The first is that it tries to construct a persuasive moral argument against a case for austerity that hasn't been framed morally.
Ms. Lacy — friendly, energetic, looking far younger than her 67 years — delivered a persuasive rationale for her brand of public art, now known as "social practice".
White House officials may have thought it would be a persuasive rationale because Comey has come in for criticism from leaders of both political parties.
In 2003, for example, an article by James Atlas in The Times described him and Mr. Kristol as neoconservatives who had felt that the Vietnam War had a "persuasive rationale".
For the neoconservatives who emerged out of the Vietnam era -- most notably Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer and Irving Kristol -- that war had what they felt was a persuasive rationale: the need to avoid the spread of Communism.
Nor is it a persuasive rationale, which can be readily expressed to scientists and the public alike.
What we learned was that, even after coming up with a persuasive rationale and a list of practical measures, there was a long interval spent carrying the message to multiple audiences before the result began to take shape.
On Tuesday, when Mattis appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz). needled him about the absence of a persuasive rationale.
[33] Our results were remarkably similar (59% for open-placebo; 35% for no-treatment control), suggesting that open-label placebo in the context of a persuasive rationale may show comparable efficacy to established IBS treatments.
We found that patients given open-label placebo in the context of a supportive patient-practitioner relationship and a persuasive rationale had clinically meaningful symptom improvement that was significantly better than a no-treatment control group with matched patient-provider interaction.
It is hard, in this cozy, wired-up, GPS world, to imagine circumstances in which human beings would be so completely at the mercy of nature, but Mr. Carnahan constructs a persuasive picture of primal danger.
