{"id":679,"date":"2008-08-21T03:53:35","date_gmt":"2008-08-21T08:53:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=679"},"modified":"2008-08-21T03:53:35","modified_gmt":"2008-08-21T08:53:35","slug":"good-argument-bad-argument","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/679","title":{"rendered":"Good Argument, Bad Argument"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ran across the tube containing Standards in Science Blogging and My Inbox<\/a>. I’m interested in standards of science blogging, so I gave it a read. The author almost<\/em> gets it right when talking about the right way and wrong way to support your argument.<\/p>\n

There is a right way and a wrong way to buttress one’s viewpoints on controversial issues involving science and society.<\/p>\n

The right way is to do a comprehensive search of the literature on the topic and to find a group of peer-reviewed articles that support one’s argument. In a popular article, it’s OK to also quote popular sources, but if the subject is science, the focus should be on peer-reviewed mayerial.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think you need to take it one step further. Finding articles that support your argument is the lawyer’s way of making a case. The scientist looks at all<\/em> of the material, or at least a reasonable sampling of it. In any widely-researched area there will invariably be some literature that is unsupportive, contradictory or at least ambiguous, and it is not scientific to cherry-pick results. This is just the nature of, well, nature \u2014 you get statistical results, and sometimes those results are the outliers rather than the average.<\/p>\n

So make sure it’s carefully-done research (peer-review helps with that). But survey the whole body of it, and make sure the science really is supporting you. There are people who will point to a poorly-done study and build a position from it, oblivious to the fact that it contradicts mounds of other works \u2014 these are not good arguments.<\/p>\n

I think it that science bloggers and journalists should work toward a standard of ethics that their scientifically-related posts and articles will contain at least a minimal number of links or citations to peer-reviewed material.<\/p>\n

Obviously, if blog posts aren’t about science, there’s no such need for literature citation.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think this is true, remembering the context of discussions of science & society. One also needs to remember the difference between fact and opinion. There are quite a few people out there who post their opinions as if they were facts, or dismiss facts as if they were opinions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ran across the tube containing Standards in Science Blogging and My Inbox. I’m interested in standards of science blogging, so I gave it a read. The author almost gets it right when talking about the right way and wrong way … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","category-science-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}