Logical Reasoning

PT131 · S3 · Q25 Science writer: All scientists

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Science writer: All scientists have beliefs and values that might slant their interpretations of the data from which they draw their conclusions.

Conclusion

Biased interpretations of data will generally be removed before publication.

Evidence

Before publication, scientific analyses of data will be carefully reviewed by many other scientists. These scientists are likely to notice and object to any biases they don't share with the scientist(s) who wrote the analysis

Evaluation

Given that a bunch of scientists are going to call out whatever biases they see in the pre-publication papers they review, how could we still argue that some biased interpretations will make it through to the publication stage?

What if the panel of scientists reviewing a paper have the same biases as the scientist who wrote the paper? The reviewers are going to notice and object to biases that they do not share. But if they share the same bias, then that bias might make it through to publication.

We can think of this as an untriggered conditional:

If Reviewers notice a → object to and bias they don't share remove that bias

Goal

Look for an answer that rules out the aforementioned objection, something like .

25.

Which one of the following is an assumption required by the science writer's argument?

The scientists reviewing serious scientific
Not Required
This would Strengthen the author's case, but it's not necessary. If we negate this, it says that the reviewers always have biases that slant their interpretations of the papers they're reviewing. That might sound damaging, but the author acknowledged in the first sentence that all scientists have beliefs/values that could bias them. So she might freely accept that all reviewers have biases that slant their review. However, she could still say that because you have many scientists reviewing these papers, even though they have their own biases, they are able to spot different biases held by those who wrote the papers. A team of biased reviewers, all calling out biases that they don't share with the writer could successfully weed out most/all biases from the paper. It's almost like if you have a team of politicians, with their own political biases, working together on a piece of legislation. Because they'll all call out the things that go too far afield of their own comfort zone, the resulting legislation should be pretty center of the road.
17% picked this
Correct
In general, biases that slant
Why this is right
If we negate this one, it becomes a damaging objection: the biases that generally slant interpretations of data are shared among all scientists. Thus, a team of reviewers that all shared the same bias wouldn't notice or object to it, because they all share it. And that's how biases would make it through to the publication phase.
Skill tested: Necessary Assumption · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
69% picked this
Biases that are present in
Out of Scope: "scientific value"
The argument is only concerned with whether biases are weeded out or not by the pre-publication review phase. No part of the argument is concerned with whether or not the papers have scientific value.
3% picked this
The interpretation of data is
Too Strong: "the only part"
The argument wouldn't care whether other parts of a paper are sometimes/never biased. The conclusion is only about whether the interpretations of data end up still being biased at the publication stage. This is a classic Necessary Assumption trap answer pattern: only one source of bias is mentioned, so they write a trap answer saying "it's the only source of bias".
2% picked this
Slanted interpretations of data in
Too Strong: "only through peer review"
The author is assuming that peer review is sufficient weed out most biases, but she doesn't have to assume that peer review is necessary to weed out biases, as this answer says.
8% picked this

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