Logic Breakdown

Passage Summary: A biology journal checked submitted photos with software and found many had been edited against the rules, leading the journal to conclude that fraud is a big problem.

Conclusion: Scientific fraud is a common occurrence among authors submitting to this specific cellular biology journal.

Reasoning: A software tool revealed that dozens of submitted images had been manipulated in ways that violated the journal's specific guidelines.

Analysis: The argument makes a massive leap from 'violating guidelines' to 'scientific fraud.' Not every violation of a formatting or editing rule constitutes intentional deception or fraud; some might just be poor technical skills or misunderstandings of the rules. To make this argument work, we must assume that at least some of these manipulations were actually fraudulent in nature rather than innocent mistakes. Look for an answer that bridges the gap between breaking a technical rule and committing an act of dishonesty.

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15.

Which one of the following is an assumption required by the argument?

Correct Answer
D
D is correct. It supplies the needed link that many of the violating manipulations were intended to misrepresent the information in the images. Negation test: If few or none of those authors manipulated images to misrepresent, the evidence would not show widespread fraud, undermining the conclusion.
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