How to Evaluate an Argument Like a Trained Scientist
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From the pontifications of the politician on the nightly news, to the latest tabloid health scare, we’re constantly bombarded by other people’s arguments – their attempts to make a particular claim based on some kind of evidence. How best to evaluate all these assertions and counter-assertions? Some insights come from a new study in the journal Thinking and Reasoning that’s compared the argument evaluation strategies of scientists (advanced doctoral students and post-docs in psychology) with those used by first-year undergrad psych students.
Sarah von der Mühlen and her colleagues presented the 20 undergrads and 20 psychologists with two passages of text, approximately 400 words long, about smoking and addiction, each containing a mix of plausible and implausible arguments (note the superficial meaning and grammar of the implausible arguments was not at fault).
There were several elements to the task: All the participants were asked to identify the different components of the arguments and to judge the plausibility of the arguments. They were specifically told to evaluate the arguments based on their internal consistency and quality, not based on their own prior knowledge or opinion. The participants were also interviewed afterwards about what they’d thought of the task, the strategies they’d used to evaluate the arguments, and whether the arguments contained any of a list of fallacies, such as being circular. For one of the texts, the participants were asked to speak their thoughts out loud as they evaluated the arguments, granting the researchers immediate insight into their evaluation strategies.
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