PrepTest 118, Section 4, Question 12
Columnist: If you received an unsigned letter, you(70 more words not shown)
The columnist's argument proceeds(1 more words not shown)
- Apointing out that(27 more words not shown)
- Bdrawing an analogy(29 more words not shown)
- Cinferring that an(26 more words not shown)
- Dcalling into question(22 more words not shown)
- Ecalling into question(20 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
An unsigned letter could be accurate. But I can see why I'd hesitate to trust it: I don't know who is making the claim, and the writer may never have to answer for a lie.
The columnist asks us to carry that hesitation over to anonymous sources in news stories. The shared feature is the lack of public accountability. A source can supply inaccurate or slanted information without being identified. That supports skepticism, not an automatic conclusion that everything the source says is false.
What we’re looking for
There could be a reason to treat the situations differently. Perhaps a journalist checks the source's information before publishing it. That's an objection worth considering, but the question asks how the columnist argues. The method is a comparison: we would doubt an unsigned letter, so we should also be cautious about anonymous news sources for a similar reason.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
The first situation is receiving an unsigned letter, and the attitude is skepticism about its contents. The analogous situation is encountering statements from an anonymous news source. The columnist uses the first situation to support taking a similar skeptical attitude in the second, because both allow the source to avoid answering for inaccurate claims.
- B
The passage does contrast two attitudes: doubt about unsigned letters and respect for anonymous news sources. But B says the columnist justifies the latter attitude, the respect. The columnist argues in the other direction: the anonymous news sources deserve skepticism too. The beginning of B fits; its account of which attitude wins does not.
- C
The columnist isn't moving from one imagined example to every case of a single general category. The argument compares two settings with a relevant shared feature: unsigned letters and anonymous news statements. C misses that comparison and replaces it with a generalization to all situations of a type.
- D
The columnist doesn't show that unsigned letters are usually false. Readers might reasonably doubt a letter while remaining open to its being true. The comparison supports caution about anonymous news claims, without treating the letters as an established collection of false evidence.
- E
The argument identifies an opportunity to make inaccurate statements without accountability. It does not establish that the particular sources have dishonest motives, and it doesn't conclude that their information is probably false. Skepticism means withholding automatic trust, not declaring the opposite of what a source says.
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