PT36.S2.Q16--Help-- what is the meaning of "misconception"?

Darklord

Hi,

So I got this question wrong because I chose D, and I thought that D was right because, from lines 1-7, I thought that it was heavily implying (if not outright asserting) that researchers previously emphasized that gonadal hormones' effect on behavior because they believed that it was the only thing that affected behavior. I thought this because of line 7 ("it has now become clear, however, that other hormones...") which implies that it wasn't clear before that other hormones could affect behavior.

Thus, I chose D because I thought that the new research was essentially correcting the old incorrect belief that only gonadal hormones affected behavior. However, JY seems to ignore this possibility and states that this "undue emphasis" does not count as a misconception. Nevertheless, when I look at dictionary examples of how to use the word "misconception", the examples seem to align with my understanding (https://www.yourdictionary.com/misconception) of misconception = "we incorrectly thought that X happened only because of Y."

Along these lines, I thought that "refuting" this misconception was a perfectly valid description of the passage because the new research showing that other hormones affect behavior is technically "proving wrong" the notion that only gonadal hormones affect behavior.

Gosh, can anybody show me where I went wrong here?

jmarmaduke96

Hi there!

I think that questions like this can be very tricky because the answers can be so subtle. To begin with D, I think the primary issue here is that we do not know that there was a misconception. You are correct that incorrectly saying "X happened because of Y" would be a misconception, but there is not tremendous evidence that is what is happening here. Let's look at the evidence:

Starting at line 1, the passage states that "Discussions of how hormones influence behavior have generally been limited to the effects of gonadal hormones hormones on reproductive behavior and have emphasized the parsimonious relationship arrangement whereby..." I think the key words here are the italicized portions, "have generally been limited" and "have emphasized." I think there are two important takeaways here. First, for D to be the correct answer, the old view would have had to be that gonadal hormones were the only ones that influenced reproductive behavior. Otherwise, im not sure what the misconception would be. But the passages tells us that discussions were generally limited. The fact that it says "generally" means that there was at least some discussion of other ideas, meaning that the scientists did not only know about the gonadal hormones. I think that the same can be said for the word "emphasized." If one part of a conversation is emphasized, there has to be another part that is de-emphasized.

If that does not make sense, think of this example. "For much of the 20th and early 21st century, media depictions of the Second World War have generally been limited to the Western front and have emphasized the effort to eradicate the Third Reich. It has now become clear, however, that the Pacific theater of war is a valuable piece of history and its subject matter is worthy of media attention. For example, ...."

In this example I think it is more clear. I am discussing the relationship between the media and WWII to show how the earlier focus only shined a spotlight in one area. I think that when confronting an example like this, where we have subject matter familiarity, we would be hard pressed to say that there is a misconception being corrected. What would the misconception be? That no one thought the Pacific theater was interesting or valuable history? I don't think that is supported. Im just trying to show you that one thing has really gotten a lot of emphasis at the expense of something else. Im not trying to convince you that people believed some fact that was actually false, which is what a misconception would be. I hope that analogy makes sense, let me know if I can clarify!

Darklord

Jeez, thank you for the comprehensive explanation @jmarmaduke96 , but I am still having trouble with this question. After all, doesn't the phrase, "it has now become clear, however..." (lines 6-7), show that it wasn't clear to these scientists in the past that other hormones can affect behavior, and thus, we can deduce that these scientists thought that only gonadal hormones can affect behavior?

jmarmaduke96

Hi!

I think that what helps me to understand the meaning of that sentence in context is the notion of logical opposite vs polar opposite. The logical opposite of "X" is just "not-X". For example, while the polar opposite of "hot" is "cold," the logical opposite of "hot" is "not hot."

While it is true that the word "however" typically connotes a changeover, or a way of saying "not" to the view before it, all we can infer is that the "not" takes us to the logical opposite, not the polar opposite. What is important with this passage is to understand what "not the view before" means here.

At lines 6-7 it says that "it has now become clear, however, that other hormones... can affect behavior." How do we say "not" to this statement? Well, we just know that prior to this passage being written it was not clear that other hormones can affect behavior. I want to emphasize the tremendous difference between not knowing whether there are other factors at play vs positively believing that one factor is the only factor at all.

For example, to use a timely example: the fundamental forces. The vast majority of scientific literature focuses on the four known fundamental forces. Sometimes it is suggested that a fifth might exist, but there is no proof of that nor is that where the majority of the scientific conversation is directed.

To put this example to use, lets fast forward 100 years into the future and pretend that someone is writing an article after winning their Nobel prize for discovering the fifth fundamental force. This individuals finishes their introductory paragraph with the words "Contrary to what was previously though, it is now clear, however, that there is in fact a fifth fundamental force."

Does that mean that in the modern day that you and I are living in (the past to our hypothetical scientist) that we conclusively believed that there were only four fundamental forces? Not at all. I am right now acknowledging that there might be a fifth. That being said, it is not remotely clear that there is a fifth one and the bulk of research is not devoted to finding out the answer to that question. That is all our hypothetical scientist is saying. It was not clear before, now it is. While it is possible for this to mean that people absolutely believed that there were only four fundamental forces, you have to make an arbitrary assumption to support that reading of the sentenece.

Returning to the passage with that in mind, we can say for certain that it was not clear prior to the writing of the article that other hormones could have the same affects that gonadal hormones do. However, that does not allow us to say that the scientists at the time believed that only gonadal hormones could have the affects that they do. Without establishing this, we cannot determine that there was any misconception at all. After all, simply not knowing the full state of affairs is not necessarily a misconception. I do not know if there is a fifth fundamental force. Therefore, whatever the truth of the matter (whether there are only 4, or 5, or as many as 100 fundamental forces) I do not have a misconception that can be corrected.

I hope that makes it more clear, let me know if I can explain something better or in more detail. This is a challenging concept that is difficult to grasp. It is bits of text like this that make RC so hard!

Darklord

Wow-- now this makes sense to me! Thank you very much @jmarmaduke96! You definitely know your stuff!