Q25 - Science writer: All scientists have

[joseph.m.kirby]

Please let me know if my rationalization is amiss. =)

(1) All scientists have "beliefs" and "values" that might slant their interpretations
(2) Serious scientific papers are reviewed by other scientists before publishing
(3) Other scientists (reviewers) are likely to notice and object to biases they do not share
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(C) ANY slanted interpretations will generally have been removed (from the serios scientific papers)

(A) I don't think (A) contradicts premise (1) unless we assume that "beliefs" and "values" are "biases" (which could be a different gap in the argument that this necessary assumption question doesn't exploit). On another note, (A) says that the reviewers do not always have biases likely to slant their interpretations of the data in those papers. Let's negate (A) and say that reviewers do always have biases likely to slant their interpretations of the data. Does this negated answer destroy the argument? Not necessarily. The reviewers could have biases and yet be able to somehow, keep the biases from making it into publication. How? That's outside the scope of the argument. Perhaps the reviewers have an internal system to pass the documents amongst each other so as to check for biases they don't share with other reviewers. In any case, it is not necessary to assume (A).
(B) is necessary. If scientists share all biases, the reviewers will not notice and object to SOME biases. If this is the case, the conclusion cannot follow because no biases will be removed (all biases are shared).

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Nice work Joseph!

I completely agree that the negation of answer choice (A) shows that it need not be assumed for the argument's reasoning to hold. Why? Because even if all scientists do have biases, as long as they don't share the same bias, the issue will be addressed. The big danger to this argument is that all scientists share the same bias and so the interpretations of data would all suffer from the same bias. No peer review system could be expected to catch the slanted interpretation if all scientists shared the same bias that led to that slanted interpretation. Answer choice (B) defends the argument from the possibility that all scientists share the same bias that would lead to a slanted interpretation of data.

Incorrect Answers
(A) is tempting but does not indicate that the bias for all scientists is the same. Maybe some are biased in one place, some in another. Even if all scientists were biased, so long as they didn't share the same bias, the slanted interpretations that follow from them could be caught.
(C) is out of scope. The issue isn't whether the value of the paper would be impaired but whether slanted interpretations would be present.
(D) is out of scope. The conclusion does not address issues other than whether slanted interpretations would be present in the paper.
(E) addresses the means by which the correction of the slanted interpretations would be caught. But while the argument suggests that peer review is sufficient to catch the slanted interpretations, it does not suggest nor assume that peer review is the only way to catch those biased interpretations.

[cleoz490]

Thanks for the explanation. I think A is also wrong for another reasoning. if we negate this choice, won't it be "the scientists reviewing serious scientific papers for publication do not SOMETIMES have biases likely to slant their interpretations of data"?. It does not destroy or seriously weaken the argument, because it says "sometimes"and scientists in discussion are not necessarily in this category... Is my thinking correct?