PrepTest 101, Section 2, Question 8
Sociologist: The claim that there is a large(41 more words not shown)
The sociologist's argument is flawed(2 more words not shown)
- Apresupposes that most(6 more words not shown)
- Bpresupposes the truth(8 more words not shown)
- Cassumes without warrant(9 more words not shown)
- Dmistakes a property(20 more words not shown)
- Euncritically draws an(17 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
I'd want to see the crime figures before accepting that claim. A newspaper full of crime stories doesn't by itself tell us how many crimes occur, but neither does suspicion about the coverage show that violent crime is rare.
I can see a possible concern about the newspaper evidence. Imagine repeatedly seeing stories about a natural disaster. The coverage could make that danger feel much more common in your own life than it actually is. Newspapers select events to report; they don't give us a random sample of everything that happens. So a lot of coverage could make an unusual event seem commonplace.
But then the sociologist says, “since violent crimes are very rare occurrences.” Wait—that is the very point we were supposed to be establishing.
The conclusion says there isn't a large number of violent crimes. The explanation for all those newspaper stories relies on violent crimes being rare. Instead of supplying independent evidence for rarity, the author has built rarity into the proposed explanation. If I don't already agree that violent crime is rare, I haven't been given a reason to accept that part of the explanation.
What we’re looking for
For the flaw question, that's the issue to find: the argument assumes the point it is trying to prove. We can identify the two matching claims right in the passage. We don't have to decide the actual crime rate, or treat every questionable argument as circular.
Working the answers
- A
A large number of stories isn't necessarily most of the newspaper. A paper could run many crime stories and still run more stories about politics, business, sports, and other subjects combined. The sociologist never needs more than half of the stories to concern violent crime. A adds a quantity the argument doesn't assume.
- BCorrect
“Presupposes” means assumes. The conclusion rejects the claim that violent crime is common, while a reason offered for that conclusion already describes violent crimes as very rare. Those are the two places where we can see the circle.
The newspaper explanation may sound like additional support, but its key starting point is the disputed claim itself. The sociologist can't establish rarity merely by using rarity to explain why the newspapers cover these events.
- C
The sociologist doesn't need the newspaper stories to be free of bias. In fact, the proposed explanation suggests that newspapers select unusual events, so their coverage might give readers a misleading impression of frequency. Whether an individual story is biased is a separate issue. The argument fails because it assumes rarity, not because it assumes perfectly neutral reporting.
- D
A mistake of this kind might start with each person's low chance of being a crime victim and conclude that the whole society has no substantial crime problem. Many individually small risks could still add up to many victims. But the sociologist doesn't make that argument. We aren't given a property of each person and then a conclusion transferring it to the whole group.
- E
There is no prediction about what will happen in the future. The sociologist is making a claim about crime in society now and explaining current newspaper coverage. We don't have an earlier crime pattern being treated as a guarantee of a later one.
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