Science, Evidence, Convention Writing in the Health Professions

Writing in the Health Professions, 2010 Mickey Schafer2 The EBM/EBP Model: Evidence + Experience = Expertise Where does evidence come from?

Writing in the Health Professions, 2010 Mickey Schafer3 Meta- Analysis Systematic Review Randomized Controlled Trial Cohort studies Case Control studies Case Series/Case Reports Animal research/Laboratory studies The EBM Pyramid evidence comes from publication

Writing in the Health Professions, 2010 Mickey Schafer4 The cultural context we operate in: Science Scientific Conventions Language use Subheadings Relationship amongst ideas The scientific perspective – why cite the following opening sentence? “Headache is a common disorder in the population. 1-3 ”

Writing in the Health Professions, 2010 Mickey Schafer5 The Scientific Method: Question  Test  Results = Evidence (repeat ad infinitum)

Writing in the Health Professions, 2010 Mickey Schafer6 Evidence needs to be communicated! Thus born is the citation: the explicit, overt marker of who created what -- citation is the convention governing the communication of who is responsible for the evidence/information used in scientific prose.

Writing in the Health Professions, 2010 Mickey Schafer7 A merican P sychological A ssociation APA Style Guide A merican M edical A ssociation AMA Style Guide C ouncil of S cience E ditors CSE Style Guide CSE Style Guide (Diana Hacker)

Writing in the Health Professions, 2010 Mickey Schafer8 Join the great conversation! Well, maybe… Practical Approach to Citation Behavior Every sentence has intellectual history – an evidence trail Citation is the behavior that makes the trail known.

Writing in the Health Professions, 2010 Mickey Schafer9 Only two options– either a citation is present or it is not. If the sentence a has citation … The writer is attributing the information to the source/s indicated in the citation. Because intellectual history must be made immediately following the sentence, citations are provided after first mention in a text and for EVERY sentence presenting new information that is not clearly and unambiguously connected to the previous sentence. If a sentence does NOT have a citation, then … 1)the sentence is common knowledge and requires no citation (at this early stage in your career, you don’t get to claim any discipline-specific knowledge as common knowledge) ; 2)the sentence is a clear and unambiguous continuation of the previous sentence (e.g. when discussing methods and results of studies); 3)the sentence is an original contribution by the writer (thus, subsequent to publication, all references to this piece of information must be attributed to the writer of the paper).

Writing in the Health Professions, 2010 Mickey Schafer10 Citations have both ideological and practical value – here’s more of why they are of practical significance to you: Synthesizing Sources Synthesizing Sources – The CYA Strategy for Avoiding Plagiarism while Writing in the Sciences