#18 - A large survey of scientists found that almost all

[Robert Carroll]

glasann,

You can connect two "most" statements in certain situations. There's an example at this link, which I'll quote: viewtopic.php?t=17137

The reason the above works is because the two Mosts both originate from the exact same group (B, in the case above). Imagine the following two statements:

Most doctors are smart. ( D S )
Most doctors are wealthy. ( D W )
If there are 100 doctors, then at least 51 are smart and at least 51 are wealthy. So, there has to be an overlap there, leading to the inference that Some smart doctors are wealthy.

"Almost all" certainly overlaps with "most". It's definitely stronger - 51 out of 100 would not be "almost all". But it's impossible to give an exact numerical range. I think it's quite safe to say that "almost all" covers something above 80% - the range of "almost all" is, I think, narrower than that (it probably starts far above 80%), but it's at least safe to say that "almost all" requires more than 80%.

With that in mind, in this situation, the premises therefore allow us to infer that a majority of scientists surveyed simultaneously accept Wang's Law and know the results of the Brown-Eisler Experiment. That's already proven, so we don't need to add anything to the argument. Note that one thing we're not told is how many scientists know anything about how the Law and the Experiment impact the Minsk Hypothesis. As is no surprise, the correct answer addresses that gap in the argument.

Robert Carroll

[queenbee]

Hi

Seems like I am outlier here. I selected (E). If Wang's Law is true, doesnt that do it all? People know the results of the BE experiment, and that's nice, but if Wangs law is not true, isn't that a bigger problem and everything falls apart after that?
Why does having to know about both the law WITH the B-E results matter. If the law is true, and B-E results contradict the law, it could be that the experiment was flawed.

Would appreciate some help.
Thank you!

[Paul Popa]

Hi Queen,

Great question. I would say that the stimulus doesn't actually concern itself with factual reality, just perception. We see that the scientists "accept" Wang's Law, "know the results of" the B-E experiment, and (supposedly) "reject" the Minsk Hypothesis. We see the scientists accept Wang's Law, so whether or not the Law has been proven to be true is actually not necessary.

The more pertinent issue here is awareness. Imagine if the scientists were being interviewed and were asked these questions:

Q: Do you accept Wang's Law?
A: Yes, I do.

Q: Do you know the results of the Brown-Eisler experiment?
A: Yep!

Q: Great! Do you therefore reject the Minsk Hypothesis?

The answer to this last question is not a guaranteed yes or no. It could also be "I'm not aware of a Minsk Hypothesis." For them to be able to reject a hypothesis, they have to know what it is, or at very least, have been learned somewhere that Wang's Law and the results of the B-E experiment contradict the Minsk Hypothesis. Thats why (A) is necessary. The scientists surveyed have to have been made aware, somehow, some way, that there is a contradiction to state they reject the hypothesis. Otherwise, they could say "Not aware" or "No opinion." Hope this helps!

[electricwatt]

Hi Team,

I am getting a better understanding of why B is not true but I am having a hard time understanding or being convinced by A.

Even the scientists are generally aware of the Brown-Eisler experiment with Wang's law contradict Minsk, the stimulus only says they know the results -- not that they accept them. Even if they know of the results, doesnt mean they accept them which doesnt require they reject the Minsk hypothesis. Could you guys please explain to me why A has to be required for conclusion to be true? When you negate A, I also dont see how it destroys the conclusion.

Maybe I am overthinking

[Dana D]

Hey electricwatt,

You are correct in stating that awareness does not equal automatic rejection, however consider the content and context of the stimulus here. Wang's Law is an accepted scientific "truth" - it has been tested and verified and accepted by most of the surveyed scientists. The Minsk Hypothesis, in comparison, is a theory. Hypotheses are not yet tested or verified via experiment. If there was a scientific experiment, like the Brown-Eisler Experiment, which, when combined with an accepted scientific truth such as Wang's Law, contradicted a hypothesis, it makes sense to assume the scientists would reject the hypothesis. This is a normal part of the scientific process - a hypothesis is proposed, it is tested, and based on the results of the experiment, it can be accepted, refined, or rejected.

Answer choice (A) is necessary because if most of the scientists surveyed are aware that the BE Experiment and Wang's Law contradict the hypothesis, it makes sense to conclude most surveyed scientists would reject the experiment. However, if most scientists did not know of the contradiction, we cannot be sure they would reject the hypothesis.

Hope that helps!

[christine_o]

Hello,

I'm having a really hard time understanding why A is correct. I read through your explanations herein, and still don't understand. Answer choice A seems to be a necessary assumption only if it's also assumed that the scientists also know how the experiment was conducted, believe it was conducted properly, and agree that the results are sound. Otherwise, even if they knew that the results contradict the Minsk Hypothesis, they wouldn't necessarily reject the Minsk Hypothesis, because the results wouldn't mean much to them. I chose C for this reason, and was surprised to see that it wasn't a more popular answer choice.

Please help.

Thank you!

[Jeff Wren]

Hi christine,

You wrote: "Answer choice A seems to be a necessary assumption only if it's also assumed that the scientists also know how the experiment was conducted, believe it was conducted properly, and agree that the results are sound."

Actually, the only one of those assumptions that you listed that would be necessary is that most of these scientists agree/accept the results of the Brown-Eisler Experiment.

As Francis explained in her earlier post (Post #9), there is a difference between knowing the results and accepting the results, and the argument requires that the scientists accept the results even though the premise only mentions that the scientists know of the results. If an answer had stated that most of the scientists accept the results, it would have been correct. (Of course, no answer does state this, as that would create two correct answers.)

The other assumptions that you listed ("that the scientists also know how the experiment was conducted, believe it was conducted properly") are not in fact necessary for the argument. The scientists may accept the results even without having detailed knowledge of how the experiment was conducted. (Perhaps scientists should research the details of the experiment before accepting the results, but that doesn't mean they necessarily do.) For example, if the results of the experiment are published in a highly prestigious, very reputable science journal, I imagine that many scientists would accept the results of the experiment without bothering to read the details of the experiment under the assumption that the journal would only publish the results if the experiment was properly conducted. This is why Answer C is not necessary for the argument. If you've studied the history of medicine, for example, you may have come across many examples of scientists/doctors who accepted results that were based on bad experiments.

I'm not a scientist, but I accept results and data from reputable news sources all the time without researching the methodology behind the statistics. Who has the time for that?

You seemed to be bothered by the fact that Answer A would still require another assumption for the argument. Just to be clear, it's the argument that would require Answer A and the assumption that most of the scientists accept the results of the experiment, not Answer A itself requiring this assumption. In other words, those are two separate assumptions that the argument is making. The fact that this argument contains more than one assumption is completely fine and not unusual.

This is not a Justify question, so we are not looking for one answer that when added to the premises, proves the conclusion. Instead, we are looking for just one (of any number) of assumptions that are necessary for the argument.

If you negate Answer A, it invalidates the conclusion that most of the scientists reject the conclusion because the scientists would need to know/be aware that the results and Wang's Law contradict the Minsk hypothesis. Even though we know that factually they do contradict the Minsk hypothesis, if the scientists don't know that, they would have no reason to reject the Minsk hypothesis.

[christine_o]

Hi Jeff,

Thank you, your response is helpful. I understand why C is wrong, and I think you're right that I was treating this like a Justify question.

BUT, this part is this still confusing to me, please:

You seemed to be bothered by the fact that Answer A would still require another assumption for the argument. Just to be clear, it's the argument that would require Answer A and the assumption that most of the scientists accept the results of the experiment, not Answer A itself requiring this assumption. In other words, those are two separate assumptions that the argument is making. The fact that this argument contains more than one assumption is completely fine and not unusual.

Here, don't you need to assume that the scientists accept/agree with the results of the experiment for answer choice A to even be relevant to the argument? We're told not to tag assumptions onto answer choices and instead to take them as they are, and the explanations for many incorrect answer choices include that they require unwarranted assumptions to make sense. How are we to know when it's acceptable to do that, and when it isn't.

Also, I don't think I agree that the scientists need to know the Law+results contradict the Hypothesis for them to reject the Hypothesis. There are many Creationists who unknowingly reject Darwin's Theory of Evolution since their beliefs are at odds with the theory, despite not knowing anything about evolution nor what it contradicts. If the scientists in question accept Wang's Theory and accept the results of an experiment which, coupled with Wang's theory, contradicts a certain Hypothesis, I think it's accurate to say they reject the Hypothesis, whether or not they know about the contradiction. I know we're taking the word "reject" as a conscious action, but that's not always what it means. This is partly why I had ruled out A.

I'd appreciate further input and advice, please.

Thank you again!

[Amber Thomas]

Hi Christine!

Let's break down the stimulus:

Premise 1: Almost all scientists surveyed accept Wang's Law
Premise 2: Almost all scientists surveyed know the results of the Brown-Eisler Experiment
Premise 3: The results of this experiment combined with Wang's law contradict the Minsk Hypothesis
Conclusion: Most surveyed scientists reject the Minsk Hypothesis

To your points:
a) The stimulus doesn't pose the Brown-Eisler Experiment's results as something to accept or reject (i.e. like a principle/law/hypothesis). The results are just stated as-is. Note that when the stimulus refers to Wang's Law or the Minsk Hypothesis, they mention that it can be accepted/rejected; this is not the case for the Brown-Eisler Experiment.

b) There's a difference between a conflict and a rejection. If the scientists didn't know that Wang's Law + the Brown-Eisler Experiment contradict the Minsk Hypothesis, they could very will still wrongly accept the Minsk Hypothesis. That wouldn't constitute a rejection. They could also be neutral towards the Minsk Hypothesis, or not even know about it. It's only when there is conscious knowledge that Wang's Law + the Brown-Eisler Experiment contradict the Minsk Hypothesis can they outright reject it.

I hope this helps!