Logical Reasoning

PT146 · S1 · Q25 Critic: The Gazette-Standard

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Critic: The Gazette-Standard newspaper recently increased its editorial staff to avoid factual errors.

Conclusion

The move to increase editorial staff to avoid factual errors is clearly not working (i.e. there are at least as many factual errors since the increase in editorial staff was enacted).

Evidence

Compared to its biggest competitor, this paper runs significantly more corrections acknowledging factual errors.

Evaluate

This evidence is a Comparison, and the conclusion is Anti-Causal (the new staff is not causing a reduction in factual errors).

Usually, when we're weakening an Anti-Causal argument, we're saying that the Comparison evidence presented is not a fair comparison (they had different initial reference points / they have different realities that make it unfair to compare along these lines).

Goal

We can prephrase any Weaken question by thinking, .

So,

But in particular we might look for an answer that makes the Evidence less compelling; some way in which this paper and its biggest competitor are unfair to compare.

25.

Which one of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the critic's argument?

  1. The Gazette-Standard pays its editorial

    Strengthens, if anything

    How much either paper pays its employees is not that relevant. If we were to invent a somewhat dubious common sense premise that "the less they're paid, the more mistakes they'll make", then that would only strengthen the author's notion that the G-S paper is not doing well when it comes to making errors.

    1% picked this

  2. The Gazette-Standard has been in

    No Impact

    This is a distinction between the two papers, but it doesn't seem to make them unfair to compare. If anything, we would probably assume that the longer a paper has been in business, the better practices it will have evolved for cutting down on errors. So if Gazette-Standard is the longer running paper and is still running way more corrections than its competitor, it reflects negatively on Gazette-Standards ability to avoid errors.

    1% picked this

  3. Correct

    The Gazette-Standard more actively follows

    Why this is right

    This establishes a difference that does make the evidence feel like more of an unfair comparison. Say that I told you that Iowa has more documented COVID cases per capita than Nebraska, and thus concluded that Nebraska was doing a better job of containing COVID. It could be that Nebraska just doesn't do as much COVID testing as Iowa does. If you don't conduct as many tests, you won't publish as many positive cases. Similarly, it might be that the Gazette-Standards biggest competitor has as least as many cases of factual errors, as Gazette-Standard does, but if they're not "testing" for them by following-up on reader complaints, then they won't detect as many cases of errors, and thus won't publish as many corrections. Because the two papers have different commitment levels to finding and acknowledging factual errors, it's unfair to look at the number of corrections each paper publishes as a metric for gauging how many actual errors took place in the paper.

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

    81% picked this

  4. The Gazette-Standard’s articles are each

    Strengthens, if anything

    If the Gazette-Standard paper has more editors fact check, but still ends up publishing way more factual errors, then that reflects pretty poorly on the editorial staff, which therefore would support the author's conclusion that increasing the editorial staff is not helping.

    13% picked this

  5. The increase in the Gazette-Standard’s

    Strengthen, if anything

    We probably should consider anything about the reporting staff to be out of scope. But it seems like if we were to try to take this answer anywhere, a decrease in reporters would probably leave the remaining staff stretched more thin than before. When you're stretched thin, you don't have as much ability to thoroughly check your work. So fewer reporters might lead to more factual errors, which would just strengthen the author's argument.

    4% picked this

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