Self-study
Critic: The Gazette-Standard newspaper recently increased its editorial staff to avoid factual errors. But this clearly is not working. Compared to its biggest competitor, the Gazette-Standard currently runs significantly more corrections acknowledging factual errors.
25.
Which one of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the critic's argument?
a
The Gazette-Standard pays its editorial staff lower salaries than its biggest competitor pays its editorial staff.
This doesn't weaken the argument. How much the editorial staff are getting paid is irrelevant. We just want to know if the editorial staff are actually succeeding in catching errors.
b
The Gazette-Standard has been in business considerably longer than has its biggest competitor.
This is irrelevant. How long these newspapers have been in business doesn't tell us anything about how many errors they each publish, and how the number of errors is connected, if at all, to the Gazette-Standard's increase in editorial staff.
c
The Gazette-Standard more actively follows up reader complaints about errors in the paper than does its biggest competitor.
This weakens the critic's argument. This answer choice provides an alternative explanation for why the Gazette-Standard runs more corrections than its biggest competitor: not because the Gazette-Standard prints more errors, as the critic assumes, but because it responds more to reader complaints about errors than its competitor does. The competitor might print as many or more errors and just not receive as many reader complaints, or not respond to the complaints it does receive. Thus, by destroying the critic's assumption that because the Gazette-Standard prints more corrections, it actually prints more errors than its competitor, and by suggesting an alternative explanation, this answer choice weakens the critic's argument.
Alternate explanation
Alternate explanation
Weaken: Introduce or support an alternate explanation for a phenomenon.
Strengthen: Helps to eliminate an alternate explanation for a phenomenon.
d
The Gazette-Standard's articles are each checked by more editors than are the articles of its biggest competitor.
This is irrelevant. It just gives us more details about how the Gazette-Standard runs its editorial process compared to its competitor. But we already know that the Gazette-Standard has hired new staff: even if it's true that it's hired enough new staff to have twice as many editors working on each article as its biggest competitor, we still have to explain why it's running more corrections than its competitor does. This answer choice doesn't suggest an alternative explanation for why this is happening, and so it doesn't weaken the critic's hypothesized explanation that the editorial staff aren't successfully doing their job.
e
The increase in the Gazette-Standard's editorial staff has been offset by a decrease in the reporting staff at the newspaper.
This is irrelevant. For this to weaken the critic's argument and suggest an alternative explanation, we would have to assume that having fewer reporters would somehow lead to more factual errors, which doesn't have to be true. Perhaps the newspaper would just print less material until it hired more reporters, allowing each reporter to focus on the same number of stories as before. Since we don't know what the effect of fewer reporters would be, this answer choice doesn't provide an alternative explanation for why the Gazette-Standard prints more corrections than its biggest competitor, and doesn't weaken the critic's argument.