#25 - Critic: The Gazette-Standard newspaper recently

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi lemonade,

Good question.

Let's think about the information we trust (the premises) and the conclusion we don't.

Premise(s): The Gazette-Standard hired more editors. The Gazette-Standard prints significantly more corrections than their leading competitor.

Conclusion: Hiring did not help them avoid errors.

We need an answer choice that acknowledges and is consistent with the premises. For answer choice (D), we don't have any reason to think more eyes means more people finding errors. Additionally, that wouldn't explain why the Gazette-Standard has so many factual corrections compared to the competitor. If more editors were looking, wouldn't they print fewer errors? For answer choice (E), we have the same issue. Even if the statement were true (that the editor positions resulted in fewer reporters) it doesn't really impact the idea of how the editors resolving the issue of the frequency of errors.

Answer choice (C) explains why we can't connect the premises to the conclusion. The premises are still true (they are printing more retractions and there are more editors). BUT they are doing so not because they make more errors, but because they FIND more errors. Answer choice (C) weakens the idea that the explanation for the factual errors is that they make more than their competitors by giving us an alternative explanation.

Hope that helps!

[teddykim100]

Something I'd like to clarify - my prediction going into the answer choices was something along the lines of: "Well, it's not really fair to compare them to a competitor, to see if hiring more editors was successful. Instead, you should compare how many errors the Gazette caught before the hire, with how many errors they caught afterwards".

However, (C) sticks with this comparison between the Gazette and its competitor, citing that the Gazette responds to more reader-found errors. However, whether the Gazette chooses to respond to these reader-found errors is irrelevant, no? The fact is, the readers caught these errors (after the editors reviewed them), meaning those errors made it past the editors (and therefore were NOT avoided). So the Gazette never really avoided making errors then, which is what the author concluded! Am I mistaken?

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Teddy

Why would they run more acknowledgments of errors? Either they make more errors (the critic's implication) OR they address more errors. It's possible that the competitors make the same number of errors, but don't have the staff to address them appropriately. If the Gazette is responding to more, it could be either that they make more, or that they have the staff to appropriately deal with more. We don't know which it is, and we can't make a conclusion strong without that. Answer choice (C) attacks the argument by pointing this out---the possibility that the Gazette-Standard is not making more errors, but instead catching more errors.

Hope that helps!