Lorenzo Tucker

Answer choices

1. A

   Correct89% picked this

   being at considerable risk of misrepresenting some

   Why this is right

   This might seem a little harsh, with "considerable risk", but that just means "noteworthy / worthy of consideration". Clearly the author thinks that someone telling their own story is liable to self-serving distortions. That's the whole point of the 3rd paragraph, and in the 4th paragraph, the author is telling us, "Don't worry -- I realized that Tucker's oral testimony would be super sketchy as a primary source, so it's undergone careful scrutiny and has been compared to known facts. For the most part, stuff that couldn't be verified was not included in the book." That's a big show of respect for the potential inaccuracy of self-testimony. The author mostly wouldn't include Tucker's self-testimony in her study unless she could back it up with other evidence, because she doesn't fully trust it as a source.

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

   89%
2. B

   Out of Scope: duplicates public record2% picked this

   a source of information that merely duplicates what is available in

   If the physicist is sharing their own recollections of events, then they are probably sharing pretty unique stories. The events themselves might already be available in the public record, but the physicist's recollection of them might have details that aren't otherwise known. The author never mentions that Tucker's testimony will probably duplicate stuff that's already known (in fact, the author seems to be boasting that the study will shed light on something that hasn't been looked at enough).

   2%
3. C

   Too Strong: rarely used3% picked this

   a type of source that is rarely used for scholarly

   The source used in this physicist's book is his own recollections. Did our author say that scholarly history writing rarely uses someone's own recollections? No, there's no mention of how frequently someone's own recollections are / aren't used.

   3%
4. D

   Too Strong: generally inappropriate4% picked this

   a type of source that is appropriate for biographies of entertainers but generally not for

   The author never talked about histories of scientific discovery, so we have no reason to think that he had specific feelings about whether self-reporting was a type of source that was generally appropriate or not within such histories. The author is not super comfortable using a self-reporting source even for this biography of an entertainer. The author seems to think that in any type of history, someone who is telling their own story is likely to embellish in a way that flatters them.

   4%
5. E

   Contradicted3% picked this

   an authoritative account that does not require

   Our author believes the opposite of this. That's why in the 4th paragraph the author tells us that Tucker's self-testimony "has undergone careful scrutiny / has been placed up against the known facts for verification / was not included in the book unless it could be corroborated by other sources".

   3%