I Can’t Find any Good Quotes.

This common complaint rises from a misunderstanding that the only useful quotes are those that “support my thesis.” As I’m sure I’ve told you more than once, establishing a thesis before you’ve begun your research, and then using searches to go looking for sources that “agree” with your pre-conceived argument, is a total waste of your time and your readers’ time.

Look! I Agree with Several Authors!

The best you can accomplish from such a search is finding several authors who have already written on your topic, whose views have already been published, who have already contributed their arguments to the academic community, who, in other words got there ahead of you.

Your paper citing all their beautiful arguments and evidence is the equivalent of publishing 3000 words to say:

Look! I read these guys and I agree with them! Aren’t we good?

Search Broadly and Read Widely

The only way to do original academic work is to develop your own point of view by becoming VERY familiar with your subject matter. That means remaining open to ideas on ALL SIDES until you finally decide you’ve got something original to contribute.

If you keep your searches general, you’ll expose yourself to more than a single perspective on your topic. Search broadly and read widely, even if the source appears at first to have little relevance to your hypothesis. You never know what will be valuable until your paper takes real shape.

Until you’ve done a good bit of reading and writing, your thesis is a moving target. What you read today could very well help you prove what your thesis becomes tomorrow.

Another way to say the same thing is that we:

Research to Form a Thesis,
not to Prove a Thesis.

And now, a Case Study.

Username was writing about cruelty to elephants. His topic, expressed in several hypotheses, was the counterintuitivity of going to the circus or the zoo to celebrate and experience the beauty and majesty of these massive, intelligent animals when, to accomplish that human-animal interaction, the elephant handlers have systematically mistreated them, deprived them of their very nature, and turned them into something they are not: manageable performers.

No Sources

The first draft of Username‘s Definition Essay contained no citations. It made several very strong allegations: that elephants were bound and isolated, that they were bull-hooked, that they were tortured as a means of “training.”

The trouble with the draft was it couldn’t persuade readers that such behaviors actually occurred without evidence. Needless to say, Ringling Brothers trainers do not go on record bragging about beating, binding, and starving their animals to “break” them into submissive performers.

The Dog Training Source

Unable to “Find any good quotes,” Username included an intriguing source from an entirely different arena in his second draft. A dog trainer named Amy Jorgensen was more than happy to go on the record about her techniques in an article titled, “Positive Reinforcement; Negative Reinforcement in Dog Training.”

Username wanted to highlight the Negative Reinforcement he was convinced was being used at Ringling, and perhaps at zoos, to force wild animals to submit. Here’s the citation he used:

Dog trainers stand behind the idea of positive and negative  reinforcement. They claim, “the negative or positive aspect of both methods refers to whether the trainer takes something away (negative) or adds something (positive) to bring about the desired behavior change. Collars that deliver an electric shock to a dog who barks excessively are one example of positive punishment — the shock is added to reduce the frequency of the behavior”

Notice the quote calls electric shock a “positive punishment,” but the article’s title calls it “Positive Reinforcement.”

Now, calling an electric shock a “positive” reinforcement is a very warped thing to say! Positive reinforcement for good behavior is happy talk, petting, and maybe a small treat, right? But Jorgensen offers a different definition for the term. She withholds something desirable and calls that negative reinforcement, or adds something horrible, like electric shock, and calls that positive reinforcement. If this is the model the elephant community uses, it really does sound like torture.

But it requires readers to radically rethink the meaning of “positive reinforcement.”

A New Search

Even though the quote doesn’t come from the circus, this new way of describing “positive reinforcement” gives Username an opportunity to associate the circus trainers with the cruel treatment he’s certain they’re guilty of.

A quick Google search for “positive reinforcement to train elephants” yielded several articles from the Maryland Zoo, from Compassionate Aid International, from SeaWorld, etc., all bragging that they use “positive reinforcement” to train their animals. We have to wonder now, what they mean by that.

The Maryland Zoo describes its technique as operant conditioning:

The Maryland Zoo in Baltimore trains elephants using an operant conditioning system. Operant conditioning is a process used to positively reinforce behaviors that are desired and to decrease behaviors that are not desired by training the animal away from those behaviors. Punishment is never used. The animal is given a variety of cues for a specific behavior in the form of either an audible, tactile, or visual stimulus. Depending on how the elephant responds, a positive reinforcement usually is given in the form of a food item, verbal praise, or an enrichment item. Conditioning occurs when the elephant’s correct behavior is achieved and reinforced consistently through repetition over an extended amount of time.

Notice the Maryland Zoo is careful to add that “Punishment is never used.” But SeaWorld isn’t as careful:

Positive reinforcement is the only type of reinforcement SeaWorld trainers use to train animals. All training is based on reinforcing desired behaviors. Reinforcers motivate an animal to repeat the desired behaviors. The reinforcer tells the animal, “Yes, you have done that well.”

SeaWorld offers an example of verbal praise, but they don’t specifically say that the verbal reinforcement is the ONLY reinforcement technique. They also don’t say what the Maryland Zoo DOES say, that punishment is never used.

Perfect Definition Essay Material

So now we know from the Jorgensen quote that different people mean very different techniques when they say “positive reinforcement.” The Maryland Zoo and SeaWorld explanations may be completely innocent, and they may be using the common and logical definition we would all understand.

But now that Jorgensen has shown an alternative, we have to accept that “positive reinforcement,” could very well mean giving an elephant electric shocks, or mistreating it in other ways, when it “misbehaves,” which any normal person would call NEGATIVE reinforcement.

So, even if Ringling were to insist they use positive reinforcement, using Jorgensen’s definition, they might still be torturing their animals.

Not Immediately Obvious

It’s counterintuitive, if we want to demonstrate mistreatment, to go searching for “positive reinforcement to train elephants.”

But the case study demonstrates the value of using a broader search strategy and remaining open to the contradictions and nuances in whatever sources we find to see the flaws in the arguments of others, and to avoid them in our own.

Feedback Required

Please reply below if this advice has been useful to you. Reply also if it hasn’t been useful. If you want me to believe you didn’t read it despite my efforts to help you, don’t reply at all. 🙂