Q5 - Journalists agree universally

[ohthatpatrick]

You're exactly right. It does seem confusing to me now to justify why we're supposed to get that meaning, but that IS how I read it.

Consider this sentence:
Many flowers have a sweet smell, while many others do not.

Many other flowers or many other people?

You're almost surely assuming I meant many other FLOWERS, because the syntax of this type of sentence is like using a pronoun: you're referring back to the noun used in the first clause.

Let me put a complete explanation up here:

Question Type: Inference

Task: Read a bunch of information. See if you can synthesize any claims. Pick the most provable answer choice (beware extreme, comparative, out of scope wording).

The information doesn't have any telltale hints at which claims could be synthesized (such as Causal, Conditional, or Quantitative language).

The first sentence talks about what ALL reporters believe. The other two claims are wishy-washy. Some reporters do X, some don't.

(A) This is a strong indictment of reporters' ethics. This is way too strong. In each sentence after the first, we don't know whether a bigger proportion of reporters is on one side or the other.

(B) "NO correct answer" in any given situation is too extreme.

(C) Half of the last sentence would agree with this but the other half wouldn't.

(D) Nothing here said that lying is permissible. The reporters who think that X is permissible do NOT think it's lying. The reporters who think that X is lying do NOT think it's permissible.

(E) Sure! The last sentence says this. Some reporters think X is permissible, others condemn X as lying. From the first sentence, we know that all reporters think that lying is bad. So the reporters who think that X is permissible must NOT think that X is lying.

Hope this helps.


#officialexplanation

[onguyen228]

I have a question about the wording in the stimulus.

When it says "many others" or "others" it is referring to many other reporters and other reporters, right?

The first time I read the stimulus I thought it meant other people that aren't journalists, but that wouldn't give the answer (E). Referring to other reporters is the only way answer (E) makes sense.

Thanks!