“The Worth of Personal Experience, Case Examples, Testimonials, and Statements of Authority as Evidence”

1. Evidence is used by a person who is trying to make a claim. The evidence is used to support the claim or argument. It is factual information that can come in many forms including personal experiences or observations and studies conducted by researchers (Browne & Keeley, 2018).
2. Personal experiences are used by the person making a claim because the experiences are vivid in one’s mind, thus “making” the claim true. A strength of using personal experience as evidence is that it adds a personal factor to the claim, allowing the audience to connect on a more personal level. It can appeal to the emotions of the audience. A weakness of personal experiences is that it leads to hasty generalizations, a type of fallacy in which a person uses a personal experience to draw a conclusion for all people, even if other evidence does not support the claim or conclusion. Case examples are stories of a specific situation, used to capture the attention of the audience. These are often very vivid, allowing the audience to relate to the issue, which is a strength of this type of evidence. Case examples typically do not represent statistical evidence. They are persuasive stories or claims, thus creating a weakness because the validity of the evidence can easily be questioned. Testimonials are ratings or opinions given by people or critics about a product or service. They are helpful for people who want to know how others liked the product or service because they can read the reviews. Testimonials are questionable though because the review’s words can be alternated, meaning quotations can be taken out of context or words can be omitted. The reviews can also be selected so they are only in favor of the product, like book reviews or those used in ads or commercials. Appeals to authority are claims given by officials or experts. To the general audience, these are great because for the speaker making the claim, they can use the claims of an official as a source of evidence. Many people see the claims or opinions of officials as a liable source of evidence. Appeals to authority are not always reliable because many officials tend to disagree with one another or make false statements. Some of statements given by officials are merely opinions and are not backed by factual evidence.
3. According to the article, homeless people are at greater risk for the coronavirus. Many homeless people already have pre-existing health issues or have compromised immune systems. This increases the chances of them contracting the virus. They have little to no access of health care, so if they were to get the virus, they may not receive the help they need. Furthermore, the homeless people do not have access to resources that can help prevent the virus, such as bathing, hand washing, and hand sanitizer. The shelters and other places homeless people go to easily contract germs because of the number of people who utilize it. It is difficult for the people who run or work in these places to keep it sterile and clean. If the homeless get the coronavirus, they are likely to spread it to others relatively quickly.

Cousineau, M. (2020). Coronavirus could hit homeless hard, and that could hit everyone hard. The Conversation.

The author is a “professor of preventive medicine and health policy” (Cousineau, 2020). Therefore, the author is an expert on the topic of public health and how it can impact others. The author takes a first-person perspective at the beginning of the article, stating his beliefs. He then provides evidence to support his claims that the homeless people are in danger of the coronavirus. Other than citing the CDC, the author does not provide evidence from other sources. The author used appeal to authority evidence by using his own evidence and evidence from the CDC, which is a national agency.