Teacher: Journalists who conceal the identity of the sources they quote stake their professional reputations on what may be called the logic of anecdotes. ████ ██ ██ ███████ ███ ██████████ ████████ ██ ████ ███████████ ███ ███████████ ████ ███ ███████ █████████████ ██ █████ ████ ████ ████ ███ ████ ████ ██ ████████ ███ ███████████ ████ ██ ███ ██████████ ███ ████ ██ ████████████ ██ ███████████ ██ ████████ ██ █ █████ ████████████████████ ███ ██████████ ██ █ ████ █████████
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Here are the stimulus’ core claims distilled:
Teacher’s Claim: Getting published requires at least one of three things – plausibility, originality, or interest.
Student’s Premise: Invented stories can easily achieve any of those three things.
________
Student’s Conclusion: Stories don’t need to be real [to be published].
We can see the flaw in the student’s reasoning through two lenses. First, the student confuses necessity for sufficiency: just because fulfilling one of those three factors is necessary for a story to get published doesn’t mean fulfilling those factors suffices to get a story published.
Alternatively (and this is the lens our correct answer uses), the student treats the named factors as the only factors: just because we’ve laid out a few necessary factors doesn’t mean there aren’t other necessary factors as well.
Analysis by MichaelWright
The student’s response contains which ███ ██ ███ █████████ █████████ ██████
confusing a marginal ████████████ ████████ ████ ███ ███████ ████ ████ ██ ███████████
ignoring the possibility ████ ███ ███████ ███████ ██ █ ████████████ ███ ███ ███████████ ██ ██ ████████████ █████████ ████ ███ █████████ ████ ████████ ████ ████
confusing the characteristics ██ ████████ ██████████ ████ ███ ███████████████ ██ ███ ██████████ ██ █████ ███ ██████████ ████ ████
judging the merits ██ ███ ███████████ ████████ ██████ ██ ███ ████ ███████ ████ ██ █████ ███ ████████ ███████
falsely concluding that ██ █████ █████████ ███ ████████ ██████ ██ ████████ ████ ████ ██████████ ███ █████████████ ████ ███████ ████ ███████