PrepTest 148, Section 3, Question 15
Among the many temptations of the digital age,(66 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(7 more words not shown)
- AThe scientists who(18 more words not shown)
- BThe journal requires(9 more words not shown)
- CScientific fraud is(16 more words not shown)
- DMany of the(19 more words not shown)
- EScientific fraud is(14 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What kind of manipulation are we talking about? Someone might adjust colors to make an image easier to read, or might alter the image to make the research appear to show something it doesn't. Both involve editing, but they raise different concerns.
What we’re looking for
The journal found dozens of authors whose images violated its guidelines. Now the argument calls scientific fraud widespread. Dozens out of how many? Dozens among fifty authors would look very different from dozens among tens of thousands. The size of the whole group matters to how widespread the problem is. For the required assumption, my first prediction is that the dozens represent a substantial problem among the authors submitting to this journal. The argument treats the count as enough to support that broader characterization.
Working the answers
- A
Awareness of the checking software isn't required for fraud to be a problem. An author could deliberately misrepresent results without knowing how the journal might detect the manipulation. Or the author could know about the software and submit a misleading image anyway. The risk of getting caught doesn't determine whether the submission is fraudulent.
- B
Not every article needs an image for fraudulent images to be a widespread problem among submitting authors. Some could submit text-only articles while many others submit misleading images. B imposes a universal submission requirement that the argument doesn't need.
- C
Digital images needn't be the only possible means of scientific fraud. Someone could, for example, fabricate numerical results. The existence of that other route wouldn't prevent manipulated images from providing evidence of fraud here. C unnecessarily rules out every nonimage route.
- DCorrect
This addresses the earlier question about what the editing means, rather than my prediction about the size of the group. Many authors intended to misrepresent the information in their images. That matters because violating an image guideline needn't by itself be fraud: an author might have been trying to make details easier to see without realizing the adjustment was prohibited. The argument needs many of these cases to involve misrepresentation, not merely forbidden editing. D supplies that connection. It doesn't resolve every concern about how widespread the practice is, but it addresses a separate assumption needed to call these submissions evidence of fraud.
- E
Fraud could be widespread in other fields too. That would be entirely compatible with its being widespread among authors submitting to this cellular-biology journal. The conclusion identifies a problem in this group; it doesn't claim the group has an exclusive claim on that problem.
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