QUESTION TEXT: Sociologist: The claim that there is a…
QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning
CONCLUSION: There aren’t many crimes in society.
REASONING: Newspapers only print stories about crime because there aren’t many crimes.
ANALYSIS: This is a circular argument. The premise is the same as the conclusion.
___________
- The sociologist only said that there are a large number of crime stories. They didn’t say most. And if they had said most, I’m not sure why that would be wrong, if it were true.
- CORRECT. The sociologist gives us no evidence. They just say “there aren’t many crimes”, twice.
- The sociologist didn’t say anything about bias. And I’m not sure what bias has to do with whether there are many or few crimes. Even if you write a biased story about a crime, presumably the crime did happen.
- This is a different error, a part-to-whole flaw. It’s like saying: every cell in your body is tiny, so you’re tiny.
- This is a different error. It’s like saying: it’s been warm every day in August, so it will be warm for the rest of the year.
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