LR Drill Set 8, Question 6

What we’re looking for

Working the answers

• A

  This says warranting investigation is enough for all scientists to consider a phenomenon legitimate. But we don't know that a reported telekinetic case warrants investigation. That's exactly the gap. A provides no connection from the missing replication to the investigation requirement, so it can't get our reasoning started. “All scientists” is stronger than what the conclusion discusses, but the missing connection is the decisive problem.

• B

  This talks about a phenomenon being capable of replication. The passage says the cases have not been replicated; it doesn't prove replication is impossible. More fundamentally, B tells us something favorable about phenomena with that capability, not what scientists must think about these unreplicated cases. It doesn't make actual controlled replication a requirement for the acceptance we're trying to rule out.

• C
  Correct

  Anything that warrants investigation must have been replicated under controlled conditions. None of the reported cases meets that requirement, so none warrants investigation. And the original rule says only phenomena that warrant investigation are considered legitimate by most scientists. These cases therefore cannot be considered legitimate by most scientists. C connects the missing steps all the way to the conclusion; it doesn't require us to show that telekinesis is impossible.

• D

  Like A, this tells us that warranting investigation leads to acceptance by most scientists. The original rule already tells us that acceptance requires warranting investigation. Adding the other direction between those two ideas still leaves replication disconnected. We still need to explain why the absence of replication excludes these cases from the group that warrants investigation.

• E

  If a phenomenon has been replicated, this gives a likely result: most scientists consider it legitimate. Our cases haven't been replicated, so that rule doesn't settle their status. Other unreplicated phenomena might still be accepted. To exclude our cases, we need replication to be required for the path to acceptance, not merely something that would probably help produce acceptance.