ASSIGNMENT
The paper must be 5 to 7 pages long and follow the usual format. ALL the pieces described in “making connections” formula must be in place
The topic is simple: Use some of the lessons about critical thinking you find in Kida’s book Don’t Believe Everything You Think to systematically evaluate the arguments in the three food articles
I use the word “systematically” intentionally: The paper must exhibit a plan, and that plan must be evident throughout the organization of the paper. Again, the “making connections” formula is your guide: You make a clear point, you follow it with evidence in the form of quotations from select readings, and you analyze that evidence. Then you make the transition to your next point, and so on and so forth. Kida should appear somewhere in every paragraph of the paper, as he is your guiding light.
[Assert a subtopic or point–>Introduce a quotation–>Give the quotation–>Explain it in your own words–>Introduce a second quotation–>Give it–>Explain it–>Analyze the connection–>Transition to your next point or subtopic.]
As with the paper about the short story endings, how you choose to organize the discussion is up to you, but it must not appear random, that you’re simply discussing issues as they occur to you, but that you have chosen to “line up your ducks” in a very specific way to be shot down.
Here are some crucial points from Kida to consider for the paper. Obviously, you won’t be able to use every one exhaustively for all the articles. Pick and choose carefully to make a strong case:
The use of anecdotes/testimonials/stories as “evidence”
The correlation fallacy
Extraordinary claims
Try to “think like a scientist” while not worrying about the science itself: that is up to the experts, not us. In the same way that it was not necessary to correctly determine which short story ending was the real ending, you are not to be concerned about whether the claims in the articles are “true” or “false,” but about how the writers have made their cases, which, I can tell you right off, is not very good.
I’m even prohibiting you from making definitive statements about GMOs, organic food, and veganism, because you are simply not qualified to make such determinations (neither am I) and this is not a scientific research paper. As with the last paper, your topic is what the writers say, how to view one writer’s words in light of another writer’s words. In the same way that Pinker sheds light on how to read Darwin, Kida sheds light on how to read the three articles.
