Summarizing and Paraphrasing Assessment: Coursework Autumn 2016

This assignment focuses on summarizing and paraphrasing a provided text, emphasizing the reduction of information while preserving the original meaning and structure. The student's solution demonstrates the difference between summarizing and paraphrasing, highlighting that a summary can closely follow the original text, while a paraphrase requires rewriting in one's own words while retaining the key points. The assignment involves a step-by-step process including identifying the text's subject, main points, author's conclusion, and ultimately, producing a concise paraphrase. The provided text explores why some people doubt science, examining the impact of technology, the importance of scientific literacy, and the need for critical thinking. The final paraphrase is written in approximately 250 words, demonstrating the student's ability to condense the original text accurately and avoid plagiarism.

Summarising and Paraphrasing Assessment Autumn 2016
Summarising and paraphrasing in an academic context nearly always means reducing
someone else’s text or idea to a briefer account, without losing the intention or the
structure of the original. From your reading you should by now appreciate the difference
between the two – a summary can follow the original text quite closely and can be written
in short, sharp sentences – even in bullet point format. A paraphrase on the other hand
must be written in your own words, not copying parts of the original text. It must ‘flow’ like
a piece of prose writing and must retain the essential key points of the original text. Try the
step-by-step technique which follows and you should find that your notes and other
summaries are more useful to you in the end, with less time wasted and greater accuracy.
The writing of the final paraphrase will help you to avoid plagiarism by giving you the
experience of expressing someone else’s ideas in your own words, not sounding like the
original yet retaining the key message of that original.
This is the text that you need to summarise and paraphrase:
Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?
We live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge—from the safety of fluoride and
vaccines to the reality of climate change—faces organized and often furious opposition.
Empowered by their own sources of information and their own interpretations of research,
doubters have declared war on the consensus of experts. There are so many of these
controversies these days, you’d think a diabolical agency had put something in the water to
make people argumentative. And there’s so much talk about the trend these days that
science doubts itself has become a pop-culture meme. In a sense all this is not surprising.
Our lives are permeated by science and technology as never before. For many of us this new
world is wondrous, comfortable, and rich in rewards—but also more complicated and
sometimes unnerving. We now face risks we can’t easily analyse.
We’re asked to accept, for example, that it’s safe to eat food containing genetically modified
organisms (GMOs) because, the experts point out, there’s no evidence that it isn’t. But to
some people the very idea of transferring genes between species conjures up mad scientists
running amok—and so, two centuries after Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, they talk
about Frankenfood.
The world crackles with real and imaginary hazards, and distinguishing the former from the
latter isn’t easy. Should we be afraid that the Ebola virus, which is spread only by direct
contact with bodily fluids, will mutate into an airborne super-plague? The scientific
consensus says that’s extremely unlikely, but an Internet search for the dangers of airborne
Ebola will return a plethora of results – some even from reliable-sounding sources.
In this bewildering world we have to decide what to believe and how to act on the
information we can get. The trouble goes way back, of course. The scientific method leads
us to truths that are less than self-evident, often mind-blowing, and sometimes hard to
swallow. In the early 17th century, when Galileo claimed that the Earth spins on its axis and
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orbits the sun, he wasn’t just rejecting church doctrine. He was asking people to believe
something that defied common sense—because it sure looks like the sun’s going around the
Earth, and you can’t feel the Earth spinning. Galileo was put on trial and forced to recant.
Even when we intellectually accept these precepts of science, we subconsciously cling to our
intuitions—what researchers call our naive beliefs. A recent study showed that even
students with an advanced science education had a hitch in their mental gait when asked to
affirm or deny that the Earth goes around the sun. This is true, but counterintuitive. The
students, even those who correctly marked “true,” were slower to answer this question
than whether the moon goes around the Earth (also true but intuitive). As we become
scientifically literate, we repress our naive beliefs but never eliminate them entirely. They
lurk in our brains, chirping at us as we try to make sense of the world.
Even for scientists, the scientific method is a hard discipline. Scientific results are always
provisional, susceptible to being overturned by some future experiment or observation. To
some climate change sceptics, for example, the fact that a few scientists in the 1970s were
worried about the possibility of a coming ice age, is enough to discredit the concern about
global warming now. Scientists rarely proclaim an absolute truth or absolute certainty.
Uncertainty is inevitable at the frontiers of knowledge.
It’s the very detachment, what you might call the ‘cold-bloodedness’ of science that makes
science the killer app. It’s the way science tells us the truth rather than what we’d like the
truth to be. In science it’s not a sin to change your mind when the evidence demands it. For
some people, the tribe is more important than the truth; for the best scientists, the truth is
more important than the tribe.
Now we have incredibly rapid change, and it’s scary sometimes. It’s not all progress. Of
course we’re right to ask questions about some of the things science and technology allow
us to do. Everybody should be questioning –that’s a hallmark of a scientifically literate
society. But then they should use the scientific method, or trust people using the scientific
method, to decide which way they fall on those questions. We need to get a lot better at
finding answers, because it’s certain the questions won’t be getting any simpler.
737 words to be summarised and paraphrased to 250 words.
Adapted from an essay by Joel Achenbach March 2015.
Step 1
What is this text about?
Write one single, very broad statement, as if notifying a friend of the article.
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The article is about why more and more people show mistrust on science and scientific
methods of enquiry and explore how technological advances and science have
permeated our day to day lives, but still we tend to cling to our naive intuitions.
.

Step 2
What are the main points?Write in brief note form, but keep the sequence of the original.Create as many boxes as
you need.
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Point 1
Our modern lives have become full of controversies and debates and the self doubt has
not only become common but a hallmark feature of science.
Point 2
This new age, with its numerous scientific and technological advances is not only
wonderful, but also troublesome and unnerving at the same time
Point 3
Same technological advances that have aided our progress can also be the tool of our
destruction
Point 4
200 years after Frankenstein was written, people are still afraid of humans playing the
role of god, and creating life.
Point 5
The internet serves as a powerful source of information but information from the
internet can also be misleading and therefore it is vital to understand the validity of the
sources

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Point 6
Scientific enquiry and scientific evidences is not bound to human expectations and
scientific information can often be mind blowing and hard to swallow and can also be
anti-intuitive.
Point 7
We have the inherent tendency to cling to our native intuitions, even when we have
access to scientific data.
Point 8:
The naive intuitions never get eradicated from our minds and can have significant
influence on our beliefs and behaviours, which makes it harder to accept scientific data
that is counter-intuitive
Point 9
Science is a hard discipline even for scientists as scientific results are always met with
scepticism and is prone to be disproven and modified through future research.
Point 10
Science can never say anything with absolute certainty, and there are always
uncertainties at the frontiers of science. This has caused many scientific data to be
changed and revised and eroded trust.

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Point 12:
A hallmark of a scientifically literate society is the tendency to question everything and
also knowing from where to seek answers.
Point 11:
For science pursuit of truth is more vital than caring for people
Point 13:
With the growing complexities in our society, our questions are bound to become
more complicated and we need to get better at seeking the right answers

Step 3
What is the author’s conclusion,
or the major, most distinctive general statement in the article?
Step 4 Produce your paraphrase!
Put away the original and use your summarising notes above (the single statement from Step 1, the six
expanded dot points from Step 2, and the conclusion from Step 3) into a series of paragraphs of
continuous prose (in your own words).The whole paraphrase should be written in 250words. Make
sure your word count is within 10% (above or below) this target.
In paraphrasing, you should represent the original, be accurate and not add any comment or opinion of
your own; keep your own views for critiquing.Try to use alternative words for those in the original so
that your version does not look or sound like the original, but carries essentially the overall message
in a much shorter form.While you may find the text not to your likingor may disagree with the points
made, your job is not to critique the article or alter this passage’s meaning in any way. Your job is to
produce an accurate summary of the text which clearly and concisely conveys the key points
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The author concluded that the modern society needs to become scientifically aware,
develop trust on scientific methods and use scientific methods of enquiry to seek answers
to their questions. Technology has provided us the access and methods to find our
answers, we can use them effectively to understand our world better and move out of
the need to cling to the biased emotions.

Write your Paraphrase HERE:
In our modern world, all forms of scientific evidence face doubts and debates. Controversies
have become a common place in our modern society and self doubt of science has even crept up in the
pop culture. Technology has changes our lives like never before but also brought to us face to face
with hitherto unknown challenges. We are still afraid that science in the effort to play god would mess
with nature and create Frankenstein like monsters. The advent of GMO has further fuelled such fears.
We stand at the cusp of amazing scientific breakthroughs as well as have just started to realise the
dangers of using these technologies without caution. Internet has become a significant source of
information for us, but also can provide us misleading information if not chosen wisely. However,
even with the right and accurate information, it can be difficult for people to cope with, as the
information can sometimes be unpalatable or unacceptable. Galileo was convicted when he presented
scientific evidence that disproved and challenged conventional knowledge and such behaviour shows
our fear for science and the innate tendency to cling to our ‘wishful thinking’. Our society needs to
outgrow such mentality if it has to progress.
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Bibliography:
Heise, A., 2017. Defining economic pluralism: ethical norm or scientific imperative.
International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education, 8(1), pp.18-41.
Moultrie, J., 2015. Understanding and classifying the role of design demonstrators in
scientific exploration. Technovation, 43, pp.1-16.
Shepherd, J., 2015. Scientific challenges to free will and moral responsibility. Philosophy
compass, 10(3), pp.197-207.
Tamanaha, B.Z., 2017. An analytical map of social scientific approaches to the concept of
law. In Legal Theory and the Social Sciences (pp. 53-87). Routledge.
Ward, H., 2016. Scientific Enquiry and Working Scientifically. Teaching Science in the
Primary Classroom, p.72.
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