Research & responsibility
Scientific funding, conservation and the responsibilities of inquiry.
Scientific Discovery: Understanding the World or Its Complexity
A model argument that scientific discovery improves understanding while also revealing complexity, and that the second view better captures science as an ongoing process.
GRE Issue Essay on Government Limits on Scientific Research
A qualified argument for broad scientific freedom paired with narrow, accountable safeguards when research presents serious risks or public funding threatens independent judgment.
GRE Practice: The Costs of Saving Endangered Species
An argumentative essay weighing the costs of protecting endangered species against conservation’s broader public value, using New Deal programs to examine both the potential benefits and the risks of costly public action.
Wilderness Protection Laws: Should Remaining Areas Stay Undisturbed?
An argument that nations should legally protect remaining wilderness from permanent development while allowing carefully limited exceptions for urgent public needs and Indigenous rights.
GRE Practice: Should Society Save Every Endangered Species?
A qualified argument for serious efforts to protect endangered species, with priorities based on urgency, effectiveness, uncertainty, and cost. It distinguishes conservation reasoning from what the supplied historical evidence can establish.
GRE Issue Essay on When Society Should Save Endangered Species
An argument that conservation should respond to the seriousness of extinction risk and the public interest, not only to whether people caused the threat.
Can Unpredictable Research Outcomes Justify Limiting Research?
An argumentative essay evaluating whether uncertainty about research outcomes justifies restricting research, with attention to potential benefits, foreseeable risks, and public oversight.
Wilderness Preservation or Economic Development?
An argument that governments should generally preserve wilderness, allowing development only when it respects existing land rights, has a strong public justification, and avoids unacceptable lasting damage.
Preserving Wilderness Despite Economic Development
An evidence-based argument for making wilderness preservation the legal default, while allowing carefully justified exceptions for significant public needs.
Should Research Prioritize the Greatest Number?
An argument that broad public benefit should guide research priorities, but not operate as a rule that excludes urgent minority needs, uncertain long-term value, or independent inquiry.
GRE Argument: Should Governments Fund Scientific Research with Unclear Consequences?
An argumentative essay assessing when governments should fund research whose consequences are uncertain, using the historical examples of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 defense policy and Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1961 warning about the military-industrial complex.