Page 196 - English for Writing Research Papers

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When you need to criticize H1, you need to do so in a way that saves the other
author’s (i.e. the proposer of H1) face. You can do this by providing an explanation,
on their behalf, of why H1 seemed to be the right interpretation. Below are some of
the types of phrases you could use:

Since H1 was originally proposed, a lot of new data on x has been presented in the literature
(Smith et al. 2010, Burgess 2011). This data would seem to indicate that …

The formulation of H1 was based on a much smaller sample size than in our study. In fact
H2 is based on a sample size that is 4-fold greater than …

When proposing H1, the author admitted that the quantity of x may have been infl uenced by
y . On this basis, we decided to investigate the impact of y , and in fact found that …

In her conclusions, the author of H1 recommended that longer follow-up times might lead
to more conclusive evidence of x . This is why in our study we …

Note that the phrases above do not undermine the credibility of the proposer of H1 and
at the same time they guide your readers towards your proposition.

You will find that link words such as a lthough, however and moreover may help you
to structure your criticism. However, do not use them too often as otherwise the tone
of criticism may become too negative.
You should also consider the cost to you of not drawing the readers’ attention to
some problems inherent in the work of other authors. If you don’t draw their atten-
tion, will it really affect your argumentation?

10.10 Saving other author’s faces: say their fi ndings are

open to another interpretation

Another way to indirectly call into question another author’s findings is not to say

that there was anything specifically wrong with their findings. You simply say that

these findings are open to another interpretation (i.e. your interpretation).
From our investigations we conclude that the data of Negovelova [2011] can be seen in a
different light when the effects of hydrogen are seen in conjunction with…
It would not be implausible to analyze Hedayat’s data from an entirely different point of
view. In fact, our analysis reveals that…

Budinich’s findings could also be interpreted as evidence of… Viewed in this way,
Budinich’s results are actually in agreement with ours.
The last example shows how you can use data that initially appeared to contradict
your data to actually give support to your interpretation.