Logical Reasoning

PT135 · S4 · Q22 Scientist: Physicists claim that their system

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Scientist: Physicists claim that their system of careful peer review prevents scientific fraud in physics effectively.

Conclusion

It would be good for progress in physics if they enhanced their safeguards against scientific fraud.

Evidence

Even though physicists claim their fraud-protection system is good because of peer review, we heard that same thing from biologists 20 years ago who turned out to be wrong. Since biology started strengthening it's fraud-protection guardrails, it's had fewer major incidents of fraud.

Evaluation

This is an argument by Comparison, since the author is leaning on Premises about biologists to make an argument about what physicists should do. To weaken an argument by comparison, we'd look for important differences: - maybe biologists were wrong 20 years ago when they said "we have good fraud-prevention systems" but physicists are correct now when they claim they do - maybe biologists didn't use peer review until recently, but peer review is the secret to fraud prevention.

To strengthen the comparison, we would want to know that physicists now and biologists-20 years ago are fair to compare in terms of their rate of fraud, their protection against fraud, and the sort of measures that would help prevent fraud.

However, we could also dig into the "New Term" in the conclusion: progress.

It's not really clear where that enters the discussion. We were just talking about whether or not fraud was being effectively prevented, until the author said,

Goal

The main thrust seems to be an argument by comparison, so we would look for a correct answer that makes biology and physics more fair to compare, when it comes to this fraud prevention discussion. But it's possible LSAT will test us on that "new guy" in the conclusion: progress. Is progress related to fraud prevention? A correct answer could help us believe that it is.

22.

The conclusion of the scientist's argument is most strongly supported if which one of the following is assumed?

  1. Correct

    Major incidents of scientific fraud

    Why this is right

    This gives us a linking idea between "doing things that biologists did, in order to prevent major fraud incidents" and the new term in the conclusion "conducive to progress". "Deleterious" means "damaging, injurious, bad". If major fraud is bad for progress, then preventing major fraud should be good for progress.

    Skill tested: Strengthen · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    57% picked this

  2. Very few incidents of even

    Weak Impact

    Cool, biology has cleaned up its act even more than we already were told. But that doesn't add much to the conversation. It was already compelling that biology, by effecting certain fraud-prevention measures, had prevented any major incidents of fraud in the past 20 years. To find out that it's been almost as effective with minor fraud is both less impressive and less impactful, so it's a very weak strengthener to the notion that biology's efforts have been successful at expunging fraud.

    17% picked this

  3. No system of careful peer

    Weak Impact

    This just means that "all systems of peer review still let some fraud through the cracks". That's an incredibly weak claim, but the author could say, "Physicists say that their system of peer review effectively prevents fraud, but all systems of peer review are not able to prevent 100% of cases." If peer review prevented 99.9% of cases, wouldn't we still think it's effective? I use a lot of anti-bacterial soaps that kill only 99.9% of germs and I still think of them as effective. Saying that "at least one piece of fraud slips through your peer review, Physicists!" is too weak to be a correct answer.

    18% picked this

  4. Twenty years ago the system

    Weakens

    The author needs modern physics fraud protection to be fair to compare to biologists' fraud protection from 20 years ago. He's assuming that since the biologists were wrong, the modern physicists are wrong. So he's assuming that modern physicists are comparably vulnerable to fraud as those old biologists were. This says the opposite and would hurt the author's argument: "The physicists might be correct when they say they have effective fraud protection. Yes, the biologists were wrong, but the biologists has a less effective system than physics' peer review."

    7% picked this

  5. Over the years, there have

    Weakens

    This makes it seem like there's not much of a fraud problem to worry about in physics.

    1% picked this

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