Presumably everyone in this class has written a research paper at some time. For some students, decades have passed since they were last required to write such a formal paper. For others, research papers are a regular part of their academic lives. As our class progresses into the final paper, it's important to remember that each new class means new expectations and a new level of researching, reading, and writing.
Chapter 8 of ARCS should help each student understand the heightened expectations of these papers. In a simple person-to-person debate, people often use Wikipedia as their one-stop-shop for facts and explanations. Similarly, Google has become a go-to resource for quick and easy information in order to make the world at large more readily understandable. As a result, many students come to this paper and wonder why these everyday resources are no longer acceptable. After all, Google provides a wealth of information from a wide variety of resources, so how could a limited database that only accesses a certain type of publication be better? Enter Chapter 8. Chapter focuses on the need for credibility, ethos, from any convincing resource.
Consider the section on community authorities. Community authorities are people who are considered experts in a given field. In class, we used Rush Limbaugh as an example. Rush Limbaugh is an expert in politics. He has a decades-long career in politics and a long-standing reputation for his knowledge and participation in the United States political world. If a student wanted to write a paper portraying a Republican position on the current administration, Rush Limbaugh would be a great resource. He is a community authority on politics. However, he is not the end of the argument. As the book explains, authorities can be wrong because of ignorance or because "their ideological bias compromised their accuracy" (275). Limbaugh is a great example of a community authority, but he is also known for his biased position on nearly all things political. However, he is still a credible resource. Limbaugh does not speak without doing his research, and he does not write without checking his facts. He represents bias and credibility at the same time. In other words, he is the type of authority who can be used but must be taken with the proverbial grain of salt.
The flipside is to consider when a source is no longer credible. We also talked in class about Dan Rather, a well-known news journalist whose career spanned over forty years of world events, U.S. politics, and more. In September 2004 Rather reported on what are now referred to as the Killian documents, a series of memos criticizing President Bush that were allegedly found in the desk of President Bush's former commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. People watching the news immediately began to question the authenticity of the documents, and, after a series of events that ultimately failed to prove the documents were real, CBSNews fired the story's producer and asked three additional producers to step down. Rather retired amid a flurry of scandal claiming his retirement was to avoid forced resignation. To many viewers, Rather had already lost his credibility.
This story is key to understanding how credibility works. Dan Rather had a career that started to grow after he covered President Kennedy's assassination, continued to grow with his in-depth coverage of the Watergate Scandal, and then came to an abrupt end over one story with questionable credibility. As researchers, we have to understand how quick and easy it is for a writer or speaker to lose all credibility and then acknowledge that we run the same risk with our papers. Each fact must be cited, and each citation must be trustworthy. To introduce information with questionable origins is to introduce holes in our own arguments.
Chapter 8 goes on to discuss how to examine credible sources, and our in-class lessons will help you learn how to find credible sources. As you progress with this paper, your goal should be to find the best, strongest, most credible sources for your paper. If you find yourself with a strong source that has only one fact you can use, this is not the best source for your paper. If you find yourself with a source that has a considerable amount of information but does not have a credible background, this is not the best source for your paper. Because we are writing in a more sophisticated style with more respectable sources than you were likely required to have in the past, we should all consider this paper an opportunity to write as we haven't written before. For those of you who have not written a research paper in a very long time, this will level our academic playing field for you. This is new material for everyone. For those of you who have already started writing research papers at the collegiate level, this is an opportunity to build on what you know in order to write better than you have in the past. Between the books we use, our in-cklass lessons, and the valuable resources provided by the university, each of you should find yourself with a new appreciation and style for researching and writing by the time we finish this paper.
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