Making the case

Research Methods — Week 4

Recap

The journey so far

• Week 1: Is biomass carbon-neutral? (Curiosity)
• Week 2: The numbers are interesting (Discovery)
• Week 3: The answer depends on the assumptions (Doubt)

Week 4: Write it up. Make the case. And learn to spot when someone else isn’t making it honestly.

• [5 min] Frame the arc. Students have gone from curiosity to evidence to uncertainty. Now: communication and judgement.

Questions?

Submit questions anonymously:

PollEv.com/geol

text geol to 07480 781235

• Open the Poll Everywhere Q&A activity before the session and leave it active throughout.
• Questions appear in your Poll Everywhere presenter view; upvoted questions rise to the top.
• Address during transitions or at the end of concept blocks, not mid-explanation.
• Reset (archive) the activity between sessions so questions don’t carry over from the previous week.

Writing for a policy audience

🎓 Concept block 1

Who is your reader?

A policy-maker: busy, not a specialist, needs to make a decision.

What they need:

• A clear bottom line
• Evidence they can trust
• Honest acknowledgement of uncertainty

• [20 min block] Writing for non-specialists. This is the communication strand coming to a head.

Structure of a policy briefing

Section	Purpose
Summary	The answer — first. Reader could stop here.
Evidence	Figures, data, analysis
Caveats	What’s uncertain, what depends on assumptions
Conclusions	Recommendation, with caveats attached

Compare to an academic paper: background first, answer last.

A briefing is the opposite — answer first, evidence after.

• Show 1–2 real policy briefing examples if available (one-pagers). Point out the structure.
• Key principle: “Your reader should be able to stop after the summary and still know the main message.”

The summary test

If your reader stops after the first paragraph, do they know:

1. What you investigated?
2. What you found?
3. What you recommend?

• This is the standard for a good summary. If any of the three are missing, the summary needs work.

Write a summary

💬✏️ Exercise 1

10 minutes

Write a 3–4 sentence summary of your biomass findings, aimed at a government minister.

Then we’ll share a few.

Is the message clear? Is the uncertainty honest? Would a minister know what to do?

• [15 min including sharing] Students write, then 2–3 volunteers share. Class gives quick feedback using the three questions above.

How to lie with statistics

🎓 Concept block 2

The heart of this session

I’m going to show you the same data presented two ways.

Both are technically accurate.

One is honest. The other is not.

• [25 min block] This is the exemplar reveal. Use the faithful and traitor AI environmental impact reports.
• Take your time. Let students react. The moment they realise the traitor report “feels” more convincing is pedagogically powerful.

Two exemplar reports

Faithful report

Balanced evidence. Honest caveats. Uncertain where the data are uncertain.

Traitor report

Selective evidence. Misleading framing. Confident where it shouldn’t be.

Let’s look at the techniques.

• Show both reports (or excerpts) side by side. Students read briefly, then you walk through the techniques.

Technique 1: Cherry-picking

Choose the number that tells your story.

Example: AI energy per query — 0.3 Wh (a Google search) vs 18.9 Wh (a complex AI task). Same topic, 60× difference, depending on which you cite.

• The traitor report cited the smaller number to downplay AI’s energy cost. The faithful report cited the range.

Technique 2: Invalid chart type

A pie chart of things that don’t form a whole.

Or a bar chart where the y-axis starts at 900.

The chart is “technically correct” but visually lies.

Technique 3: Cross-scale conflation

Compare a small thing to a big thing without adjusting the scale.

Example: “Global AI uses less electricity than UK households.”

Both are true numbers — but the comparison is meaningless without matching the scales (global vs national).

Technique 4: Omission

What you don’t show matters as much as what you do.

Example: Omit the supply chain, the payback period, or the alternative scenario. The remaining evidence looks cleaner — and more convincing.

• Don’t reveal all the techniques in the teaching notes — save some for the application session reveal, when students have had a chance to spot them during peer review.

The lesson

The most dangerous misinformation is technically sourced.

You can’t just fact-check the numbers — you have to audit the choices.

• This connects everything: Week 1 (falsifiability), Week 2 (“Compared to what?”), Week 3 (“What assumptions?”).
• The skills for spotting deception are the same skills for avoiding it accidentally.

“What’s missing?”

💬 Exercise 2

Spot the omission

A deliberately incomplete data summary from the biomass case.

What’s been left out? How does the omission change the impression?

• [10 min] Small-group discussion. Show a summary that omits the payback period or the supply chain. Students identify what’s missing and how it changes the conclusion.

Effective figures for a briefing

🎓 Concept block 3

Principles (revisited)

1. Every figure needs a “so what” — what should the reader take from it?
2. Don’t show everything. Show the thing that matters.
3. Captions tell the story, not just the axes.
4. Label directly rather than relying on legends.

• [20 min block] Practical guidance for the figures going into the briefing. Show before/after examples.

Before and after

Before

• 8 fuel types, no legend order
• Y-axis label: “twh”
• No caption
• Grey background

After

• Top 4 fuels, ordered by value
• Y-axis: “Generation (TWh)”
• Caption: “Biomass has replaced coal…”
• Clean white background

• If possible, show the actual figures side by side. The contrast should be stark.

The briefing assignment

📋🎓 Assignment and traitors

Your assignment

Write a ~2-page policy briefing answering:

“Is UK biomass electricity carbon-neutral?”

Due: committed to your GitHub repo by the end of the application session.

Structure: summary → evidence (with figures) → caveats → conclusions.

• [10 min] Hand out the assignment details. This is formative — it doesn’t count toward the final grade, but it’s essential practice.

Peer review

Each of you will be assigned to review someone else’s briefing.

You’ll file GitHub Issues with structured feedback:

• Clarity, evidence, uncertainty, trust

And you’ll make a trust judgement: faithful or suspect?

The traitors

Some of you will write deliberately misleading briefings.

If you want to be a traitor, let me know privately.

Traitors receive a briefing sheet with specific techniques to use.

Everyone else: read carefully. Not everything is what it seems.

• Traitors self-select (aim for 15–20%). They receive the traitor briefing sheet privately (email or DM during break).
• If too few volunteer, privately recruit. If too many, some can be “double agents” (write faithful briefings but think they’re traitors).
• Keep this light and fun. The traitors are doing the class a favour.

Wrap-up

Next time

Application session: “Write, review, reveal”

Three phases:

1. Write your briefing (45 min)
2. Review someone else’s (30 min)
3. The reveal (25 min)

Come ready to write. Your figures from Weeks 2–3 are your evidence.

• Students should have their scenario analysis and figures ready to reuse. The application session is about synthesis and writing, not new analysis.