1. Conclusions are based on evidence, not pre-conceived ideas.
Theories of Science
The traditional view is that science is objective and evidence based…
Many scientists claim there is a clear distinction between science and other ways of viewing the world. A recent example is Richard Dawkins, who in The God Delusion (2006) made the following observations about science and religion:
“Fundamentalists know they are right because they have read the truth in a holy book … The truth of the holy book is an axiom, not the end product of a process of reasoning. The book is true, and if the evidence seems to contradict it, it is the evidence that must be thrown out, not the book. By contrast, what I, as a scientist, believe … I believe not because of wrong, somebody eventually discovers the mistake and it is corrected in subsequent . That conspicuously doesn’t happen with holy books.”
Conclusions are based on evidence, not pre-conceived ideas.
Scientific enquiry is open; tested ideas that turn out wrong are rejected & they keep going to find more accurate ones.
So; science is objective and the scientist is neutral & doesn’t bring their own opinion into it.
But that traditional view of science has been challenged…
Michael Lynch (1983) argued that science is far less objective than scientists claim it is.
Lynch studied scientists experimenting on lab rats and concluded that scientists were more influenced by their existing theories than they should have been.
When ‘anomalies’ occurred – i.e. results they weren’t expecting – the scientists often put them down to errors in the photographs they were studying, rather than seeing them as evidence towards a new theory or hypothesis.
Science can be viewed as a Belief System like Religion…
Polanyi (1958) suggested that a belief system was made up of three factors. Science can be viewed as fitting this model.
A circulatory of beliefs – each idea within the belief system is explained in relation to others. If one is challenged or it fails it is defended by reference to another, to avoid changing the belief system.
Supporting explanations are given for difficult situations – if any evidence is shown to contradict the belief there will be a reason to explain it (as with the anomalies in the experiments Lynch observed).
No alternative belief systems can be tolerated – a sweeping rejection of religion could be seen as an example of this.
Using Polanyi’s three factors that comprise a belief system, apply these to religion and ideology using the grid overleaf…

2. Science and falsification.
How do we know that scientific theories provide accurate explanations? According to Karl Popper in his influential book The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959), theories can be tested through observation and experiment. In this respect, they are superior to ‘everyday’ knowledge and beliefs.
However, Popper argues, we can never know with certainty that a theory is true. All we can say is that so far the theory has not shown to be false. For example, many scientists accept the ‘Big Bang’ theory of the origin of the universe – it is supported by a range of observational data. However, evidence yet to be discovered may disprove or falsify this theory. Scientists therefore accept theories ‘for the time being’ because there is a general agreement that to date they are supported by observations. As a result, ‘science does not rest upon a solid bedrock’. (Popper, 1959).
According to Popper, science is based on the systematic testing of theories in an attempt to disprove them. If theories withstand this attempt, then they gain acceptance. However, they can never be finally proven. In practice, theories are eventually modified or overturned by new theories.
What is Popper’s basic belief about theory &, according to him, what should be done about this problem?
2) Why are theories only temporary?
3) What is falsification?

3. The fabrication of facts.
Popper argued that scientific theories ‘do not rest on a solid bedrock’. Karin Knorr-Centina, in an article entitled The Fabrication of Facts (2005), makes a similar point about the ‘facts’ used to test scientific theories. In her words, ‘facts are not something we can take for granted or think of as the solid rock upon which knowledge is built’. She argues that he systematic observations and measurements made by scientists are not the objective ‘facts’ they are often seen to be.
So-called ‘facts’ are fabricated – they are constructed by scientists. The ‘facts’ they observe in the laboratory or the natural world are shaped by their theories and by their measuring instruments. Theories direct scientists what to look for and how to see it. For example, the theory of evolution directs scientists to examine fossils to see how they fit into an evolutionary sequence and to look for ‘missing links’ in order to fill gaps in that sequence. And measuring instruments construct the ‘facts’ available to scientists. For example, Galileo’s telescope was essential to provide the observations that supported his theory that the Earth went around the Sun. As new measuring instruments are invented, new observations are possible and new ‘facts’ can be manufactured. In this respect, science is based on the fabrication of facts.
4) What does Popper mean when he says scientific theories ‘do not rest on a solid bedrock’?
5) What does she mean when Knorr-Centina says ‘facts’ are fabricated?
6) What role do scientists have in fabricating facts?

4. Kuhn challenged the idea that science is objective…
Gomm argued that scientists’ work should be viewed in its Social Context…
Roger Gomm (1982) argued that the theories scientists produce are in part a product of their social context (the situation they’re in at the time), and that scientists tend to try and prove rather than falsify their theories.
Gomm gave the example of Darwin and his theory of evolution to explain this.
Gomm suggests Darwin’s theories of natural selection and the competitive struggle for the survival of the fittest were not supported by all of the evidence.
Darwin therefore missed the opportunity to ‘falsify’ aspects of his theories. Gomm suggests the reason for this was ideological rather than scientific.
Gomm argued that the ‘survival of the fittest theory’ slotted neatly into the Victorian capitalist ideology of free market economics, individualism, and the minimalist approach to welfare of the time. Gomm therefore emphasised the importance of placing ‘science’ in its social context. Scientific knowledge can be seen, at least in part, as socially constructed.
Kuhn challenged the idea that science is objective…
Thomas Kuhn (1962) introduced the idea that scientists, at certain times in history, work in a paradigm.
A paradigm, according to Kuhn, refers to the framework of accepted ideas in which scientists operate. It might include ideas on truth, validity and methodology.
Kuhn argued that scientists will tend to work within the paradigm and so seek evidence which supports it. This will continue until anomalies are so strong as to trigger a paradigm shift or scientific revolution.
When this happens, a new ‘normal science paradigm’ is established and the process begins again.
“I’ll be happy to give you innovative thinking. What are the guidelines?”
According to Dawkins, what distinguishes science from religion?
What are the three factors which make up a system of belief, according to Polanyi?
What is the difference between an inductive and a deductive scientific approach?
What is meant by falsification?

5. Falsification and Conjecture.
Extension work
Falsification and Conjecture.
Karl Popper.
The traditional view of scientific discovery and knowledge is that of the process of verification. The scientist observes the results of carefully controlled experiments from which an idea, hypothesis or theory emerges about the behaviour of a particular type of matter. The scientist searches by further experiments for evidence to verify (prove) his hypothesis which, if successful, grows in stature (importance and confidence) into a scientific theory or law upon which he and other researchers can not only accumulate further knowledge about the wonders of nature but can actually ‘predict’ its behaviour. This process of accumulating fresh facts, this constant searching for new ideas by observation and experiment is known as induction, and this method is seen as the dividing line between scientific and non-scientific knowledge.
Using a highlighter, take notes from the following passage and condense them in your own words
In The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959), Sir Karl Popper pointed out two key flaws in this traditional picture of scientific method and knowledge:
That, in reality, many of the major scientific discoveries had resulted not from systematic observation and analysis but from wild speculation, inspiration and chance.
That no matter how scientifically arrived at, no theory can be totally verified, absolutely correct. Rather as the eighteenth-century philosopher, David Hume, argued, there is always the possibility that sometime in the future it will be ‘falsified’, proved wrong. All it takes is one or two contrary examples. It only takes the observation of one black swan (as has occurred in Australia) to refute the thesis that all swans are white. Equally, while we can predict that the sun will rise tomorrow, we cannot prove it will happen until it does. Thus, in Popper’s view, all scientific hypotheses are only temporal and as yet unrefuted: all scientific knowledge is provisional, workable and the best available so far.
Popper therefore proposed that the real essence of scientific method was not and could not be verification but was and should be falsification, that good science would involve a process of trial and error or conjecture and refutation by which scientists were actively encouraged to develop bold new ideas and hypotheses and then set up tests and experiments, not to prove them correct but to refute or falsify them. In this way weak and inadequate theories could be swiftly eliminated and only the strongest ideas would survive for future testing and form the basis for some temporary advances in scientific knowledge and understanding.

6. A good scientific theory for Popper, therefore, is one that is falsifiable, one that makes definite claims and predictions about the natural or social world that can then be put to the test. Newton’s theory of gravity fulfilled such a criterion by making a wide variety of highly testable claims which survived examination for over a century, and so gradually eroded its authority and opened the way for Einstein’s grandiose (big) and spectacular theory of relativity which, so far, has survived the tests of the twentieth century. A bad scientific theory is one that is not empirically or rationally testable, one that is so general and wide-ranging that there is nothing definite to test, or one whose supporters ignore such criticism and simply keep amending it whenever its predictions prove false. Popper was especially scathing here about Marxism and psychoanalysis, both of which he regarded as pseudo-sciences because they were untestable and made grandiose predictions about a utopian future but offered no basis for evaluating them.
Thus for Karl Popper, what distinguished science from non-science was the falsifiability of its ideas and knowledge and, though this meant that we could never absolutely prove any scientific theory, such continual testing did bring us gradually nearer to the truth, slowly peeling away the many layers of reality. More important, for immediate, practical purposes it gave us ‘relatively’ solid ground upon which to base our technology and social policies; ground solid enough for piecemeal social reform but not solid enough for the sort of large-scale social engineering proposed by more radical writers. Popper therefore believed that the social sciences are capable of becoming ‘scientific’, provided they adopted the scientific approach he proposed of conjecture and refutation. He was scathing, however, in his criticism of sociological theories, particularly Marxism that went beyond this and sought to claim that their predictions of future society were both scientific and inevitable.
In The Open Society and its Enemies (1945), Popper launched a major critique on such historicist theories and argued that the closed mentality of such dogmas excluded alternative or critical perceptions or evidence – the very essence in Popper’s view of falsification, the only practical way to prove and establish scientific theories. Falsification, by definition, could only operate in an open society encouraging open minds so that all theories are continually subjected to an ongoing process of conjecture and refutation. Those that survive such a rigorous process of conjecture and refutation. Those that survive such a rigorous process deserve critical acclaim. The long a theory survives the test of time, the closer it is likely to be to the truth. Closed societies in his view had closed minds. They deliberately exclude criticism and alternative views in favour of a faith and belief in the governing orthodoxy. Such societies, such creeds could not, in his view, progress or find the real truth. Hence his virulent and passionate opposition to Marxism as a philosophy and as a basis of future society.
As an Austrian by birth and having seen the devastation caused by fascism in his home country and by communism in Eastern Europe, the passion that Popper brought to his criticisms of Marxism and other ‘totalitarian’ theories is perhaps understandable.
Explain this point…

7. The social construction of scientific knowledge.
Thomas Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) challenged the traditional view of science. He saw science as socially constructed within scientific communities. This rejects the view that science is based solely on rationality and objectivity.
According to Kuhn, scientists work in communities centred on particular branches of science and particular research projects. They operate in terms of shared paradigms. A paradigm is a framework stating which theories should be developed, what kinds of data should be collected and which research methods are appropriate. Scientists tend to look for data which supports the paradigm and refine theories contained within the paradigm. The paradigm shapes the way they see the world. This outlook is supported by communities of scientists. In this respect, the paradigm is socially constructed and socially legitimated.
Kuhn argues that for most of the time scientists conduct normal science, that is within the framework of the current paradigm. Normal science develops and refines the paradigm rather than challenging it. Most scientists are committed to the existing paradigm – their career has been based upon it, their reputation has been built in terms of it and they find it difficult to see the world in any other way. There is a tendency to ignore or explain away contradictory evidence which challenges the paradigm of the day.
According to Kuhn, significant changes – scientific revolutions – occur when sufficient evidence accumulates which cannot be explained in terms of the existing paradigm. A new paradigm which appears to explain this evidence then develops. However, there is often considerable resistance to a new paradigm. For example, Newton’s theories, which formed the basis of a new paradigm in physics, took over 50 years to become established. Once accepted, a revolutionary paradigm becomes the order of the day and normal science is then conducted within its framework.
Summarise this text here:

8. Taken from Sociology in Focus, AQA A2 Level, Second Edition, Haralambos et al, Causeway Press, 2009.
Science and Society
1.1 The Social Construction of Reality.
In an influential work entitled The Social Construction of Reality (1967), Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann argue that human beings construct their beliefs in a social context. They manufacture universes of meaning which organise their experiences and make sense of their lives. They construct their own social worlds and work to maintain them against the threat of uncertainty and disruption.
A universe of meaning requires constant legitimation. It needs repeated reinforcement and justification. Members of society must be told and re-told that their universe of meaning is legitimate – right, true and correct. Without this support, a universe of meaning would tend to crumble, life would become meaningless and the stability of society would be threatened.
Belief systems are socially constructed. They form the basis of universes of meaning. And they feed back and reinforce the society the constructed them. This applies to the whole spectrum of beliefs. In this respect, there is little difference between scientific theories, political beliefs and religious doctrines. They are all socially constructed, they all help to make sense of the world and they all form a part of and legitimate universes of meaning.
Here are some examples.
Religious beliefs provide answers to basic questions such as the meaning of life, the origin of the human species and what happens after death. They also provide justification for the legal system. For example, many laws are based on religious beliefs about right and wrong. Religion provides ultimate support for universes of meaning – it places within a supernatural reality which believers do not question. By comparison, science offers support for universes of meaning by grounding them in reason and evidence. For example, the origin and evolution of the human species is explained in terms of Darwin’s theory of evolution which is based on evidence from fossil records.
Berger and Luckmann argue that the certainty provided by universes of meaning has a precarious (uncertain, a bit shaky), foundation. Universes of meaning are real because people believe they are real. Life is meaningful because of the meaning people give to it. However, there is no universal standard or yardstick against which reality can be shown to be real, that beliefs can be shown to be true. One society’s truth may be another society’s falsehood. Common sense in one society may be nonsense in another. Universes of meaning are insecure and easily shattered.
1.2 The Social Construction of Science.
In today’s society, many of our beliefs are based on the observations and theories of science. Modern genetics has unravelled the human genome and Darwin’s theory of evolution has provided an explanation for the origin and evolution of the human race. In 2008, the Large Hadron Collider, a particle collider, was built near Geneva, 100 metres beneath fields in a 17 mile circular tunnel. It aims to reveal the origins of the universe and the forces of nature by simulating aspects of the ‘Big Bang’.

9. 1.3 The Origins of Modern Science.
Researchers have placed the origins of modern science in 18th century Europe during a period known as the Enlightenment. Scholars from a number of countries contributed to a publication known as the Encyclopédie. It was based on two principles. First, the belief that reason could provide an understanding of the world. And second, the belief that this understanding could be used to improve the lives of human beings. Knowledge was based on reason and observation. This formed the guidelines for the scientific method – the procedure for ‘doing science’.
These beliefs directly challenged the view of the world provided by the Roman Catholic Church. According to the Church, knowledge was based on divine revelation – eternal truths revealed by the word of God. In contrast, science claimed that reason and observation formed the basis for knowledge and the foundation for many beliefs.
1.4 The traditional view of science.
The traditional view of science in modern society is fairly straightforward. Science is based on systematic observation and measurement. Ideas about the behaviour of matter in the natural world can be tested and shown to be true or untrue. In the laboratory, for example, the scientist observes the behaviour of matter under various conditions, measuring variables such as temperature and pressure. These observations are objective – they are not influenced by the values or religious beliefs of the scientist. They can be shown to be accurate by replication – by the repetition of the experiment under the same conditions. If the results are the same, then the observations are seen to be accurate.
Theories are then constructed to explain the behaviour observed. If later observations show that behaviour differs from that predicted by the theory, then the theory is modified or changed. In this way science progresses – it provides an increasingly accurate and comprehensive understanding of the behaviour of matter.
In modern society scientists have high status. Their findings have generally been accepted and seen as beneficial to humankind. For example, scientific advances in medicine have been welcomed and seen as a major factor in improving health and increasing life expectancy.
However, the view of science described above is overly simple. And the belief that science brings benefits to humankind has been increasingly questioned.

10. Go further... Paradigms. Thomas Kuhn. 28 Extension Opportunity
The term ‘paradigm’ refers to a set of ideas, a theoretical framework, a theoretical model of how society or nature works. Almost all academic or scientific disciplines operate within a particular paradigm or involve a debate between competing paradigms as to the nature of society or the underlying forces of the physical or natural world. Examples of major paradigms would be Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity in physics and Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in biology. Examples of competing paradigms would be Marxism and structural functionalism in sociology and behaviourism and Gestalt theory in psychology.
Go further...
In his key work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Thomas Kuhn, an American philosopher of science, used the concept of paradigms not to simply explain how scientific and academic research develops but to challenge the accepted view that science and the accumulation of scientific knowledge is a gradual, evolutionary process based on objective and impartial analysis in which scientists and academics collaborate on an agreed agenda in the pursuit of truth and the discovery of facts. Instead, using the notion of paradigms, Kuhn proposed the radical and quite revolutionary thesis that in fact the history of modern science is not a gradual and cumulative one, rather it is one of revolutions in thinking and the professors that go with it. Far from the academic world being one all embracing community, Kuhn describes it as an inner world of competing theories and competing communities racing to make the next great discovery, plotting to take over and dominate academic theory in their particular discipline or science. As traditional theories and practices are discarded in favour of a new paradigm or supertheory, so a new very different view of the world of nature emerges and with it a new approach to scientific research and a new team of key theorists.
Using a highlighter, take notes from the following passage and condense them.
Thomas Kuhn defined paradigms as ‘universally recognised scientific achievements that for a time provide model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners’. A paradigm is a unified and coherent framework, a way of thinking that a particular field of science has about the universe and the way it works. It guides scientists towards certain problems and provides many solutions; it governs their research programmes and is increasingly reinforced by the theories that develop from it. It is like a puzzle. It sets out the rules of the game, poses the challenges for each new generation of scientists and the aim is to solve the problems it poses and to discover the missing pieces required to complete its picture of nature. It sets the standards against which new discoveries will be acclaimed or rejected. It is the accepted view of what constitutes science in a particular discipline and the members of each scientific community are so committed to it, so take it for granted, that it is rarely questioned or criticised. 28

11. Who, or what, is the scientific community?
Modern examples of paradigms would be the dominance of Einstein’s theory of relativity in physics or Darwin’s theory of evolution in biology. New generations of young scientists are socialised into the paradigm’s underlying theory and research methods by their teachers and their textbooks. They are taught only the paradigm’s principles and theories and rarely exposed to alternative ones. They gain entry to the ‘scientific community’ by producing the expected solutions in their experiments, passing examinations set by professors steeped in the paradigm’s principles and setting up research projects directed at the paradigm’s problems.
The picture Kuhn therefore presents of modern science is of a series of tight-knit academic communities each based on a rather closed, even dogmatic, view of reality from which alternative visions are rigorously excluded and in which the standard of judgement is not objective reality but the subjective evaluation of one’s peers.
Kuhn divided the development of science into three main stages:
1. Pre-paradigm – a state in which there is no general consensus or agreed theoretical framework within a particular discipline but a wide variety of competing theories as to the nature of their subject matter, appropriate research methodology and the types of problems that require solutions.
2. Normal science – the mature stage at which a particular scientific community agrees to unite behind a particular paradigm, its achievements and its guidelines as to research. The general aim is to fill in the puzzle and ‘mop up’, rather than to innovate. Though anomalies in the paradigm do arise they are either forced into the existing framework or the scientist involved is blamed as incompetent.
Who, or what, is the scientific community?
3. Paradigm revolution – however, in time, as the anomalies grow, as more and more questions arise that the dominant paradigm cannot answer and new phenomena are discovered that it cannot explain, so a crisis develops in the discipline to the point where even its ‘leading lights’ feel uneasy. There follows a period of hectic debate about fundamentals and a sudden willingness to try anything which is solved either by a new development in the existing paradigm or the emergence of a new paradigm or the emergence of a new paradigm with a new view of nature and a new puzzle to solve. During this revolutionary stage the disciple tends to divide into traditionalists and radicals and a battle for power and allegiance develops. This takes place at two levels: the theoretical and the political. Gradually, more and more of the scientific community are won over to the new paradigm, not be reasons – because initially it lacks substantial proof and cannot by definition be tested by the old methods – but by ‘conversion’, a leap of faith, what Kuhn (962) calls a ‘Gestalt shift’, a sudden vision of the new wonders offered by the new paradigm – ‘Lavoisier ... saw oxygen where Priestly had seen dephlogistated air and where others had seen nothing at all’ – and, once converted, not only is it impossible to revert back to the old view of nature, but it is impossible to hold, simultaneously, two paradigm visions because people, holding different theories ‘see different things and they seem them in different relations to one another’. After a paradigm revolution scientists simply see and so respond to a different world. Such incompatibility of paradigms Kuhn called ‘incommensurability’.
Summarise Kuhn’s three stages of the development of science here:

12. As conversions to the new truth spread, as evidence and research experiments in its favour grow, so too, in time, the older traditional professors of the discipline will have to give way to the new young converts wager for power and ambitious for authority. Once in power they will now preach the new orthodoxy, select the research projects and teams, rewrite the textbooks and set the exams. As the dust settles and the new paradigm gains general acceptance so a further phase of normal science is set in motion as a new generation of scientists explores the fresh challenges and novel problems posed by the new framework, until that too reaches its limits. As Max Planch remarked: ‘a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.’
As examples of scientific revolutions, Kuhn sites the developments associated with the names of Copernicus, Newton, Lavoisier and Einstein, each of which involved the overthrow and rejection by the scientific community of one time-honoured theory for another, each of which produced a shift in the problems available for scrutiny and the standards by which their solutions were to be judged, each of which transformed the scientific imagination in such a way as to transform the world within which scientific work was done.
Add all your notes re. paradigms together here…

13. Science and Society YES NO
What is meant by ‘universes of meaning’? (What kind of questions might they ask and answer?)
What is the process of legitimation?
What does it mean when it says that belief systems are socially constructed?
What do ideologies, scientific theories and religious doctrines have in common?
In what main way can religions legitimise their ‘universe of meaning’?
How does science legitimise its universe of meaning?
According to Berger and Luckmann, does the fact that people believe their universe of meaning is real, mean that they have the truth?
How did scientific theory create conflict with religion?
What is meant by scientific observation and replication in science?
10) Can Sociology be seen as a science in relation to the three main criteria?
Systematic observation
Objectivity
Replication
YES NO
11) Why do scientists have high status?
12) Do you think this is justified?
Yes:
No:

14. Jean-Francois Lyotard – science in postmodern society.
According to the French writer Lyotard (1984), people in postmodern society have lost faith in the metanarratives of modern society. A metanarrative is a ‘big story’ like the Enlightenment view of progress, Christianity’s view of life and Marx’s view of history In postmodern society, metanarratives no longer inspire, they no longer direct action, they no longer form the basis for beliefs. Science is a metanarrative – a big story about the origin of the universe, behaviour in the natural world, and the evolution of species.
Lyotard believes there is widespread disillusionment with science in postmodern society. Science has failed to deliver on the Enlightenment promise of progress. (It’s just rooting out more depravity – internet…?). People no longer trust scientists and have lost faith in the grand claims of science.
Rather than being concerned with human betterment, science is becoming the servant of industry and commerce. Scientists are increasingly concerned with technology, focusing their attention of producing goods for sale. This can be seen from the rapid advances in electronic goods. From this point of view, science is becoming technoscience, concerned with producing commodities for the global marketplace (Irwin and Michael, 2003).
Q1. Using the item above, identify and explain why science as a metanarrative is under threat. [9 marks]
AO1 Knowledge & Understanding 3/9
* Good sociological knowledge & understanding * Relevant concepts explored, understood & used correctly.
AO2 Interpretation, Application, Analysis & Evaluation 6/9
* Do you select appropriate points with which to answer the question? * Is your discussion detailed & focused on the question?
Q2. What does Kuhn mean by a paradigm, and how is it important in the theory of science? [18 marks]
AO1 Knowledge & Understanding 6/18
* Good sociological knowledge & understanding * Full, detailed and accurate evidence / issues to support claims. * Relevant concepts explored, understood & used correctly.
AO2 Interpretation, Application, Analysis & Evaluation 12/18
* Accurate and sociological interpretation of the question * Do you make use of appropriate & relevant material? A balanced evaluation that pulls out both strengths and weaknesses of the material you use * Clear rationale, followed by appropriate deductions you’ve made.
Q3. To what extent can religion and science be seen as different varieties of belief system? [33 marks]
AO1 Knowledge & Understanding 15/33
* Good sociological knowledge & understanding * Full, detailed and accurate evidence / studies to support claims * Range of theoretical perspectives * Relevant concepts explored, understood & used correctly.
AO2 Interpretation & Application, 9/18
* The introduction fully breaks down the question * A range of relevant and appropriate studies / evidence * Do you explain how the evidence you use supports or rejects the points you’re trying to make?
AO2 Analysis & Evaluation 9/18
* A balanced evaluation that points out both strengths and weaknesses of the evidence you use * A discussion that creates an argument through a series of separate points.