skeptical readers might conclude that the cost of true acupuncture, which is very
expensive, is simply not worth paying.
Rhetorical Goal: Present concept-driven lines of support,
to convince readers to accept your claim
1. If necessary, explain why you're making a concept-driven argument rather than
a data-driven argument.
2. For each line of concept-driven support, present the scientific knowledge,
mechanisms, theories, and/or reasoning that support your claim. Consider the
knowledge needs of your readers to determine how much background knowledge
to provide and how deeply to explain concepts.
3. Explain how the concepts support your claim. That is, present necessary
warrants.
4. Present the necessary evidence and reasoning to convince readers that your
concept-driven line of support is based on a strong foundation of consensus
knowledge in the scientific field.
5. When possible, use indirect data to strengthen your concept-driven lines of
support.
6. Acknowledge and explain shortcomings associated with your concept-driven
lines of support.
Position Paper Draft
Rhetorical Goal: Argue for the methodological strengths of studies that support your claim, to
convince readers that the data derived from the studies are valid.
Flip side: Argue for the methodological weaknesses of studies that do not support your claim,
to convince readers that the data derived from the studies are problematic.
1. Clearly identify the most important and convincing methodological strengths of
the studies that support your claim. For our paper I'm looking for deep holes, so you
might focus on only 1 methodological strength from 1 supporting study.
2. Explain how the methodological strengths likely influenced the studies' outcomes,
leading to valid results and conclusions. Avoid simply listing methodological
strengths.
3. Explain how the strong methods in studies supporting your position are superior to
weaker methods in studies supporting the counterarguments. That is, directly
compare related methodological approaches across studies that support your
argument and the counterargument.
Position Paper Draft
Rhetorical Goal: Acknowledge limitations to your argument
and respond to them so that readers don't dismiss your claim
1. Acknowledge only those limitations that might meaningfully influence
your argument. That is, don't focus on limitations that readers might say
are unimportant.
2. Explain the nature of the limitations and how they influence your
argument.
3. Explain how your argument would be strengthened if the limitations
didn't exist.
4. Convince readers that, despite the limitations, your argument has
merit and is still stronger than alternative arguments.
Position Paper Draft
Rhetorical Goal: Acknowledge and refute counterarguments,
to convince readers that you're considering all sides of your issue and
that your argument is stronger than alternatives
General Strategies
1. Present the counterargument: its overall claims, lines of support, and
warrants. This strategy is important to show readers that you deeply
understand alternative arguments to yours.
2. Present all of the necessary details to explain studies that support
the counterargument: the research questions, methods, results, and
conclusions.
3. Discuss the strengths of the counterargument to show your audience
that (a) you understand why people might support it and (b) you're not
unfairly biased against it.
4. Refute the counterargument by discussing (a) methodological
problems in studies that support it, (b) why the data from its
supporting studies are not completely convincing, and (c) why the
conceptual arguments that support it are not completely convincing.
Position Paper Draft