#25- Science writer: All scientists have beliefs and values

[jiyounglee]

Why is A incorrect? What makes B the better answer?

My analysis of stimulus is...

Premise: All scientists have beliefs and values (beliefs and values = bias?)
Premise: serious scientific papers are reviewed
Premise: Reviewers are likely to notice and object to biases that they do not share
Conclusion: any slanted interpretations of scientific data will generally have been removed before publication

Applying assumption negation technique,

A could potentially weaken the conclusion because if the scientists reviewing papers for publication do always have biases likely to slant their interpretations of the data in those papers, they would not notice and object biases (because they do share that biases). Therefore, conclusion would be weakened because any slanted interpretations of scientific data will not generally removed before publication

[David Boyle]

Why is A incorrect? What makes B the better answer?

My analysis of stimulus is...

Premise: All scientists have beliefs and values (beliefs and values = bias?)
Premise: serious scientific papers are reviewed
Premise: Reviewers are likely to notice and object to biases that they do not share
Conclusion: any slanted interpretations of scientific data will generally have been removed before publication

Applying assumption negation technique,

A could potentially weaken the conclusion because if the scientists reviewing papers for publication do always have biases likely to slant their interpretations of the data in those papers, they would not notice and object biases (because they do share that biases). Therefore, conclusion would be weakened because any slanted interpretations of scientific data will not generally removed before publication

Hello jiyounglee,

But they could have different biases, and be able to catch other people's biases. (Doesn't the stimulus say all scientists have biases?) So B is a better answer, because it asks the question, "What if everyone has the same biases?"

Hope this helps,
David

[queenbee]

Hi

I struggled with this one too. The stimulus stated that the serious scientific papers are reviewed by many scientists and, in doing so, bias would be removed. In addition, those bias's that are identified are not shared by the scientists reviewing. (A) specifically references the scientists who review the papers, and (B) references all scientists in general. Isn't that too broad?

Thank you!

[Luke Haqq]

Hi queenbee!

Since this is an assumption question, it might be helpful to start with the correct answer and apply the Assumption Negation technique.

Answer choice (B) states, "In general, biases that slant interpretations of data in serious scientific papers being reviewed for publication are not shared among all scientists." A possible phrasing for negating this is, "In general, biases that slant interpretations of data in serious scientific papers being reviewed for publication [might be] shared among all scientists." In other words, the original phrasing is saying that something is not the case, and the negation is saying that it's not necessarily true that it's not the case.

If it were true that some biases might be shared among all scientists, then the argument would fall apart. This is because peer review is taken to assure that biases are removed--for if the reviewers shared the same biases, then peer review would not necessarily remove those biases.

The stimulus only states that "reviewers are likely to notice and object to biases that they do not share." This leaves untouched any biases that they do share. By concluding that all of the biases are removed through peer review, the science writer must assume that biases that the reviewers share with the authors of scientific papers have also been removed, which isn't a mentioned premise. In other words, it assumes that there are no shared biases to which reviewers might be blind.

Answer choice (A) states, "The scientists reviewing serious scientific papers for publication do not always have biases likely to slant their interpretations of the data in those papers." To see why this is incorrect, we can again apply the Assumption Negation technique: "The scientists reviewing serious scientific papers for publication do [ ] always have biases likely to slant their interpretations of the data in those papers." Even if the reviewers had their own biases, we're still told that "These reviewers are likely to notice and object to biases that they do not share." That reviewers have their own biases on its own wouldn't make the argument fall apart. But if they had their own biases which were shared with writers of scientific papers, this would make the argument fall apart.

[maedayoku]

Why is the negated version of answer choice A being "Scientists do always have biases"? since I negated A to be "Scientists sometimes have biases likely to slant their interpretation." I think i might be confusing the negation methods between verbs and quantity terms. Could someone help me clarify on this?

[Jeff Wren]

Hi maedayoku,

In order to properly negate statements (which is critical for using the Assumption Negation Technique), you'll definitely want to study the concept of Logical Opposition.

Simply put, the logical opposite of the words "not always" is the word "always." You can think of the word "always" as meaning that something happens 100% of the time. The words "not always" mean everything except 100% of the time. In other words, "not always" means something happens 0-99% of the time (ignoring decimals and fractions).

Please also note that the word "sometimes" does not have the same meaning as the words "not always."

Logical Opposition is discussed in more detail in lesson 2 of The PowerScore LSAT Course and in chapter 11 of "The Logical Reasoning Bible."