Workshop 1: Critical Reading of Health Literature

Overview

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 20 min

Questions

• How do we spot different statements?

• How do we differentiate between arguments and non-arguments?

Objectives

• Learn to spot different types of statements

• Learn to spot arguments from non-arguments

Types of statements without reasoning

• Descriptions have only facts; these are simple statements that expresses a third person statement or refer to some conditions.
• Summaries are extended descriptions; you should look for summaries in the methods section of the paper or in any space where the author has just stated a series of facts connected together
• Opinions are first person perspectives that expresse a position only
• Beliefs are first person perspectives that express a position plus moral connotation
• Rhetorical manipulation or content are statements that are aimed to put an emotional perspective

Statements and passages with reasoning

• Arguments are statements with reasoning and persuasion
• Explanations are statements with reasoning but does not include persuasion

Hint: how can we locate each element?

Look for indicator words. Indicator words are the words or expressions such as “Given”, “Given that”, “Because”, and similar words that give away that a reason is being presented. Also look for emotion laden information but no rationale or reasoning being provided

Look for a conclusion; if there is a conclusion, then there is an explanation or an argument.

Here is your first challenge.

Read the passage/article and identify one of each element in the paper:

• One descriptive statement
• One summary (copy paste the summary)
• One Opinion
• One Belief
• One example of clarification
• One example of illustration then find:
• One argument
• One explanation

For explanation and argument, can you spot their conclusion and a reasoning to go with it?

Challenge

Social isolation is linked to increased blood pressure and depression.

Imagine a 65-year-old woman who sees her physician frequently for a variety of aches and pains. She might complain of back pain on one visit, headaches another time, and feeling weak on the next. Each time, her physician does a physical exam and runs the appropriate tests, without finding anything to account for her symptoms. Each time, she leaves the office feeling frustrated that “nothing can be done” for what ails her.

However, if we looked more closely, we’d find out that this patient lost her husband five years earlier and has been living alone since. Her three children all live in other states. Although she dotes on her grandchildren, she sees them only about once a year. She has a few friends that she only sees occasionally. If asked, she would probably tell you that, yes, she is lonely.

This is a common picture in a family physician’s office. These ill-defined symptoms without any clear cause might well be the result of social isolation and boredom. Research shows that people who feel lonely have more health problems, feel worse and perhaps die at an earlier age.

Psychiatry, my specialty, has long known that feelings of all kinds can affect our physical health in profound ways. It seems officials are starting to take that seriously – the United Kingdom now even has a minister for loneliness. And for good reason.

In 2015, researchers from Brigham Young University looked at multiple studies on loneliness and isolation. Their results from several hundred thousand people showed that social isolation resulted in a 50 percent increase in premature death.

Loneliness and social isolation are also associated with increased blood pressure, higher cholesterol levels, depression and, if that weren’t bad enough, decreases in cognitive abilities and Alzheimer’s disease. Humans evolved to be around others. Long ago, we hunted in small hunter-gather groups, where social cohesion could help protect from predators. Being alone without support in the wild is dangerous – and stressful. You’d have to be constantly vigilant for dangers, ready to go into “fight or flight” mode at any time. Over the short term, stress can be healthy. But in the long term, uncontrolled stress becomes a problem. There’s good evidence that chronic stress elevates levels of a hormone called cortisol in the brain. Cortisol can decrease immune system responses to infections. It might even make neurons in the brain less active and even lead to cell death. It contributes to inflammation, which is connected to cardiovascular disease, stroke and hypertension and is probably a cause of depression.

If you want to read the full paper, see here:

Loneliness is bad for your health

Use the worksheet for the first exercise to enter your responses. You can either type or copy-paste.

Key Points

• Arguments have facts plus reasoning plus persuasion

• Explanations have facts plus reasoning no persuasion

• Non-arguments do not have reasoning embedded in them