Effective Writing in Psychology. Bernard C. Beins
working knowledge of logical fallacies can also be useful for separating science from pseudoscience. The phrase logical fallacy describes a position that is logically untenable. If a writer uses unsound thinking to support a hypothesis, it can lead to an invalid conclusion. There are a number of different logical fallacies, but in Table 3.1 we describe only those more relevant to identifying pseudoscience. You can find a more detailed exploration of logical fallacies at: http://www.fallacyfiles.org.
Table 3.1 Logical Fallacies
| Fallacy | How It works | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Emotionally loaded terms | Appeals to a reader's emotions without using logic or other support to back up the argument | If you really cared about children, you would vote for the pro‐life candidate. |
| Bandwagon fallacy | Argues that, because everyone else thinks or acts a certain way, the reader should as well | The candidate won with a huge majority of votes, so she must be very qualified. |
| Faulty cause and effect | Sets up a cause–effect relation without evidence that the two events are causally related | As more homes have televisions, literacy rates have decreased; therefore, an increase in televisions causes a decrease in literacy rates. |
| Either/or reasoning (also a black and white fallacy or false dichotomy) | Presents a situation as having only two alternatives | Either aggression levels are biologically determined or they are caused by environmental factors. |
| Hasty generalization | Develops a conclusion or rule based on only an individual case or a few cases | This study shows that college students scored well on the test; therefore all 18‐ to 21‐year‐olds would score well. |
The presence of a logical fallacy does not necessarily invalidate all the work done in a study; however, fallacies are warning signs that there might be other weaknesses in the research. Additional items to look for when evaluating a source's credibility are unexplained or unacknowledged contradictions, persuasion with creative or strong language rather than valid evidence, the presence of jargon that other scientists do not use, and the lack of reliable sources that support the hypothesis and conclusion.
For scholarly examinations of pseudoscience, see Pigliucci (2010), Leahy (1983), Lilenfeld, Lohr, and Morier (2001), Still and Dryden (2004), Olatunji, Parker, and Lohr (2005/2006). There are also websites that explore various kinds of pseudoscience. Some examples are:
https://surface.syr.edu/suscholar/vol4/iss1/2
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pseudo.html
http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/index.shtml
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what‐is‐pseudoscience
https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/what‐is‐pseudoscience‐learning‐to‐objectively‐evaluate‐science
Evaluating Internet Sources
For a paper about serial killers, the following four sources are relevant:
1 Wikipedia has an entry on serial killing at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_killer.
2 Through Google Scholar you can find an article titled “Predicting serial killers' home base using a decision support system” by David Canter, Toby Coffey, Malcolm Huntley and Christopher Missen in Journal of Quantitative Criminology.
3 Through PsycINFO you can find “Critical characteristics of male serial murderers” by William B. Arndt, Tammy Hietpas, and Juhu Kim in American Journal of Criminal Justice.
4 A Yahoo search with the key words “serial killer psychology” connected you to a page on the Crime Museum's website: https://www.crimemuseum.org/crime‐library/serial‐killers.
Which source(s) will be useful and credible for an academic paper on serial killers? Which source(s) would increase your reader's confidence in your ideas? Use the following points to assess the sources.
Using sources written by psychologists for psychologists may strengthen the credibility of your paper.
Using sources that appear in an academic publication may strengthen the credibility of your paper.
Using sources that are NOT written by psychologists for psychologists may indicate to your reader that you were too lazy to look for scholarly sources.
Even if it contains accurate information, using a source that is not peer reviewed and does not have references does not meet standards of academic writing and may weaken the credibility of your paper.
Anyone with access to a computer, time, and the ability to make a web
page can place information on a personal website, so you want to be particularly alert when you encounter online content that is not part of an already established academic journal. However, do keep in mind that many academic journals are open access and make their content available as freely as that on a personal web site (see https://doaj.org for a list of peer‐reviewed open‐access journals), and you can often find citation information and abstracts for scholarly sources online.
In general, the five areas you want to consider when getting information from websites are accuracy, authority, objectivity/advocacy, currency, and coverage. We briefly explain these categories in Table 3.2 and illustrate how they can be used to determine the validity of online information.
Table 3.2 Evaluating Internet Sources
| Evaluation category | Questions to ask |
|---|---|
| Accuracy | Can you verify any of the information from your own experience, and does the information seem consistent with other sources you have found? Are there references or links indicating the source(s) of the information? Are you able to access the references cited, either through the library or through the internet, and do those sources seem credible? Does the website conform to standards of academic writing and grammar? |
| Authority |
|