The Use and Abuse of Science in Public Policy Debates Syllabus Spring 2012

The Use and Abuse of Science in Public Policy Debates Spring 2012

UGS303 SPRING 2012
Trish Roberts-Miller
Lecture MW 10-11 PAR 201
63575/63580/63585
The Use and Abuse of Science in Public Policy Debates
TRM Office Hours: MTW 1:30-3:00 and by appointment
Email: redball@mindspring.com
http://www.drw.utexas.edu/roberts-miller
To access UT webspace: https://webspace.utexas.edu/xythoswfs/webui

The goal of this course is to give students some of the basic skills of reasoning, critical analysis, source assessment, and argumentation that will help assess scholarly and non-scholarly appeals to expert opinion.

We will be reading some offensive things in this course (racist material from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), and you will be required to criticize material with which you agree. If you can’t imagine reading things with which you (and all of us, I assume) disagree, and criticizing things with which you agree, this is not a good course for you to take.

In this course, you will often submit “Reading Responses” to your discussion leader. Any time that you would like me to answer a question about the reading—whether I’m your discussion leader, whether there is a Reading Response due that day, just send it to me (redball@mindspring.com) by 8:00 a.m. the day that the reading is due. Any time that there is some kind of glitch in the reading—pages missing from the coursepack, a different title from what you expect, or simply confusion about the assignment—email me immediately.

COURSE POLICIES

LATE PAPERS. Papers and work are due at the beginning of class. They will be dropped one-third grade if they are turned in during class, and a full grade for every day late unless you contact me ahead of time. If you do contact me ahead of time (which includes sending email any time before class starts), then the late paper policy will apply to whatever the extension is.I have a stringent (even Draconian) late paper policy for two reasons. First, our schedule is packed, and getting thrown off even slightly will make both our lives miserable. Second, in my experience, students have trouble completing the work in a writing class because they’ve mis-defined the task. If I get involved, I can help.

Keep in mind, if you turn a paper in late (even with an extension), chances are that you will not get it back before the next submission is due, and you may not be able to have a student conference.

ATTENDANCE. If you miss over six classes (lecture and discussion each count as “classes”), you will receive an ‘F’ in the course. In addition, coming to class (either lecture or discussion) more than ten minutes late or leaving class more than ten minutes early constitute absences. Sleeping in class, doing work for another class , or other forms of mental non-attendance will be counted as ½ absence. Only religious holidays and military service are “excused” absences.

When I first started teaching, I distinguished between excused and unexcused absences, and I found myself getting entangled in all sorts of ways. More important, I discovered that, even with the best of intentions, students just couldn’t make up the work–students who missed a lot of class did poorly. Poor attendance and poor grades are probably associated in this kind of class because one cannot “make up” the class work (in the way that one can with a lecture course).

It is none of my business why you miss class. It is your business to contact me ahead of time if there is any work due on the day you miss (the late paper policy applies whether or not you are present in class), and also your business to find out from other students what happened in class.

If there are medical reasons for your absences, please talk to me so that we can arrange a medical withdrawal. If you miss close to six classes, you can expect that it will negatively affect your grade–not because I will punitively lower your grade, but just because you will have missed the discussions and information that would help you write better papers and exam answers.

If you miss class, please don’t expect that I can go over all the material with you in office hours. I wish I could, but it just isn’t possible for me to do that with every student. Instead, you should try to get notes from another student in class—one of many reasons that having a good cohort correlates strongly to doing well in college.

I don’t want to have a tardy policy, but I will mention that students who continually show up a few minutes late also tend to do poorly in courses dependent on what happens in class (as opposed to classes in which lectures are easily available in other formats). My personal crank hypothesis is that students do poorly because important announcements are made in those first few minutes, so those students keep missing important information. It’s also very rude to your classmates to show up late (as there’s always a disruption when someone comes in late). So, please show up on time. If there is some reason that you have trouble getting to class on time (e.g., a physical disability that slows you down, a prof who tends to keep you late), please, please let me know. If you have an issue with getting to class late, or with attendance, I will not write a letter of recommendation for you.

I’m sorry to have to do it, but I have to ban laptops, iphones, smartphones, ipads, and all such devices. I’ve had too many students who spent their class time facebooking, texting, working on things for other classes, or generally not paying attention who then wanted me to make extra time for them outside of class because they were lost in class (or complained in teaching evaluations that I hadn’t explained things).

Also, those technologies distract students behind you (which is one of the ways that teachers know when you’re messing around and not just taking notes). Just as a general piece of advice, don’t underestimate the intelligence of your teachers. If you are really struggling in a class, and you look like you’re paying attention, most teachers will try to work with you as best they can. But you can imagine that it’s a little weird if a student doesn’t pay attention in class and then wants all sorts of extra time outside of class. If you need such a device as part of an accommodation, then please let me know, and you will sit in the front row.

Do not sign in for another student, and do not allow anyone else to sign in for you. If you are signed in on the roll sheet and not in class, I’ll send a note to that effect to the Dean. And, of course, I won’t serve as a reference or write a letter of recommendation for you.

If you have health or academic difficulties, do not simply disappear from your courses—you might find yourself responsible for returning grant, loan, or fellowship money.

PLAGIARISM. Even a single instance of plagiarism on any coursework (including Reading Responses) may result in an ‘F’ in the course, in addition to the matter being made part of your academic record. Any plagiarized coursework will receive a 0 (that is below an ‘F’).

Plagiarism is the unattributed borrowing of ideas or language. It does not matter if the original source is a published book or article, something from the web, something written (or told to you) by a student, or even work for another course. Changing a few words here and there does not solve the problem–correctly citing the source does.

There’s a handout in the coursepack on plagiarism, and most handbooks have good explanations of what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid it. See this page:
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/rhetoric/firstyearwriting/plagiarismcol…
But, if you ever have any questions about how to cite, or if you are concerned that you have a borderline situation, just put a note in the margin of your paper saying that you are unsure.

Part of what I hope you will learn in this course is that citation of your sources is not something one does to please obsessive teachers, but a basic ethical responsibility of anyone participating in public discourse. You should always try to be clear where you have gotten your information, and you should always insist that others tell you where they got their information. And you should know how to judge the basic credibility of those sources.

ACADEMIC HONOR POLICY VIOLATIONS. Any other violation of the Academic Honor Policy (e.g., using notes or prewritten material for the exams, signing another student into class) may result in an ‘F’ in the course and the matter being made part of your academic record.

DISABILITY STATEMENT Students With Disabilities: The University of Texas at Austin provides upon request appropriate academic adjustments for qualified students with disabilities. For more information, contact the Office of the Dean of Students at 471-6259, 471-4641 TDD. If you have a disability, please let me know immediately, so that we can make appropriate accommodations.

If you have a disability that is temporary, or not quite in the realm of ADA recognized (e.g., you sprain an ankle, and are having trouble getting to class on time, or you need to be near the board to read it), let me know, and we can easily work something out.

EMAIL NOTIFICATION. The official policy of UT is:
Electronic mail (e-mail), like postal mail, is a mechanism for official University communication to students. The University will exercise the right to send e-mail communications to all students, and the University will expect that e-mail communications will be received and read in a timely manner.

UT uses whatever email you have listed with UT Direct, so make sure to keep that updated. Blackboard will send notices to that address, so, if your email address is incorrect, you won’t get notices when I clarify or change assignments. You need to make sure that you check whatever email address you use for UT Direct every couple of days—every day is better.

Whenever you have a question about an assignment, email me. If I hear from several student, I know that my instructions were unclear, and then I’ll send out an explanation via blackboard. So, if blackboard doesn’t have your correct address, you won’t get the mail.

GRADING. If you do not turn in a good faith first version of a paper (1.1) on time, you may not revise the paper. Furthermore, you will receive a 0 (which is below an ‘F’) on that paper, so 20% of your final grade will be 0. If you do not turn in a Reading response, that is a o (lower than an ‘F’); failing to do Reading Responses will have a significant negative impact on your grade, and may bring the final grade down.

Failing to take an exam means that the exam grade is 0 (well below an ‘F’).

Exams: (2/13, 3/7, [4/30]) 20%
[Optional exam grade will be added to the other two in order to calculate the average of all three]
Quizzes:(1/20; 2/27; 4/2; 4/25; first part of final) 20%
Final Exam: 20%
Reading responses:
(1/25; 1/27; 2/6; 2/8; 2/20; 2/22; 3/5; 3/19; 3/21; 3/28; 4/11)
[see grading explanation in the Reading Response section] 10% (up to 10.2%)
Paper 1.1 10%
[note that this is graded as a final version and not as a “draft”]
Paper 1.2 20%

EXAMS. Failing to take an exam means that the exam grade is 0 (well below an ‘F’). If a sudden emergency means that you are unable to take the exam on the scheduled day, send me email (redball@mindspring.com) before class begins. We will schedule a makeup exam. The makeup exam may be substantially different from the one given in class on the scheduled day. Exams are graded on the criteria of: thesis, organization, evidence, clarity. That is, a good exam answers the question persuasively and clearly with appropriate evidence from the class. An excellent answer does not simply reiterate what students were told.

Exam #1: Analyze the use of fallacies in the text given to you in class. Identify the fallacies, show how those arguments are fallacies, and explain the significance of the fallacies for the argument (that is, why your identification of the fallacy is not just nit-picking). The text will be a selection from A.E. Wiggam or Popenoe and Johnson—the material you have in your coursepack. You are welcome to come to office hours well ahead of time in order to talk about that material, or to ask questions about it in discussion section.

Exam #2: Apply the concepts of case construction and stock issues to the text you are given in class. It will be a selection from the Medicare Debate material. What kind of case does the rhetor make? What stock issues does he use? What major flaws are there in the argument in terms of stock issues?

Exam #3: [Optional. If you choose to take the exam, the optional exam grade will be added to the other two in order to calculate the average of all three.] Apply the concepts of case construction and stock issues to the text you are given in class. It will be from the Committee Hearings on Japanese internment (Hearings on National Defense Migration), some portion of the material you have in your coursepack. It will be a section that has some question and answer. What kind of case does the rhetor make? What stock issues does he use? What major flaws are there in the argument in terms of stock issues?

Final Exam. You will be asked to write an essay on one of the following prompts (you will find out which prompt at the beginning of the exam). At the beginning of the exam, you will be given a copy of whatever primary texts you are asked to analyze in order to answer the prompt. That text (or set of texts) will be from a selection given out April 23 in class. You should bring two unmarked blue books to the exam.

In this class, you’ve been given concepts of stock issues/case construction, fallacies, epistemology, and authoritarianism. Using the text given out in the exam as an example, argue that these concepts are (or are not) mutually reinforcing. Do these concepts all point toward the same phenomena? Or does one enable insights not enabled by the others?
OR

One criticism of the very concept of “appeal to expert opinion” is that it is inherently authoritarian. Using the concepts explored in this class and the text handed out in the exam, argue that valuing “appeal to expert opinion” is or is not authoritarian (as defined by the class reading).

QUIZZES. With one exception the quizzes are primarily short answer (many are multiple choice). The exception is the quiz on 4/25.

For that quiz, you should be able to answer the quiz on the basis of lectures and readings, but don’t hesitate to ask me prior to the exam to define a term if it’s unclear. Keep in mind that the quiz is asking you how these terms are used in the scholarship we’re reading on rhetoric and public deliberation, so definitions from a general interest dictionary or encyclopedia will not help. Since people in different disciplines use terms differently, even a definition from another discipline will not necessarily be appropriate–you need to give the definition we’ve been using in class. You may receive up to four points for each term: up to two points for an accurate definition of a term, and up to two points for an apt example. While you can draw the definition from the written material, course lectures, or other class members, your example should be your own.

Bargaining v. deliberating (examples of both; eight possible points)
binary terms
ad hominem
solvency
feasibility
humans as cognitive misers
authoritarian personality
need/plan case
post hoc ergo propter hoc
“hermetic” wording
motivism
illustrative v. demonstrative example
straw man
naïve realism
unexpressed premise
argumentum ad ignorantium
red herring
false dilemma
fallacy of moral equivalence
peer-reviewed journal
argument from authority
argumentum ad populum
necessary versus sufficient condition
argumentum ad baculum

Quiz grades are essentially cumulative. There are five quizzes. The first quiz is worth up to 10 points; the second up to 30 points; the third up to 30 points; the fourth up to 100 points; the fifth (during the final exam) up to 30 points. The grades are totaled, and then translated into a 100 point scale. (So, if your initial total is 150, that becomes 75.) That latter number is the number used in final grade calculations. Thus, getting a 0 on quiz will have a significant impact on your quiz grade.

READING RESPONSES. Reading Responses can have a significant positive or negative impact on your grade. Keep up on them! They should be 250-750 words. See the “grading” method below. You are not generally expected to consult outside sources for them; if you do, you should cite those sources. Presenting someone else’s words or language as your own in the reading responses will be treated as plagiarism, and may earn an ‘F’ in the course.

The responses don’t have to be formal essays (if you turn in five paragraph essays I’ll go nuts), and you won’t get a lot of comments on them. They’re intended to make sure that I am clear as to what aspects of the course reading and concepts you’re getting (so neither of us should be surprised when it comes around to the exams). They’re graded on content—not whether I agree with you, but with whether you’ve plausibly and persuasively explored the prompt. They can be very informal, and you’re welcome to talk about whether you liked/understood/found boring the material.

You’ll generally get them back one week after you turn them in (with a couple of exceptions toward the end of the semester when I’ll be swamped with grading). But, keep in mind that you’ll get minimal feedback on them—they’re what’s called “expressive” writing. If you can’t come to class, then email your reading response to me by class time.

They have three major functions. First, they enhance your reading comprehension—research suggests that writing about a reading afterwards improves your understanding of the reading and also helps you identify what you didn’t understand about the reading. Second, they enable you to ask questions about the reading or indicate what concepts were unclear to you. I use them for class preparation (that’s why they’re due when they are), and therefore appreciate when students tell me what aspects of the reading they did or didn’t understand. Third, they can serve as notes for your studying. Fourth, they are the one part of the course that is essentially an effort grade. Notice that simply doing all of them adequately will get you an ‘A’ on that part of the grade.

“Grading” on RR:

Points Mark Total Explanation
10.5 + 102 (see note above) This mark is reserved for an extraordinarily good response, one that puts forward an insightful and excellent argument, on top of thoroughly answering the prompt. These are very rare.
9.5 √+ 102 (see note above) An excellent (that is, excelling) answer to the prompt, with strong close analysis., original insight and/or excellent questions. Many students (including ones who get good grades in the course) never get one.
8.7 √ 95.7 A response that answers the prompt and poses good questions.
6 √ – 66 A response that is inadequate in some way—too short, only responds to part of the prompt.
4.5 – 49.5 A timely Reading Response that says the student did not do the reading or did not have time to write the response; a Reading Response (that would normally receive a √ received after the cutoff but before class).
0 0 0 No response, or one that is submitted after class.

OFFICE HOURS. Office hours are your time–you can come by just to chat about the class, talk about things only minimally related to the class, go over course material that’s especially interesting or confusing, brainstorm your papers, go over paper comments, or even just shoot the breeze. If there are multiple students waiting, you may find your visit cut short. Students sometimes come to me for help on writing statements of purpose, appeal letters, or papers for other courses–that’s fine (and you’re welcome to do that long after you take a course from me). Some students prefer to get help through email, which is perfectly fine by me (and can be especially convenient on weekends), but I can’t guarantee I’ll get back to you immediately.

CLASS CALENDAR. Work is due on the day listed—make sure to check the next page for dates that are toward the bottom of a page. If you are confused about an assignment, or are having trouble getting the text, you should contact me or the TA; confusion is not actually a good excuse for failing to do the work.

(Think about it as you would a job—if you were a server, and your boss told you to give water to the people “over there,” while gesturing vaguely, what do you think would happen if you just didn’t do anything? Do you think telling your boss that s/he was vague would be considered an adequate reason for not giving the table more water?)

As we learn more about you as a class (your strengths, weaknesses, background knowledge), we’ll make changes to the calendar. For changes to lecture, I will send you notifications via blackboard—hence to the email address you have listed with UT Direct. If you have proposals as to how I should change the calendar (e.g., take another class session on a difficult concept), please let me know ASAP. It gets harder to change the calendar as the semester progresses. You may be given a different syllabus in discussion section for changes to what happens there.

PAPER PROMPT. The goal of the paper is for you to write a paper assessing the sources of a website with which you agree. Your paper will persuade someone else who thinks the website uses logic, sources, and stock issues appropriately that it does not, in fact, do so, in substantial ways. That is, you are writing to an opposition audience–someone who likes the website–and who has good reasons for thinking the website is good.

You must choose a webpage from the list given to you in class. If you want to do a different webpage, you must send the URL to your discussion leader by February 27, and have received written approval by March 2.

In your paper, you’ll have to acknowledge those reasons. Your assessment of the website will be deeply grounded in research on the website’s arguments, sources, and opposition (that is, how it represents the major opposition). Thus, you will examine the sources the website uses, its representation of its opposition, the internal logic, and even its use of statistics. For a discussion of fallacies, sources, and stock issues, you will rely on the material given to you in this course.

Although this assignment says “webpage,” you may need to look at more than one page by an organization in order to make your argument. Looking at more than two pages is probably unwise; if you choose a page with too little argumentation, you will find the paper impossible to write, and it will have a significant negative impact on your grade.

The paper will probably be 8-15 pages double-spaced with standard margins (approximately 2000-3750 words). You will use MLA citation formatting (you should use noodlebib to ensure you have the correct citation method), and appropriate sources for a college paper. Your paper will have a Works Cited and a Works Consulted. General interest encyclopedias or dictionaries are not appropriate for the Works Cited (as you should not be citing them in your paper), but are appropriate for the Works Consulted.

Use of concepts or language from any source (printed or not) must be cited–see the information on plagiarism in the coursepack, and the MLA Guide to Research Papers. You should not rely on someone else’s critique of the webpage–we are trying to ensure that you learn how to assess argumentation.

Your paper will have four major parts (that are not the same length): a summary of the webpage, an explanation as to why the webpage could look good to someone, an analysis of the page (the largest part of the paper, by far), and an argument that the flaws you have identified are significant (which might be interwoven into your analysis of flaws).

You can use the first person; you should use active voice and agency. “Correctness” (format, grammar, usage, diction, style) is important for writing a persuasive paper; it will be an important consideration in the grade. If you have a problem with correctness, you should make sure to finish the paper early enough that you can take it to the Writing Center. While they do not do proofreading, they will help you improve your own paper. Some students also find that filming themselves reading the paper enables them to catch problematic passages.

PAPER PROPOSAL. Your paper proposal will be approximately 200-500 words (not including sources). It might be longer, but I have trouble imagining it being any shorter. Your proposal will have (not necessarily in this order):

• The URL for the webpage(s) you will be analyzing.
• A summary of their argument. While you will almost certainly quote from the page(s), you will also need to paraphrase in order to explain what you think their major arguments are. Use the language of case construction and stock issues to describe the argument.
• A brief summary of the general debate—what is this specific argument a part of. (For instance, is a webpage condemning factory farming part of an argument for vegetarianism, or for increasing governmental regulations?)
• If it is not part of the previous, a brief summary of the major opposition arguments.
• A summary of what you see as the major issues with this argument—what claims you will examine, what sources you will check, etc.
• Full citations on at least five sources you will use, with a brief explanation as to why you think this source will be relevant.

Failure to include any one of those pieces of information will result in a √- for the Reading Response. In my experience, doing well on this proposal correlates strongly to doing well (that is, B or above) on the paper. Failure to do it at all correlates strongly to a failing grade on the paper.

A “good faith” submission is at least 2000 words, responds appropriately to the assignment, does not violate the academic honor policy, has a substantial number of quotes from the relevant primary material, and makes an interpretive argument. It does not have asides (e.g., “In the next version, I’ll…”) You should expect that it will take you ten to twelve hours to do a good faith submission, not including the time for reading and research. If a single piece of student work violates the academic honor policy, you will receive an ‘F’ in the course; there may be additional penalties.

GRADING CRITERIA FOR PAPERS. As I keep saying in class, different readers emphasize different criteria. There are some generalizations that one can make about categories of writing (e.g., how high school writing is different from college writing), disciplines (e.g., the different things that English literature teachers tend to value as opposed to what Government teachers tend to value), and contexts (e.g., exams versus researched papers). But, unfortunately, many of the differences are hard to predict–some readers break out in hives when they see a sentence that begins with a coordinating conjunction (e.g., “But,…”), and some have odd quirks (e.g, me and the “dawn of time” introduction). On the whole, though, I think the following criteria will tend to help you in most situations. The one major difference is that many readers put some emphasis on “format;” for me, that’s part of “ethos.”

Thesis
The thesis is appropriate to the assignment (it’s amazing how often this is the major problem). This is the single most important criterion for me for grading, accounting for approximately 20% of the final grade.

Proof A major difference between high school and college writing (and exam and paper writing) is the latter require proof, and the former do not. In “display” writing, or anytime one is writing to an “in” audience, proof is not really necessary. But, it’s tremendously important for persuading an intelligent and informed audience. (And remember that “proof” and “assertion” are not the same thing.

Evidence
A considerable part of your evidence will come from the primary text (or webpage) you are discussing, and the rest will come from credible and college-appropriate sources. This is the main problem students have —getting enough evidence. Notice that if you don’t have enough evidence, you can’t possibly have adequate analysis (what would you analyse?); with inadequate evidence and analysis, your proportion will be off, and you won’t have responded to your audience’s main concerns. So, your evidence should be your main concern.

Analysis
Some teachers call this “explanation,” and that’s also a useful way to think about it. For most kinds of writing (newspaper writing being one exception), readers need you to tell them what your evidence is and also how you think they should interpret it. Simply quoting the text, especially in the form of “hanging quotes” (quotes that are separate sentences, not incorporated into the text), is not persuasive.

Organization Readers often describe this criterion as “flow” (a completely useless, when not actively harmful, term). The basic issue is whether the ideas seem to move sensibly from one to another. That reader perception is shaped by two things: the order of ideas; the degree and quality of “sign-posting” (or “metadiscourse”).

Order
As explained in “Advice on Writing,” there are lots of different ways of structuring your paper. Some disciplines have the structure specified (e.g., lab reports in experimental sciences). In general, the best structure is to move from “known to new”–that is, from what your audience already knows and is willing to grant to what is new. Or, as I keep saying, imagine that you are giving directions to your audience–start with where they are, and move them through the intervening areas to where you are.

Proportion
Order actively affects readability; proportion is more important for how persuasive your argument is. The basic principle is simple: make sure that you spend the most time on whatever most needs proving. In practice, that can be tricky to figure out, but ensuring that you explore your major claims pretty thoroughly will usually work well. (If you don’t have enough evidence, you’ll necessarily have problems with proportion.) In this paper, the bulk of your argument will be analysis of (not assertions about) the webpage.

Introduction
A good introduction establishes certain clear expectations with the reader–specifically the topic (which is most usefully thought of as the specific question your paper answers), genre, and your ethos. When the reader finishes the introduction (which may or may not be one paragraph) s/he should be clear just what the paper will be about, what kind of paper it will be (e.g., a policy proposal, a history, a literary interpretation, a comparison of various theories), and your ethos (well-read, fair-minded, closed-minded, sloppy, careful, dishonest). The introduction should persuade your reader that there is a real question that the reader should want answered, and that you are the person to answer it. It does not have to have your thesis, unless you have a lazy reader. In this course, it should not have your thesis. Instead, it should have a clear statement of the problem your paper will pursue (not your answer to that problem).

Conclusion
A good conclusion is often two paragraphs: one that summarizes your argument, and one that points toward additional speculations. The summary part of your conclusion can be written by having a sentence the paraphrases each part of your paper. If you’re good at writing summary introductions, moving it to your conclusion will often work well. When you engage in speculation, make sure to signal that to your reader through your word choice (“one might conclude…this might suggest…”).

Ethos
This term simply means your credibility. Your credibility is affected by how careful you appear to have been–what sources you used (hence whether you have a Works Cited page that is useful), whether you seem to have looked over your work (hence spelling specifically and proofreading generally), whether you are clear (hence style), and whether you have looked at all the evidence.

Audience
A persuasive paper (that is, one that actually persuades an intelligent and informed reader) uses relevant evidence, considers alternative interpretations, and takes into consideration special concerns the audience might have. This criterion is closely connected to evidence and ethos (and, in fact, one that goes wrong with evidence will usually go wrong with all three).