Why writing has SDIC
March 17, 2022Optional “that” vs. obligatory “that”
May 4, 2022Introduction
While reading this news article, I discovered several grammatical and linguistic inconsistencies that impacted readability, so I simply felt compelled to highlight them as a reminder that journalistic integrity is still important. I have categorized the issues and provided reference sources for educational purposes.
Conciseness and clarity
Analysis
The comparative adjective quicker is complemented by the adverbial prepositional phrase in those who are vaccinated. Thus, the hinge element, which should in fact be than, not rather than, is superfluous.
“But you may clear the virus more rapidly if you have good antibody from the vaccine … and therefore the antigen test may become negative quicker in those who are vaccinated rather than the unvaccinated,” he added.
Global News
Summary/Revision
But you may clear the virus more rapidly if you have good antibody from the vaccine . . . and therefore the antigen test may become negative quicker in those who are vaccinatedrather than the unvaccinated.
Logical fallacy in a faulty statement of condition
Analysis
Here, we have a logical fallacy in that it is implied that infectiousness is a consequence of an antigen test. This fallacy is perpetuated when the writer is not adherent to the fact that conditional statements of cause and effect must have a logical protasis (the cause) that precedes an equally logical apodosis (consequence).
“If the antigen test is dependent on the amount of virus in your upper respiratory tract, you will still be infectious . . . in the first few days,” said Dr. Earl Rubin, an infectious disease specialist and a division director of pediatric infectious diseases at the Montreal Children’s Hospital.
Global News
Summary/Revision
IfBecause the antigen test is dependent on the amount of virus in your upper respiratory tract, you will still have to be infectious.
Incorrect use of complementizers, i.e., how, whether
Analysis
A different complementizer (a word that performs a grammatical function) is required to communicate certain logic, such as the subordinate conjunction because instead of the complementizer how.
Rubin explains that how quickly a vaccinated person clears the virus doesn’t necessarily mean that rapid antigen tests aren’t working.
Global News
Rubin adds there’s a debate among health experts on whether antigen tests may not be as sensitive to the newer variants of COVID-19, like Omicron.
Global News
Summary/Revision
Rubin explains thathow quicklybecause a vaccinated person clears the virus quickly doesn’t necessarily mean that rapid antigen tests aren’t working.
Rubin adds there’s a debate among health expertson whetherthat antigen tests may not be as sensitive to the newer variants of COVID-19, like Omicron. (Note: May indicates medium possibility.)
A reduced single-word adjective that results in a logical, or at least a very questionable, noun phrase
Analysis
The question after reading the following is what is a pooled sensitivity?
In February 2022, the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table published findings from an analysis of preprint studies suggesting that the pooled sensitivity of rapid antigen tests for detecting Omicron infections is about 37 per cent, compared to 81 per cent for the Delta variant.
Global News
Summary/Revision
The answer has been resolved after placing the key adjective in a reduced adverb clause instead of a noun phrase with a predicative adjective. Although the grammatical constituent of the adjective is a very heavy noun phrase, the head of which is findings, it is now clear what the adjective was intended to modify.
In February 2022, the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table published findings from an analysis of preprint studies suggesting that thepooledsensitivity of rapid antigen tests for detecting Omicron infections, when pooled, is about 37 per cent, compared to 81 per cent for the Delta variant.
Lack of proper clause-compounding that leads to parsing issues, i.e., “garden path” sentences
Analysis
Sly explains that the amount of immunity a person has built up, how much of the virus a person can spread to others and how serious a person’s disease is, are all dependent on the viral load, which is the amount of virus a person has in their system.
Global News
Summary/Revision
What tells the reader that the above-highlighted section of text is not an appositive is the word are. Up until then, the reader has been sent down a garden path. Hence, the proposition should be recast:
Sly explains that the amount of immunity a person has built up, that how much of the virus a person can spread to others and that how serious a person’s disease is are all dependent on the viral load, which is the amount of virus a person has in their system.
Logical fallacy
Analysis
You don’t have to look far in today’s newspaper or online news or listen too long to the news to hear logical fallacies. Our hope is that news reports will present facts and that commentary, where cases are built for or against interpretations of those facts, will be clearly labeled as commentary. Unfortunately, the line between hard news and commentary has become increasingly blurred. All it takes is comparing the coverage of an event by CNN and by Fox News to see that. Any controversial topic brings out flawed logic. The more controversial the issue, the more flawed the logic is likely to be because when emotions get involved, they can outweigh reason. Bias can change the way a story is covered simply because of what is included and what is left out. To be fair, reporting the facts alone of a case often includes a person’s stated reasons for his or her actions, and these reasons often include their own faulty logic.
Macmillan Teaching Community
The following commentary is an example of logical fallacy used to stoke fear. Even though one of the overriding reasons for vaccination is the fact that one could be asymptomatic, asymptomatic carriers of the virus is not the current argument for why “vaccinated Canadians can have COVID-19 symptoms despite testing negative.”
“You don’t actually know who’s virus-positive who’s walking around. It could be the person sitting next to you on the bus. They may be shedding the virus every time they open their mouths . . . and you don’t know it,” Sly said.
Global News
Instead, the article itself suggests that a high vaccine coverage (which we already know is a fact in Canada) is the reason why:
“This means people who are carriers of the virus may not be getting tested at all because they don’t have any symptoms and don’t think they have COVID-19; if they do happen to get tested, it’s often negative.
Global News
So why may carriers, who may not even know they are carriers, not be getting tested?
Summary/Revision
Therefore, a less subjective or less biased argument to replace the author’s own would be that our antibodies are keeping infection, or the viral protein, in check.
