Summary Of The Article 'The Truth Wears Off'

Can scientific data be trusted? Journalist, Jonah Lehrer, in his organic, specific to general arrangement, narrative article, “The Truth wears off.” describes the study of what is called the decline effect. In which, scientific data is put into question on whether the data is reliable, or If it’s been effected by production bias, statistical errors. Lehrer’s purpose is to convey the idea that it is extremely difficult to prove anything. She adopts a serious and skeptical tone in order to appeal to similar feelings and experiences in her adult readers and the scientific community.

The article is set as organic arrangement starting with a specific example of the ability of certain prescription drugs that were tested on schizophrenics to more generic example of how the replicability between the initial research and the follow up tests could not be repeated. The article begins with capturing the reader’s attention by giving a scenario of scientists meeting up in a conference room in Brussels. Then the article goes on to state the thesis “it’s as if our facts were losing their: claims that have be enshrined in textbooks are unprovable”. Then it goes on to provide background information or examples through discoveries of Jonathan Schooler, and Joesph Rinne that
concluded that indeed there results decreased through extra testing. The article concludes with the statement “when the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe”. This statement appeals to the audiences’ emotions as well as following the steps of a organic arrangement.

The genre and tone of the article inform the readers and help them connect to article.The genre is scientific non-fiction, but using the characteristics of the communication model in organization and genre by Sargent and Paraskevas the classification of genre should be based on an action it wishes to accomplish so the true genre would be a scientific piece proving that there are many flaws with the scientific method.
The tone of the article is serious and skeptical to make the audience aware of the importance of the subject and it is proven by the fact the author is always questioning the scientific method and if it truly correct “[s]cientist know what they want, and can influence the results they
get.”

The purpose and audience are important to the overall organization to the article so the author knows who and how he should write the article. The purpose of the article is that it’s difficult to prove things are true, and that we should be skeptical about the results and what their true intentions are. This is proven throughout the article with the examples of redoing the results and not being able to get the same results as when they were first reported. The audience in the article is educated adults and the scientific community, because it was wrote as an article for the New York times that has a more educated reader then most the other news papers, also the scientific community that is curious of the results if the scientific method is truly flawed.

Jonah Lehrer in the “truth wears off” effectively uses the proper arrangement of starting with a specific example and using generic example of how the replicabiltiy can not be reproduced to keeps the educated adult and scientific community intrigued to explain why the decline effect occurs. The article actively skepticism of scientific data lets the reader decide what he truly wants to believe

Bibliography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah_Lehrer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all