
PROOF AND PERSUASION:
The Rhetoric of Scientific Integrity
FALL 2023
© 2023 by Cynthia Shearer
CYNTHIA SHEARER
419-H REED HALL
BOX 297700
TEXAS CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
PHONE EXT: 817.257.6593
ENGLISH 20803 - WRITING AS ARGUMENT
Section 63:MWF @ 2 p.m. in Reed 221
Cynthia Shearer, Instructor
OFFICE HOURS: 1 - 2 p.m. MW in Reed 419_H
STUDY GUIDE: EVIDENCE AND APPEALS



DEFINE AND GIVE AN EXAMPLE OF EACH OF THE FOLLOWING TERMS:
TESTIMONIAL/EYEWITNESS EVIDENCE
QUANTITATIVE/DETERMINATIVE EVIDENCE
QUANTITATIVE/STOCHASTIC EVIDENCE
PATTERN RECOGNITION
CORROBORATIVE STUDY
CLASSIFY EACH OF THE STATEMENTS BELOW ACCORDING TO ITS TYPE OF EVIDENCE OR APPEAL. BE ABLE TO JUSTIFY YOUR ANSWER.
1. Of the 354 students who participated in the study, 67% reported having experienced “junior year burnout” at college. Half of these students (49%) reported assignment overload as the primary cause.
2. Dynamic Ditch-digger Corp. is expected to report lower second-quarter earnings on Friday, July 17, 2015. Analysts are expecting a 10% drop in earnings from a year ago. The consensus estimate is 54 cents per share, down from earnings of 60 cents per share a year ago.
3. Since 1985, income tax brackets have been adjusted for inflation so that someone whose annual raise tracks the Consumer Price Index is not thrown into a higher tax bracket. However, that adjustment doesn’t fully protect rising income from higher taxes.
4. She has six exams in five days plus an analytical paper due. Her stomach hurts, she can barely eat. Others in her class are having panic attacks and are up until 2 a.m. each night studying. No, she’s not in law school: She’s 16, in 11th grade.
5. Researchers Altman and Taylor (1973) advanced the “social penetration theory,” arguing that the human self is actually a like an “onion-skin” made up of many layers.
6. Jane Doe experienced burnout early, during in her sophomore year when she was taking 15 hours for course credit and trying to complete an internship that required her to conduct daily 6 a.m. exercise sessions in a rehab facility.
7. Jack Barnacle was the lighthouse keeper on Tybee Island for 15 years, and says that the hurricane season of 1941 was the worst in his lifetime.
8. Since students with higher self-esteem often show greater leadership skills, athletic ability, or academic performance, it makes sense that we should pay attention to whether the educational process damages or enhances self-esteem. Nobody should have to choose between sports and good grades.
CLASSIFY EACH SNIPPET OF TEXT BELOW ACCORDING TO ITS TYPE/PHASE IN THE RESEARCH CYCLE:
1. Many research groups have correlated frequent use of over-the-counter pain meds with an increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease. But for the current study, the team of senior author Eric Larson, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Washington (UW), engaged in longer follow up (over seven years), and utilized a tighter assessment of N-SAIDs use. The study followed some 3,500 Group Health participants, average age 73, with the Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) study, which is a project funded by the National Institute on Aging.
2. Therefore, this Pfizer study aimed to replicate the design of earlier clinical trials in Great Britain, with an American sample population. The primary aim was to explore associations between compassion and clinical symptoms in a group of individuals with psychosis. It was hypothesized that greater compassion would be associated with lower levels of positive symptoms, negative symptoms, cognitive disorganization, excitement and emotional distress. The findings were strikingly similar.
3. Researchers have investigated spiritual care provided by hospice nurses in HIV populations for decades, but Kristin Dealey was the first to use qualitative sampling techniques to nurses providing spiritual care in a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) in Houston, Texas.
4. This study reviews all the evidence published in the past 40 years on the socio-economic impacts of GM crops and analyzes whether there are patterns across space and time. To this end, we investigate the effect of GM crops on farm-level costs and benefits using global data from more than one decade of field trials and surveys. More specifically, we analyze the effects of GM-crops on crop yields, seed costs, pesticide costs, and management and labor costs and finally gross margins.
5. The Brundtland Report was the first comprehensive global survey of resource depletion and mismanagement across all nations, issued by a commission convened by the UN Secretary General in 1983, with an eye towards arriving at a common purpose: to set an agenda for making sustainability a part of all international relations, and to reverse the harsh course that humanity has taken towards its own habitat, earth.
