ABSTRACT
Arguments for a single claim often travel to different audiences in different genres. In the sciences, research publications may present a canonical supporting case, but news reports, blogs, interviews, and popularizations also spread versions of the same argument, using the different means of support and different linguistic affordances available in different genres. Thus comparing arguments for the same claim across different genres is a useful method for revealing the special resources of a genre as well as the spectrum of potential arguments for that claim. The author analyzes the case of an argument for the genetic signatures of human longevity that was conducted across several genres. The first part of the analysis looks at the distortions that crept into the language of the reporting; the second part covers the challenges to the research that emerged from a common affordance in news coverage, the expert comment. Within a week, the original research report was compromised, not through the usual channels in the research literature but through media reports. Eventually the work was retracted from the journal where it first appeared but then republished in modified form in yet another venue. Cases like this one direct those interested in the means of persuasion to multi-genre arguments.
