A-manual-for-writers-of-research-papers-theses-and-dissertations

evidence.But that principle requires another. When we make a claim, we must expect, evenencourage, others to question not just our claim but how we reached it, to ask Why do youbelieve that? It's often hard to welcome such questions, but we're obliged to listen with goodwill to objections, reservations, and qualifications that collectively imply I don't agree, atleast not yet. And the more we challenge old ideas, the more we must be ready toacknowledge and answer those questions, because we may be asking others to give up deeplyheld beliefs.When some students encounter these values, they find it difficult, even painful, to live bythem. Some feel that a challenge to what they believe isn't a lively search for truth, but apersonal attack on their deepest values. Others retreat to a cynical skepticism that doubtseverything and believes nothing. Others fall into mindless relativism: “We're all entitled toour own beliefs, and so all beliefs are right for those who hold them!” Many turn away froman active life of the mind, rejecting not only answers that might disturb their settled beliefs buteven the questions that inspired them.But in our worlds of work, scholarship, civic action, and even politics, we can't replacetested knowledge and hard-won understanding with personal opinion, a relativistic view oftruth, or the comfortable, settled knowledge of “authority.”That does not mean we reject long-held and time-tested beliefs lightly. We replace themonly after we're persuaded by sound arguments backed by good reasons based on the bestevidence available, and after an amiable but searching give-and-take that tests thosearguments as severely as we can. In short, we become responsible believers when we canmake our own sound arguments that test and evaluate those of others.You may find it difficult to see all of this at work in a paper written for a class, but despiteits cold type, a research report written for any audience is a conversation, imagined to be sure,but still a cooperative but rigorous inquiry into what we should and should not believe.PART IISource Citation15 General Introduction to CitationPractices15.1 Reasons for Citing Your Sources15.2 The Requirements of Citation15.2.1 Situations Requiring Citations