From a student's first draft:

Women tend to get more feelings; they are softer and more delicate than men. On the other hand men are rough and more ordinary. Generally, men have the hard work. When a boy is growing his parents teach him that he has to study hard because the hard work is usually imposed on men and not on women. He also has to give his family the best of the best in order to make them happy and safe. Maybe men do not have enough time to get religious practices because of this issue, they spend the entire time working and trying to get new ideas to get better payment for the wellness of his family and he losses time to attend religious activities.

From the second draft:

Women tend to get more feelings; they are softer and more delicate than men. On the other hand men are rough and more ordinary. Generally, men are seen as the ones with the hard work. However Women employees work harder and longer than men do, according to a new study by independent research consultancy from Margot Peppers. When a boy is growing his parents teach him that he has to study hard because the hard work is usually imposed on men and not on women. Nevertheless “girls are more likely to say they like school and that good grades are important to them. And their motivation translates into effort: Girls are more likely than boys to spend time studying”. (Flannery). So girls have shown that they have a better background than men and they still are more religious than men.

That's what happens when you do research. You sometimes find out that your preconceptions aren't true. This is a great example of how you need to keep working on your paper to get it right. Good papers aren't written, they are re-written.

Here's a thesis statement, taken from a first draft:

As a part of a culture, religion has to evolve together with the society in question. Alternatively, in order to be successful, it needs to adapt itself. It does not matter if a religion is successful because it evolved by itself, or if some changes were adaptive; what matters is that religions have changing virtues. It is crucial to understand that religions get to change and evolve either as by-products or by themselves. These changes allow religions to survive. Religions whose values have been transmitted by women tend to expand and last in a more durable way than those that have no or little female transmission.

My response to this was that it is a good thesis. The evidence should include examples of religions that relied on men to pass them on, but died out as a result. Muscular Christianity was given as one example, but I wasn't totally satisfied, since Muscular Christianity was a movement within Protestantism, it was never a self-contained religion. Also, didn't completely die out. In any case, I introduced you all to Muscular Christianity in class - when you research a paper, you need to come back with new information. The final version of the paper contained the following:

Another religion that died out and was based on male transmission existed in Papua New Guinea until the 1960s. Urapmin people are a community of around 390 people who abandoned their tribal religion very rapidly and adhered to Christian values. This particular community lived as a hunter-gatherer society and had a special cult available for 'initiated men'. Their religion relied mostly on rituals rather than speech. They gave enormous importance to sinfulness, respect to others and secret religious knowledge. The values were transmitted by the older men from the community towards the youngest through initiation rituals from which women and men were excluded. As it is expressed in Menno Hekker's review of Joel Robbins' book Becoming Sinners:Christian Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society: "The young men, being in a better position to embrace Christianity, quickly acquired Christian knowledge; the big men decided what to do with the remnants of the indigenous religion, inspired however by the Holy Spirit." The important factor is the fast acquirement of values that came from a different religion and that it was adopted faster by the youngest. Religious values in Urapmin community were transmitted by men to men through initiation at a relatively mature age. The strength of such values, however, was transmitted too weakly because in a short period of time, the people were changed to Christian beliefs.

There we have exactly the kind of evidence that is needed to support the thesis of the paper. When researching a paper at undergraduate level, book reviews can often be a useful source. You might not have time to track down and read the whole book, but a good book review will summarize useful information. When you do this, present the source clearly and honestly. If you have only read a book review, but you try to make it seem that you have read the whole book, it could look bad, and there's a danger that you will be passing on errors.

As I often say, you realize that your research is going well when you are not just trawling to find any information at all about a general topic, but when you are looking for specific information that will support or indeed refute your claims. If the evidence you find is not what you were expecting, don't despair. Paul Samuelson, a Nobel Laureate in Economics, was once accused of changing his mind. He responded: "Well, when events change, I change my mind. What do you do?"

The quote is often ascribed to another economist, John Maynard Keynes. In fact, it was only now, when I went to check the exact words, that I discovered the true source. So you see, I'm following my own advice - check the evidence and, if necessary, change your paper to reflect the truth.

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