Where does rigor collide?

In physiology and forensic medicine, rigor is rigor mortis, the stiffening of the body's muscles after death as the chemical cycle that lets muscle relax runs down and the fibres lock. Krompecher's experimental work measured how the intensity of rigor rises, peaks, and resolves over time, so that its state can help estimate how long ago death occurred. The referent is a post-mortem change in muscle, measured by the force needed to overcome the stiffness and by its time course, and it is an entirely different construct from a standard of intellectual thoroughness.[1]

Unit

The intensity of post-mortem muscle stiffness and its progression over time

Recovery means

Rigor resolves on its own as the muscle proteins break down, and the stiffness passes some time after death

Measured by

Assessed by the force required to overcome the stiffness and by the timing of its onset, peak, and resolution

In education and scholarship, rigor is the quality of being demanding and thorough: holding work to high standards of evidence, reasoning, and care so that conclusions are well supported and expectations are challenging. Draeger and colleagues, studying how one institution tried to define the term, found that academic rigor is invoked constantly yet understood in strikingly different ways by different people. The referent is a standard of intellectual demand and thoroughness, judged by the depth and defensibility of the work it governs, and it shares only its name with the stiffening of muscle after death.[2]

Unit

The level of intellectual demand and thoroughness expected of work

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Appraised by the standards of evidence, reasoning, and difficulty a course or body of work holds itself to