Logical Reasoning

PT148 · S3 · Q15 Among the many temptations

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Among the many temptations of the digital age, manipulation of photographs has proved particularly troublesome for science.

Conclusion (clearly = opinion)

Scientific fraud is a widespread problem among the author submitting to that journal.

Evidence

Dozens of authors submitted digital images that had been manipulated in ways that violated a journal of cellular biology's guidelines.

Evaluate

The author is reacting to a curious fact with a causal interpretation, so we can use our Explain Curious Fact mindset.

Curious Fact ... why is this software tool showing that dozens of authors have submitted digital images that have been manipulated in ways that violate the journal's guidelines?

Author's Explanation ... these authors are committing scientific fraud / they are manipulating images in fraudulent ways.

The concept of "scientific fraud" really jumps out of nowhere, so we may otherwise (or in addition) have reacted to this argument by just noticing this New Concept in the Conclusion.

With Explain Curious Fact arguments, we have the same two pressure points: 1. Alternate Explanations for the curious fact 2. the plausibility of the author's explanation

Goal

The author has to assume there isn't some other explanation for why dozens of authors had submitted images that violated the journal's guidelines (i.e. they were not just oblivious to the guidelines / they did not just mistakenly violate the guidelines / the violations were not insignificant things like the wrong file type or image dimensions).

And the author has to assume whatever bare minimums there are for her explanation to be plausible (i.e. the scientists violating the guidelines were aware of the guidelines and intentionally manipulated images in a way that gives off a fraudulent impression).

15.

Which one of the following is an assumption required by the argument?

  1. The scientists who submitted manipulated

    Too Specific: used software

    The author does seemingly need to assume that the submitting scientists who "committed fraud" were aware of the journal's guidelines and intentionally tried to work around them. But in order to commit fraud, you just need to have the intent to deceive. You don't need to have any awareness of what specific entity might call you out on your fraud on the other end. For example, in order for me to commit tax fraud, do I need to know whether a human or a software program is going to be analyzing my numbers at the I.R.S.? No, I just need to misrepresent what my numbers should actually say. Negating this answer and saying that the scientists aren't aware that a software tool is examining the images doesn't weaken the argument / doesn't help us argue that these scientists were not committing fraud.

    4% picked this

  2. The journal requires that all

    Too Strong

    Too Strong: all Doesn't Address New Concept There's no reason this author needs to assume that the journal requires 100% of articles to include digital images. Would it hurt the argument if some articles were allowed to have analog images or no image at all? Of course not. It should also be a red flag to us that this answer isn't addressing the elephant in the room, the New Concept in the Conclusion of "scientific fraud".

    6% picked this

  3. Scientific fraud is possible in

    Too Strong

    Too Strong: only if Reversed Logic, if anything Conditional-strength answers are often correct on modern Necessary Assumption questions, but we want to look at them as a conditional reasoning move and ask ourselves whether the argument ever made such a move. This rule looks like this: Sci fraud is possible → Research is documented in cellular biology w/ digital images This doesn't match the Premise to Conclusion move at all. If anything, it's closer to a Reversal. The conclusion is about the existence of "scientific fraud", so if this answer matched the author's reasoning, then "scientific fraud" would be on the right. If we contraposed this answer, then the right side would say "scientific fraud is impossible in cellular biology", which wouldn't match the conclusion (it would contradict it).

    4% picked this

  4. Correct

    Many of the scientists who

    Why this is right

    Here we have an answer that actually addresses the New Concept in the Conclusion of "scientific fraud". How did the author go from "the images violated the journal's guidelines" to the much more malicious charge of "scientific fraud"? Couldn't violating guidelines just be accidental? The author must be assuming ill intent. She is assuming that at least many of these scientists who violated the guidelines intended to misrepresent the information conveyed by those images. If we negate this, we're saying "None, or practically, none of the scientists who submitted manipulated images did so in order to misrepresent what the image conveyed". If you don't have intent to misrepresent, then it's not fraud. And if none or practically none of the scientists what fraudulent intent, then that badly weakens the conclusion that "scientific fraud is a widespread problem". In the language of Explain Curious Fact arguments, we can say that this answer is establishing a baseline of plausibility for the author's explanation of why dozens of authors submitted images that violated the journal's manipulation guidelines.

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

    82% picked this

  5. Scientific fraud is a widespread

    Too Strong

    Too Strong: only Only Thing Mentioned ≠ Only Thing There's no reason the author needs to assume that scientific fraud is only a widespread problem among authors submitting to journals of cellular biology. This is resurrecting the time honored trap answer tendency on Necessary Assumption of acting like the only thing the author mentioned is therefore the only thing (or the primary thing) to which it applied. It's like going from someone saying "Black lives matter" to the accusation that they're assuming "only black lives matter" or assuming "black lives matter the most".

    3% picked this

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