#20 - History student: It is unfair for the History

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[Rosaline]

I went with answer choice A on this one. Is "A" wrong because it the student doesn't dispute that there should be some peer reviewed articles? His concern seems to be something should be allowed to be cited even if it isn't peer reviewed. Is that the issue with the answer choice?

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Rosaline,

You are spot on. The key term in answer choice (A) is "some". The student wants to include online sources that are not peer reviewed as citations, but not necessarily only those sources. Therefore, we don't have enough information to know if the student would agree that papers need at least one peer reviewed source. We only know that the student objects to the requirement that ALL sources be peer reviewed.

Hope that helps!

[AnimalCrossingLSATer]

Hi PowerScore -

I also admittedly chose A (both in my timed test and my subsequent untimed do-over) before seeing answer choice B to be correct, let alone lost sight that some = 1+, which should have been a red flag for me in this answer choice. I also notice that A talks about citations that HAVE BEEN peer-reviewed, so I’m guessing that A, in a way, is out of scope because the stimulus is on citations that are NOT peer-reviewed?

More importantly, I’m grappling with why B is the correct answer, and wanted to put my own thoughts and analysis as to why B is the correct answer here, and run this by you to see if this is correct.

B - prohibiting a certain sort of online source material from being cited as a reference —> prohibiting students from reading that source material.

→ = “amounts to”

Obviously, both the student and professor acknowledges the existence of the prohibition of students using those certain online encyclopedias, but what I notice from the stimulus is:

Student: “Students SHOULD be able to read whatever they wish; otherwise, it’s censorship”

Professor: “Students ARE allowed to read whatever they’d like.”

(Caps added for emphasis.)

The student and professor differ in the above statements in that, in the concepts of “students” and “being to read whatever they’d like”, the student uses a opinion-based connector (“should”), while the professor uses a factual-based connector (“are”), which, to me in the professor’s statements, establishes certainty that the student does not, in regard to whether students are allowed to read whatever they'd like in their papers.

So, how I’m interpreting the above, is, when answer choice B is applied:

Student: Prohibition of the use of an online source material → MAY prohibit students from reading it.

Professor: Prohibition of the use of an online source material → DOES NOT prohibit students from reading it.

My questions: Along with whether A can be ruled out also because it's out of scope, is my above reasoning for why B is correct, correct? Please let me know.

Thanks very much!

-Dustine B. (“AnimalCrossingLSATer”)

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Dustine,

I agree with you that answer choice A is out of scope, specifically of the student's argument. The student is only concerned with the censorship implications of prohibiting citations to non-peer reviewed sources. We don't know (because the student isn't concerned with arguing it) whether or not the student would agree that papers should have at least some citations to peer-reviewed sources. Since we can't know the student's position on that, we can't infer the student's agreement or disagreement with answer choice A.

With answer choice B, let's go back to the student's argument. The student starts by talking about what students cannot cite in their papers (that's what the first sentence is all about). But the student concludes by talking about what students are allowed to read, in a more general sense. That shift in the student's argument is problematic (logically speaking). And it shows me that the student thinks that rules about cites are the same as rules about what students are allowed to read. So the student agrees with answer choice B: there is a logical connection between rules about what can be cited and rules about what a student can read.

The professor doesn't agree with that logical connection. The professor says the rule about citations doesn't affect what students can read. This is clear from the first sentence, where the professor affirms that students are "allowed to read whatever they like."

So, at issue between the professor and student is whether there is a logical connection between rules about citations and rules about what is allowed to be read. The student thinks there is. The professor thinks there is not.

Let me know if that helps!