Course+Overview+Prompts

Basic Requirements for an Academic Paragraph
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Quiz Replacement Prompt: The Pickle Fallacy
Consider: A woman suffering from headaches eats a dill pickle, and the headache goes away. The next time she has a headache, she eats another, and the headache goes away again. She keeps a jar of pickles in the fridge and eats one whenever she feels a headache coming on, always with the same results. She tells others, and several of them report that it works for them, too. After reading about pickles, she starts telling people that the reason that pickles work is that they are acidic, and they help balance the body’s pH. She starts a company that advises people about how to manage their health by using acidic and basic foods to manage the body’s pH, based on her discoveries.

Using Barrett’s Laws, explain: at what point is the woman's reasoning no longer scientifically sound?‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍‍What should she do if she wants her claims to be firmly grounded in science?‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍ Possible details might include:
 * How might a plausible explanation get in the way of finding the truth?
 * If it works for other people, what’s the harm in sharing her discovery?
 * Suggested terms: common data, careful criticism, correlation/causation, plausibility

Participation Prompt: Science Summary
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