A question regarding flaw questions

Hemingway

This may be something obvious to a lot of people, and may be something subconsciously obvious to me, but nevertheless it’s something that today I noticed and paused to think about.

On a specific flaw question that asks you to identify an error in the reasoning (not sure if I’m allowed to discuss specific questions as a free user), I noticed that there were two sets of reasons that the author gave to support their argument. The first seemed legitimate, the second a clear error. In situations like this, do you accept the first reason as legitimate but then take issue with the second reason? I think I know that the answer is yes, but I’m still curious to hear what people have to say/think, and if people separate sets of reasonings like how I just did above. For curiosity’s sake.

Thanks.

Leah M B

Can you let us know which question it is? I'm not really following the set up here. Copyright rules mean that you can't type out the actual text, but point us to the PT/section/question # and we'll try to help!

Hemingway

PT34, S2, Q1

Leah M B

Ok, that helps! You're on the right track here. Since the task at hand is identifying the flaw, basically you can ignore the part that's not flawed.

Also, in this question, I sort of think there's a slight tricky sub-flaw here. I think it might be considered a flaw that R claims that others' investigations are biased due to funding sources. That would lead you to consider answer choice B.

However, that is a flaw of R, not the person reviewing R's book. The task at hand here is to point out a flaw that the author of the book review commits. The author only says the bias claim is "troubling", which is pretty non-specific and a fair assessment. However, the review author is totally discounting R because of his crappy personality. That's a blatant ad hominem attack. One can be a jerk, and also correct and worthy of merit. So the author of the review is flawed in discounting the book because of R being a jerk, therefore answer A is correct.

Hemingway

Ok, good. That was more or less what I was thinking. I appreciate the detailed explanation!