This is my reflective memo for this week’s readings in 8011 Research Methods in S&TC.
Barton & Eggly
Barton, E., & Eggly, S. (2009). Ethical or Unethical Persuasion?: The Rhetoric of Offers to Participate in Clinical Trials. Written Communication, 26(3), 295-319.
One conclusion of this study: That researchers seeking informed consent from cancer patients to take part in clinical trials make “regular and rhetorical use of unethical persuasion” from the perspective of bioethics.
This is a broad conclusion in light of the researchers’ methods: They coded written transcripts of 22 interviews between patients and their oncologists that were recorded with the participants’ permission. Interestingly, nowhere does the study say how many doctors were involved, though we know it’s at least two.
They coded statements by physicians for valence with regard to three issues: Purpose of study, benefits of study, and risks of study. Valence was positive, neutral, or negative for each statement regarding these issues. Based only on the article, I have reservations about the approach to coding. I’m not saying it was bad, I just don’t feel the article provides enough detail to form a conclusion.
But the big problem is with the inference the researchers make: Based on these 22 observations, they conclude, “Physicians regularly present purpose, benefits, and risks with a positive valence.” “The data and findings from this study… clearly indicate that… normative neutrality is not characteristic of the discourse of trial offers.” Stunning, really.
Questions I’d like to ask the authors:
- Did you seek confirmation of your coding method (its reliability) by providing a code guide to a third party and asking them to code a couple of the observations? The method described seems very unsystematic.
- Why did you not address the limitations of the study at the points where you were making claims about the inferences drawn from it?
- The statements reprinted in the article appeared largely devoid of the types of details often include in oral discourse analysis and recording. Were these removed for the article, or were they not present in the transcripts? Wouldn’t an analysis of the pragmatics of the situations have yielded a richer result?
- How can examination of isolated statements by the doctor, without considering the manner in which they responded to patient comments or questions, determine whether the doctor was positively valencing participation in the trial?
Breuch et al.
Breuch, L. K., Olson, A. M., & Frantz, A. (2002). Considering Ethical Issues in Technical Communication Research. In L. J. Gurak & M. M. Lay (Eds.), Research in Technical Communication: Ablex Publishing.
This useful article provides a sort of checklist of ethical issues when planning a research project, but also provides a rationale for “actively reflect[ing] on ethics while conducting research,” advice that next week’s reading in Marshall and Rossman will echo. The high-level checklist here:
- Understand the importance of research ethics
- Review relevant ethics literature
- Identify ethical issues in advance
- Meet the requirements of IRBs
- Don’t stop thinking about ethics once you actually start conducting the research.
Katz
Katz, S. B. (1992). The Ethic of Expediency: Classical Rhetoric, Technology, and the Holocaust. College English, 54(3), 255-275.
I generally like this article, and I agree with Katz that we need to imbue the practice of tech communication with an ethic that considers a variety of values. But I have some reservations about the soundness of Katz’s arguments.
Katz uses an example of technical writing by a Nazi bureaucrat to illustrate a problem he calls the “ethic of expediency” and then argues that this same ethic of expediency undergirds Western “technological capitalism.”
His contentions:
- Aristotle embraced the ethic of expediency (EoE). Katz does not discuss this very fully and mentions but dismisses contrary views without much elaboration. I’m not confident that he has supported this claim well.
- The Nazi regime combined the EoE, enshrining the notion that it was ethical and good to seek efficiency, even if solely for the purpose of greater efficiency.
- His argument constitutes a “critique of the EoE that underlies technical communication and deliberative rhetoric, and by extension writing pedagogy and practice based on it.”
Some questions I have:
- Katz contends that it “is well known that to perform well in a professional organization, writers must adopt the ethos of that organization.” Am I left wanting to see support for that claim merely because I am new to the field?
- Katz says in “our own culture,” “science and technology become the basis of a powerful ethical argument for carrying out any program.” He continues: “Technological expediency actually subsumes political expediency and becomes an end in itself. Progress becomes a virtue at any cost.” Why does Katz not offer more concrete examples of this in “our own culture”? The examples of airline safety are rhetorically charged, but he does not actually consider the ethical calculus that underlies them – what is the cost of a single life to the rest of society? How should that cost be ‘allocated’ to those taking the daily risks associated with living?
- Katz frequently begins paragraphs and sentences with phrases like “obviously” and “it is clear that….” Am I unreasonable for being skeptical about the claims that follow those expressions?
- It strikes me that there are many examples of modern resistance to “technology at all costs” and “expediency at all costs” – for example, reactions to human cloning, “death panels” (though they would certainly be efficient),
Marshall & Rossman Chapter 2
Chapter 2 of Marshall, C., & Rossman, G. B. (2010). Designing Qualitative Research (Fifth Edition.). Sage Publications, Inc.
In this chapter, Marshall and Rossman identify the genres of qualitative research. They divide them into two broad groupings: “Major genres” and “critical genres.” Though they treat the major genres – ethnography, phenomenology, and sociolinguistics, in an engaging way, they spend a lot more time and energy describing the critical and emerging genres.
On the one hand, I could chalk M&S’s strategy up to the need to explain the critical and emerging genres more because folks are less likely to be familiar with newer genres. On the other hand, I’m concerned that this suggests that the “major genres” are growing less relevant. The latter possibility is troubling for me, as I see myself likely more situated among the more “traditional” methods. Of course, I’m interested in ideas of action and justice, but I’d like to start with more than a hunch before choosing a course of action or an object of my efforts to promote justice.
Miller
Miller, C. R. (1979). A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing. College English, 40(6), 610-617.
Miller’s article is a pleasure to read; I can see why it is so frequently cited. She argues that the positivist epistemology of modern science and technology lead to four features of pedagogy in TC that are undesirable.
- The subject of TC is not, or is poorly, defined.
- Pedagogy in the field emphasizes “form and style at the expense of invention.” She does not like that we teach “recipes.” This illustrates that tension between teaching students what they need to succeed, i.e., an understanding of how to adapt to genres and conventions, and teaching them to see the possibilities of shattering genres and conventions.
- Pedagogy emphasizes plain, objective language. I wonder, though, whether this is not the same type of problem as the last.
- The “tendency to analyze audiences in terms of ‘levels.’” This is the notion that we must tailor the reading to the reader’s capacity to understand the objective reality. I don’t sense that in the pedagogical experiences I’ve had in the field so far, though. Was this a bigger problem in 1979?
I do have some questions:
- I’m still struggling with the notion that positivist epistemology precludes a nuanced view of language and technical communication; that it eschews an understanding of audience and rhetorical situation. Based on this article’s claims and those of Berlin (1987, cited in an earlier post) about the subject, I’m inclined to brush up my understanding of the modern take on epistemology. (I can’t think of a thing I’ve read since Locke that would illuminate me on the subject…)
- I’m uncomfortable with the notion that the “new epistemology” of “cultural anthropology, cognitive psychology, and sociology” “makes human knowledge thoroughly relative and science fundamentally rhetorical.” I recognize the impact of what those fields have contributed in terms of undermining many claims to authority and Truth, but I also feel that there is a middle territory, one where sense perceptions and subjective conceptions can share the epistemological field. (Thus, another reason to review my understanding of epistemology.)
- C.M offers this: “We can define scientific writing as written communication based within a certain community and undertaken for certain communal reasons. Technical writing occurs within a somewhat different community for somewhat different reasons.” Does this provide a workable disciplinary definition?
Great quote: “If rhetoric is irrelevant to science, technical and scientific writing become just a series of maneuvers for staying out of the way.”