#19 - Court analyst: Courts should not allow the use of DNA

[miriamson07]

Hello,

I actually had the same question as Toad from earlier in the thread, but realized that what is probably actually happening is that “how reliable these tests are” do refer to the same thing in the second and third sentences of the stimulus. In that case, it seems to me that we would have to assume that if experts agree tests are highly reliable (regardless of whether they agree on the exact amount of reliability), it would not be unreasonable for the courts to allow evidence based on DNA tests. Since this isn’t explicitly stated, it would fall under the category of an assumption we can make due to common sense. I’d appreciate your thoughts on whether my reasoning here is correct!

[Luke Haqq]

Hi miriamson07!

Regarding the first part of your post, yes it does seem like "how reliable these tests are" in the second sentence is used in the same way as "how reliable a certain test is" in the third sentence. However, I don't fully understand the point about an assumption being necessary. It doesn't seem that one needs to make any assumption in order for (C) to reflect a flaw in the stimulus. A flaw is that the analyst fails to consider the possibility that experts might agree that DNA tests are generally reliable yet disagree on how reliable they are.