Chapter 2 describes the historical development of modern scientific argumentation in the Toulmin et al. (1984) model. It describes the model’s strengths and weaknesses, leading to an overview of traditional and evidence-based reading strategies. Next, this chapter introduces the CERIC Method, an evidence-based form of categorical reading that allows readers to break down a research article into its five main components of argumentation: Claim, Evidence, Reasoning, Implications, and Context. It explores the potential benefits of enhancing reading comprehension of research articles by providing a structured approach to engaging with and analyzing research literature.

The concept of ‘stereotypes’ refers to generalisations that are made about the behaviour adopted and/or the characteristics possessed by the members of a particular group. Involving presumptions about human actions and attributes, a stereotype provides ready-made narratives as to how and why some events unfold as they do. Thus, stereotypes, especially when they operate ‘undetected’, hamper an objective analysis of the factual situation. In the courtroom, they tend to have a polluting effect on the assessment of evidence, leading to relevant pieces of evidence being ignored, irrelevant circumstances being given weight, and higher standards of proof being imposed than would have been the case in their absence. This chapter focuses on the approach of the CEDAW Committee in examining the impact of gender stereotypes on the evaluation of evidence performed by domestic courts. It provides an in-depth analysis of the views adopted by the Committee in selected individual communications.

In their chapter, Josef Parnas and Maja Zandersen critically examine the etiological claim that schizophrenia is a brain disease. They are not arguing against a claim that it is a confirmed brain disease, but rather against some implications that follow from the inference that schizophrenia is a disease even though the biopathology is not yet mapped out. To focus the discussion, Parnas and Zandersen describe what they consider a folk psychological definition of disease in medicine. A disease is an unwanted affliction caused by a biopathological process. It has a characteristic pattern of onset, time course, and outcome – including the potential death of the patient. As unwanted afflictions, diseases are experienced as deserving of treatment.

I recall the enthusiasm with which magnetic resonance imaging was greeted by the field of psychiatry in the 1980s, the stunning quality of the images, almost magical. This technology fed into the long desire by our field to have an innovative technology that would, in one fell swoop, solve the main problems of our field, particularly etiology and diagnosis. I recall claims such has “Now we can do neuropathology on living people,” “Now we have a tool to solve the mind–body problem,” and “It is now just a matter of time until we find the causes of schizophrenia.” A decade or more earlier it had been monoamine neurotransmitters (serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine) as the revolutionary scientific breakthrough, and one or two decades later it would be molecular genetics. In each case, the “hype cycle” (Dedehayir & Steinert, 2016) produced a crest of zealous excitement (and dramatic overpromising) followed by a period of disillusionment and then some stabilization and emerging maturity. The field came to recognize that the application had merits but the problems – very hard ones – of psychiatric diagnosis and etiology were not going to yield easily. Of note, the field of psychiatric neuroimaging, although now 40-plus years old, underwent another recent round of substantial criticism about the use of underpowered sample sizes (Marek et al., 2022) and inadequate corrections for multiple testing.

Observation is a dynamic process important to our successful navigation of the world around us. It is not mere passive absorption of sensory input, but the ability to carefully attend to the richness, complexity, and interestingness of our daily experiences. This chapter suggests that engaging with the arts invites us to look more closely and intentionally, to notice patterns, to see nuance, and to seek the meaning of and in our observations. The chapter analyzes a plethora of empirical evidence across domains suggesting that observational and attentional skills can be developed through domain-specific arts training and may generalize beyond arts contexts. Trained artists, for example, often use distinct attentional strategies, exhibit greater attention flexibility and perceptual accuracy, and tend to process information more holistically than nonartists. Likewise, guided close-looking in visual arts contexts – whether in museums or classrooms – has been linked to improvements in clinical observational skills, diagnostic accuracy, and a willingness to engage with ambiguity. These capacities also underpin our abilities to experience empathy, to detect, interpret, and regulate our emotions, and to approach differences with curiosity, openness, and flexible thinking.

Economic growth boosted living standards after it first surfaced in Britain in the 1700s. Why did it not arise earlier or somewhere else? Why did it spread quickly to northwestern Europe, but take longer to reach much of the rest of the world? The answer is not slavery, colonialism, or capitalism. Rather, it lies with advantages shared by much of northwestern Europe: institutions that secured property rights with benefits beyond a narrow elite; states that could rearrange property rights with credible compensation to improve transportation and agricultural productivity; cities made possible by productive agriculture that spawned agglomeration effects like those at work in Silicon Valley; skilled workers who could implement new ideas; and access to the ideas themselves from the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. Northwestern Europe had these advantages for four reasons: its history, its religion, its intellectual heritage, and its distance from Eurasia’s steppes. Those four reasons are the ultimate causes for the onset of sustained economic growth in Britain in the 1700s and for its spread to northwestern Europe.

Chapter 11 shows how to use the CERIC framework to design and deliver compelling presentations of scientific research. It introduces the modified CCERI structure – Context, Claim, Evidence, Reasoning, and Implications – as a flexible guide for organizing talks and presentations in classrooms, journal clubs, lab meetings, and seminars. This chapter provides guidance on how to choose and present figures, explain reasoning clearly, and incorporate critique and comparison into the flow of a presentation. It provides strategies for maintaining clarity and engaging audiences across disciplines. It also explores collaborative formats, including live CERIC reviews, seminar prep sessions, and group discussions, showing how these activities build scientific literacy and foster active learning. Finally, it offers practical ways to gamify research discussions, making critical analysis fun, rigorous, and rewarding.

How much of the legislative agenda and the set of statutory law in a state legislature originate outside of the legislature? This chapter turns to a detailed source of data in California to answer these questions. In the California state legislature, the non-legislative “sponsor” is indicated on the bill analyses (the legislator who introduces the bill is called the “author” in the legislature.) A range of groups are indicated on these bill analyses, from California cities to major corporations. This unique reporting institution allows me to identify partnerships between a variety of extra-legislative organizations and legislators at the bill level. I gather information on the outside legislative sponsor on all bills introduced in the legislature from 1995 to 2014. A majority of California's statutes are proposed by outsiders. A set of explorations demonstrates that legislators with less experience rely more heavily on outsider input. Further, bills sponsored by state agencies, municipal entities, and think tanks, experts, and commissions are especially successful in their pursuits at bill passage. Drawing on both quantitative analysis and oral histories from former legislators, this chapter reveals the extent of group participation in crafting state policy – even in a highly professionalized legislature, non-legislators play a central role in shaping the law.

The network approach to psychopathology has been introduced in psychometrics to offer an alternative to the dominant approach that sees mental disorders as caused by underlying mechanisms or pathogenic pathways. Instead, the network approach conceives of mental disorders as causally connected symptoms, locked in stable, dysfunctional states. The authors of this chapter aim to chart the explanatory potential of network models in psychopathology. They argue for the following (related) points. Network models (1) afford explaining the covariation between two or more symptoms as being part of a network and (2) should be conceived as heuristic devices for hypothesis testing in individual therapeutic settings. (3) This heuristic perspective allows for two types of inferences – from a generic model to specific individuals and from specific individuals to a generic model – making system boundaries of networks of causally related symptoms and of underlying mechanisms fluid, and (4) thus showing that a rigid understanding of constitutive relevance is not viable. The presented analysis is informed philosophically by two approaches: a mechanistic property cluster-understanding of mental disorders, and an understanding of mechanistic modeling as a toolbox for hypothesis generation. The authors illustrate their claims through an empirical study on panic disorder.

A 61-year-old male with history of depression and constipation presents to the outpatient neurology clinic for 1 year of progressive “shaking” in his right hand and arm, which has now spread to his right leg. His wife reports he has begun walking slower, has fallen twice in the past 6 months (both were falls forward without head contact), and has developed a soft voice.

Racism is a fundamental threat to human rights and to child and youth health and wellbeing. Addressing racism is a human rights priority and essential to ensuring all children and youth are able to realize optimal health, development, and wellbeing. This chapter first provides a brief overview of the multiple ways racism operates to impact child and youth health, development and wellbeing in school settings, drawing on qualitative and quantitative data on the prevalence and impacts of racism in schools, and children and young people’s views regarding potential remedies. It then discusses principles of anti-racism interventions in school settings and evidence-based exemplar programs. We primarily draw on our experience and learnings within an Australian context, recognizing that while racism and its expressions share many similarities across settler-colonial settings, there are also considerable historical and contemporary social and political differences.