PT11.S4.Q18 - teacher: journalists who conceal the identity

TimLSAT180

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Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the teacher's argument?

(A) A journalist undermines his or her own professional standing by submitting for publication statements that, not being attributed to a named source, are rejected for being implausible, unoriginal, or dull.

Can someone explain why A is the correct answer choice? I feel like I'm not getting the conditional logic of this question.

I diagrammed as AP (accepted for publication) --> HP (highly plausible) or HO (highly original) or HI (high interest among audience). I think the contrapositive should be ~HP and ~HO and ~HI --> ~AP. But I think A is doing ~HP or ~HO or ~HI --> ~AP. Am I missing something?

Sarah889

It is helpful to start by parsing the structure of this argument. The conclusion is the first sentence, which makes it more difficult to understand the argument's purpose if you lose sight of that.

P1: The statements reported by journalists who conceal the identity of the sources they quote are dissociated from the precise circumstances in which the statements were made.
P2: The statements will be accepted for publication only if the statements are high in plausibility or originality or interest to a given audience.
C: Therefore, journalists who conceal the identity of the sources they quote stake their professional reputations on what may be called the logic of anecdotes.

So the question stem asks us to identify the AC that MOST strengthens the teacher's argument. Well, the conclusion assumes that that these journalists' professional reputations are contingent on whether or not they either disclose their sources or their sources are accepted for publication. Why?

(A) gives us that "why."

I think your logic for P2 is correct, but I think your focusing on only P2 rather then the structure of the argument as a whole.

(JCI= Journalists who conceal the identity of their sources)
(DPC = Disassociated from the precise circumstance)
(SPR = Stake professional reputation)

P1: JCI --> DPC
P2: AP --> HP or HO or HI
C: JCI --> SPR

(A) /HP and /HO and /HI AND JCI --> SPR

(A) says that the necessary condition in P2 fails, so we can infer /AP (not accepted for publication). We also know that the sufficient condition in P1 is met, so we can infer DPC (the journalists are disassociated from the precise circumstance). But we do not know that their professional reputation is at stake based solely on what we are given...unless we have (A).

(A) says that if the necessary condition in P2 fails and the sufficient condition in P1 is met, then the journalist undermines his/her professional reputation. (A) draws the necessary connection between the information that we are given in P1 and P2 with the conclusion that is cleverly disguised as the first sentence. Hope this helps.

TimLSAT180

Thanks for the detailed explanation! This one was definitely one of the trickier questions (for me at least) because it had a subsidiary conclusion so I was confused as to which one was the main conclusion and which one was the subsidiary conclusion. That's why I had trouble with finding the assumption as well. Now I see that (A) does the job of filling in that gap between the subsidiary and main conclusion. Thank you!