Q22 - Scientist: Physicists claim that their system ...

[samantha.rose.shulman]

PT65, S4, Q22 (Strengthen)

(A) is correct.

Although this question may seem like a Sufficient Assumption question, it is a Strengthen question. It is asking us to find an assumption, but we are not looking for one that allows the conclusion to follow logically or one that is necessary. Instead, we are looking for the assumption that most strongly supports the conclusion.

The conclusion appears at the end of the stimulus: it would be conducive to progress in physics if physicists were to do the same thing.

What is the "same thing" that would be conducive to progress? In this case, "same thing" refers to biologists greatly enhancing their discipline’s safeguards against scientific fraud.

So a more complete version of the conclusion would state: it would be conducive to progress if physicists enhanced their discipline’s safeguards against scientific fraud.

Now that we have a better understanding of the conclusion, let’s look for the supporting premise(s). Why is greatly enhancing their discipline’s safeguards against scientific fraud conducive to progress? Because doing so for biologists prevented further major incidents (of scientific fraud). But how does the author know that this will work for physicists? Because biologists claimed the same thing as physicists (that their system of careful peer review prevents scientific fraud effectively) for their field 20 years ago, and they turned out to be wrong.

This gives us the following argument core:

Enhancing Biologist’s Safeguards Against Scientific Fraud Prevented Further Major Incidents --> It Would Be Conducive To Progress If Physicists Were To Do The Same Thing

What are some of the gaps in this argument? There are quite a few. First, how do we know that biologists and physicists will have the same experience? The only support given is because they made the same claim. Here lies a big assumption _ if two disciplines make the same claim and one discipline turns out to be wrong, the other discipline must also be wrong.

Do you notice any rogue elements that are mentioned in the conclusion but not in the premise(s) or vice versa? You should! Progress is only discussed in the conclusion but not in the premises. We should definitely expect the mention of progress in the correct answer choice.

Now that we better understand the stimulus, and its assumptions, we are ready to attack the answer choices. Since this is a Strengthen question we want to shrink (or close) a gap in the argument. Remember that this question type can (and often will) bring in new information. It is important to remember that the correct answer’s relation to the core may be less than obvious at first.

(B) is a premise booster, and therefore incorrect. We already know that biologists have been successful in their process of limiting major incidents of scientific fraud. Why would we care about minor incidents of scientific fraud? Eliminate!

(C) is incorrect. The fact that no system of peer review is completely effective in preventing scientific fraud has no effect on the argument. This answer choice is trying to weaken the background information given (that physicists claim that their system of careful peer review prevents scientific fraud in physics effectively) but this could still be true even if it isn’t completely effective. Either way, this issue isn’t central to our argument core.

(D) is the opposite of what we want. Remember when we asked ourselves, "how do they know that biologists and physicists will have the same experience?" This is pointing out this gap in the argument by giving an example of how the two disciplines are different, and therefore weakens the argument.

(E) is incorrect. This answer choice seems to be attempting to weaken the argument. Perhaps physicists are not wrong and their system of careful peer review does prevent scientific fraud in physics effectively. If so, it wouldn’t be outlandish to claim that they are therefore different from biologists. Also, we can’t be sure that just because there have been relatively few incidents over the years that this won’t change in the future.

(A) is the only answer choice that mentions progress, which should make it attractive to you from the start. Also, if it wasn’t true it would completely destroy the argument. Although this isn’t a necessary assumption question, stating a necessary assumption as fact definitely strengthens the argument.

This is a tough question because the correct answer may have been hard to predict. Who would think that major incidents of scientific fraud in a scientific discipline are not deleterious to the progress of that discipline? Assumptions we make frequently in real life are especially difficult to catch.

[schwingrocker]

Would D also weaken the argument in the sense that it says biology was even worse in preventing scientific fraud through their system of peer review than physics today, so there would be more of a case to have strengthened biology than there is for physics? What if it said that the system of peer review 20 years ago in biology was even better than physics' today? Would that strengthen because it is evident that biology needed to be have more safeguards, so something that has an even weaker peer review system would surely need more safeguards?

[choeunjae]

I can see that (A) seems to be the most relevant to the argument, but I hesitated for a while because the relevant assumption of the argument says:

preventing further major incidents -> would be conducive to progress in physics

However, (A) can be reduced to:

~preventing further major incidents -> ~would be conducive to progress in physics

I thought that this would be a classic case of mistaken negation. Any thoughts?

[shirando21]

this is not an inference question.

[Nina]

i have some problem eliminating answer C. i think this addresses one of the gap in the stimulus that there may be some differences between physics and biology: what if in physics the system of peer review is completely effective in preventing scientific fraud? then the physicists do not have to do the same thing as biologists.

and, why can't we just consider this questions as a sufficient assumption question? the correct answer is filling the gap of the logic chain between preventing major incidents and progress, seems to be less like a correct answer for a strengthen question.

thanks a lot!

[joseph.carroll.555]

I'm also wondering the same thing as the poster above...?

[sumukh09]

C is wrong because we don't need to assume that no system of careful peer review is completely effective in preventing scientific fraud in any scientific discipline to help support the claim that it would be conducive to progress if physics were to enhance their discipline's safeguards.

The conclusion is about making progress in physics and how enhancing safeguards will be conducive to progress. C just says there can never be a system that works perfectly. This is unique question type in that it requires us to strengthen the conclusion only; typical strengthen questions ask us to address the reasoning. I think you can actually consider this a sufficient assumption question, though I may be wrong. Regardless, even if we consider it a sufficient assumption question C is still wrong and A correct.

[T.J.]

I was really into (B) for the following reason:

The stimulus says that biologists thought that their discipline was free of fraud 20 years ago. However, they turned out to be wrong,which means that frauds appear in spite of their claim. Ever since, they enhanced the safeguard, resulting in the prevention of major frauds.

(b) says the biologists have even very few MINOR frauds. So I was like these people really nailed it. Let the physicists do the same thing!

My rebuttal to my own thinking:
(B) isn't really a premise booster like the previous poster said. I think that it actually weakens the argument, for the reason that a causal claim is made that the enhancement of safeguard helped prevent frauds. If they had very few frauds to begin with, then the enhancement didn't really help.

Second: I asked myself the question "Is the prevention of fraud conducive to progress?" The answer is no, because fraud is something that drags you down, but in order to make progress, you'd have to do things like working hard and dedicating yourself to the field.

Feedbacks are very appreciatd

[ohthatpatrick]

There have been a lot of great follow-up questions, so let's try and tidy things up here.

1. This is definitely a Strengthen question, as the conclusion need only be "strongly supported". A Sufficient Assumption question demands that the conclusion "follow logically" / "be properly inferred"

(A) does not guarantee the conclusion. It tells us that fraud is bad for progress. Does that guarantee us that if physicists greatly enhanced their safeguards against fraud that it would be conducive to progress in physics?

No, because we still haven't established that ANY fraud exists in the field of physics.

One previous poster was troubled by the "illegal negation" aspect of (A). Again, you're doing Strengthen, not Sufficient Assumption. Strengthen answers don't have to be perfect; they just have to make stuff better. We were asking ourselves from the original argument core, "Is fraud really related to progress?" (A) establishes that it is. It doesn't give us a conditional statement that would allow us to prove the argument, but it definitely makes us feel better about the leap from talking about fraud within a discipline to talking about progress within a discipline.

2. I see how someone could interpret (C) as ruling out the objection of "What if the physics peer review system, unlike the old one in biology, is perfect?" The problem is that it ONLY affects the objection of "what if the physics system is perfect?" It doesn't address the much more realistic objection of "what if the physics system is better than the old biology one or good enough?"

Cans of Lysol say that they get rid of 99.9% of household germs. Are we not going to buy it because it doesn't say 100%?

(C) is a very weak strengthener because it says that the current physics system is not 100% perfect. Big whoop.

Another reason we might not like (C) is that the argument is telling physics, "Hey, you know what would be great for progress in your discipline? Greatly enhancing your safeguards against fraud."

If a physicist said "Why?"

(C) would sound like a weird answer ... "because no system of safeguarding against fraud truly works perfectly."

Meanwhile consider how (A) would sound answering the same question ... "because major fraud is bad for progress in any discipline." (sounds like a reasonable answer)

3. In terms of (B), I see why it sounds like the improvements in biology have been REALLY effective.

The problem is it doesn't address either of the two key questions we have:
- is the situation with physics today comparable to the situation with biology 20 years ago?
- does fraud have anything to do with progress?

The 2nd to last sentence already convinced me that the enhanced fraud protections in biology were a success. I don't need (B) to make it seem like an even more complete success.

I need an answer to tell me why Physics should give a darn, or why this has anything to do with the topic of 'progress'.

Hope this helps.

[ttunden]

I tackled this question as if it was a sufficient assumption. Still got it right.

new term in conclusion is conducive to progress. So we have to assume that fraud is bad for progress in the sciences, in order to derive this conclusion.

I guess you can tackle this as a strengthen question and still get it right since ultimately whether its sufficient assumption or strengthen to gotta help the conclusion, as indicated in the question stem.

I'd be wary trying to do this as a strengthen question because then B and C can be attractive, whereas with sufficient assumption B/C won't help get us to our conclusion. Fortunately, the question stem has support conclusion so we can eliminate B/C that way.

[ganbayou]

Do they use "progress" in different meanings in the stimulus and (A)?
So in the stimulus, it says it would be conducive to progress in physics...I interpreted this as it will be helpful to conduct in physics.
In (A) if it only says "Major incidents of scientific fraud in a scientific discipline are deleterious" I can understand why A is the answer but it continues to say "to progress in that discipline"...and I got confused.
So here progress means something like "advanced" or "prevalent"?
And also discipline...in the stimulus I thought it means "rule," but in A it seems it means "the field"?

And...is it because that we dont know fraud in the scientific field is bad as well, to conclude that statement in the sti, we have to assume it IS bad in the scientific field?

Thank you

[tommywallach]

Hey Ganbayou,

Yes, these are all legitimate secondary definitions of the words. "Discipline" does mean "field." Progress doesn't mean what you described, actually. It means "development" (as in, moving something forward). So yes, I'd always encourage you to have a dictionary handy so you can look these words up as you're answering questions.

-t

[dhlim3]

A simple application you use in strengthen questions for causation argument can be helpful here: the absence of cause -> the absence of effect.

The stimulus suggests an action that resulted in the prevention of further major fraud incidents would be conducive to progress in physics.

This can be stated like this as conditional: ~Fraud -> Progress

To strengthen this, one way is to show that the absence of cause leads to the absence of effect, or like this:

~(~Fraud) -> ~Progress

or, simply,

Fraud -> ~Progress.

This is exactly what A states.

[Mab6q]

For those of you who were struggling with C, maybe thinking about it this way might help. C might actually weaken the argument because it suggests that no matter what you do, there will always be problems. In effect, it is going against the suggestion because there will still be problems that arise as a result.

[ganbayou]

why is this a strengthen question instead of assumption question?? closing gap sounds just like aasumption question

[bashanchushui]

Just tip two points:

1) You see a NEW information in the conclusion -- "progress in physics", but all the premises are about how to prevent or slow down scientific fraud. That is a GAP, A just fill it. It does not matter what kind of question you think about it, assumption or strengthen both OK.

2) both the B and C are somehow incomplete. we does not know whether the peer review in physics is better or worse than the safeguard in biology, so they can't help to support the conclusion (give up the peer review and choose the safeguard).

[seychelles1718]

Does this argument assume causality between major incidents and progress?
cause: no major incident
effect: progress

[ohthatpatrick]

Yup. It assumes relevance at a minimum.

The whole time it's only discussing whether or not fraud is effectively prevented in physics / biology.

Biology has gotten better at preventing fraud. Their efforts HAVE prevented further major incidents.

But then the conclusion brings up "progress" in physics.

Well what does "progress" have to do with "fraud"? We were just talking about whether physics and biology were good at preventing fraud from occurring.

(A fraudulent finding may have seemed like progress until it was discovered to be fraud, but that still doesn't represent an impediment to progress. Discovering that a study was fraudulent just brings us back to the previous reference point we had.)

How does fraud prevent or impede LEGITIMATE studies going on elsewhere from making legitimate progress?

[MeaganM761]

It took me a while to figure out what I did wrong with this question. I chose C. During review, I realized why A is correct, but I couldn't understand why C was incorrect. I finally realized that I was misinterpreting what the argument was actually saying.

This is what I thought the argument was saying: Physisicists claim that their system of careful peer review prevents scientific fraud in physics effectively. But biologists claimed the same thing for their field 20 years ago, and they turned out to be wrong. Since then, biologists changed their discipline's safeguards against scientific fraud by getting rid of the peer review system, thus preventing further major incidents. It would be conducive to progress in physics if physicists were to also get rid of the peer review system.

This is what it's actually saying: Physisicists claim that their system of careful peer review prevents scientific fraud in physics effectively. But biologists claimed the same thing for their field 20 years ago, and they turned out to be wrong. Since then, biologists enhanced their discipline's system of careful peer review against scientific fraud, thus preventing further major incidents. It would be conducive to progress in physics if physicists were to also enhance their system of careful peer review safeguards.

My interpretation was incorrect because of the quote "enhanced their discipline's safeguards". We only know of one safeguard, peer review and because of the word enhance, this means they didn't necessarily get rid of peer review. Safeguards is basically just a synonym for "system of careful peer review." For all we know, they kept peer review but just made it better somehow. To infer that the biologists got rid of peer review is not supported.

What made C so tempting for me was because of my misinterpretation. With my interpretation, I was looking for an answer that supported getting rid of the peer review system because of the conclusion "It would be conducive to prpgress in physics if physicists were to do the same thing. C does exactly that. If no system of peer review works, then of course physicists should get rid of peer review. But since the argument is actually saying physisicists should enhance their system of peer review, then C would actually weaken the scientist's argument.

[sclw64]

For me, C is wrong because it only tells us the problem is possible to be improved (fraud can be further eliminated for physicists), but not tells us whether imitation can improve (if physicists do the same thing, whether fraud can be further eliminated ). Therefore, answer choice C deals with the conclusion, but not impact the conclusion.