SEARCH a Personal Experience with the Loch Ness Monster.    (2 pages)Research question: Is the eyewitness claim about the Loch Ness Monster reasonable and possibly true?Sources: Your only source is

SEARCH a Personal Experience with the Loch Ness Monster.    (2 pages)

Research question: Is the eyewitness claim about the Loch Ness Monster reasonable and possibly true?

Sources: Your only source is How to Think About Weird Things. (wrote by Schick & Vaughn)

Thesis statement: In this essay, your thesis statement should be your answer to the research question. 

Explanation: SEARCH the following passage, from page 152 of  How to Think About Weird Things: 

Well, the day that I saw the [Loch Ness] monster, it was the end of September 1990, and I was driving back from Inverness. I came up the hill where we came in sight of the bay, glanced out across it, and saw this large lump, is the best way to describe it. The nearest I can tell you is it looked like a boat that had turned upside down. Pretty much like that one out there, actually, same sort of size. If you took that boat and put it in the entrance to the bay, which is where I saw the monster, that’s the size of it. About 30 feet in length, and nearly 10 feet in height from the water to the top of the back. It was a bright, sunny day, the water was bright blue, and it really showed up against it. It was a mixture of brown-greens, sludgy sort of colors. I looked at it on and off for a few seconds, because I was driving. Must have seen it three or four times, and the last time I looked, it was gone! (Val Moffat, eyewitness quoted in NOVA Online, “The Beast of Loch Ness,” accessed December 2, 2003) 

Do you spot any logical fallacies in the claim?

Can you diagram the logical argument used in the claim?

What guiding principles are you able to use when looking at the claim?

How does the reliability of personal experience affect the claim?