PT148 · S3 · Q5 Jenkins maintains that the movie

This refers to the famous Ad Hominem flaw, in which someone dismisses a point of view because the source of the view has a biased interest (or because the source has some conflicting past behavior). This author does reject an argument, in her conclusion. But the grounds on which she does so (i.e. the evidence) isn't a claim about the bias of Jenkins. Rather, the evidence is a claim that "many who've seen this movie were caused to act antisocially".

Not Correlation vs. Causation Bad Evidence Match This refers to the famous Causal Overconfidence flaw, in which an author overconfidently concludes one possible causal explanation for something, without ruling out other possible explanations. Any time a Flaw answer is structured concludes from X that Y then we can ask ourselves if X matches the evidence and Y matches the conclusion. Was the evidence "a mere correlation between phenomena"? No, the evidence was "the movie has clearly produced antisocial behavior among many who have seen it". That verb 'produced' makes this a causal statement, not a correlation. We could also say that the conclusion is not a causal claim; it's just saying that "the movie was intended to provoke antisocial behavior". That's talking about whether or not a certain motive existed; it's not claiming that Thing 1 caused Thing 2.

Not Part vs. Whole Bad Evidence Match This refers to the famous Part vs. Whole flaw, in which an author assumes that a trait that applies to a collective group also applies to each member within the group (or vice versa). Any time a Flaw answer is structured infers that Y solely on the grounds that X then we can ask ourselves if X matches the evidence and Y matches the conclusion. Was the evidence saying some trait is true of a part of a whole? Not really, but if we really wanted to stretch we could say that saying "the movie has clearly produced antisocial behavior among many who have seen it" is saying that part of the audience has "antisocial behavior" as a trait. For this answer to be right, the conclusion would then have to be saying, "Therefore, the audience as a whole for this movie behaves antisocially". But in reality the conclusion says, "Therefore, this movie was intended to provoke antisocial behavior".

Whenever a Flaw answer begins with fails to consider / overlooks the possibility, we can ask ourselves whether the idea that follows would weaken. Can it hurt the argument to say that, "Hey, author -- sometimes people can act in a way that is contrary to their expressed interest?" No, that would actually strengthen. Jenkins had concluded that Firepower wasn't intended to provoke antisocial since that would have been contrary to the director's interest for such behavior to result. This would be an objection to Jenkins' reasoning. We would say, "But Jenkins -- just because X is against the director's interests doesn't show that the director wasn't doing X. Sometimes people act in ways that are contrary to their interest." If we're objecting to Jenkins, then we're strengthening this author's argument.