Letter to the editor: When your newspaper reported the (admittedly

Question

Letter to the editor: When your newspaper reported the (admittedly extraordinary) claim by Mr. Hanlon that he saw an alien spaceship, the tone of your article was very skeptical despite the fact that Hanlon has over the years proved to be a trusted member of the community. If Hanlon claimed to have observed a rare natural phenomenon like a large meteor, your article would not have been skeptical. So your newspaper exhibits an unjustified bias.

The argument in the letter conflicts with which one of the following principles?

(A) If a claim is extraordinary, it should not be presented uncritically unless it is backed by evidence of an extraordinarily high standard. 
(B) One should be skeptical of claims that are based upon testimonial evidence that is acquired only through an intermediary source.
(C) If a media outlet has trusted a source in the past and the source has a good reputation, the outlet should continue to trust that source.
(D) People who think they observe supernatural phenomena should not publicize that fact unless they can present corroborating evidence. 
(E) A newspaper should not publish a report unless it is confirmed by an independent source.

unraveled · Answer

Frankly, what this is testing i could not figure out.
A 'conflict' does suggest that an opposite argument needs to be looked for, but how to show/choose that. Here's my post-attempt analysis. Let me know if my thought process makes sense.

Last line the conclusion, if I am right. That, since Mr. Hanlon is a trusted member of the community, skepticism(about Mr. Hanlon seeing alien spaceship) in the newspaper's tone is unforeseeable, when writer of the letter seems to be certain about the tone(not skeptical) had Mr. Hanlon claimed about seeing meteor. So, there seems to be some bias in that reporting in the newspaper's article. The meteor sight is used as a reasoning to justify the conclusion.

Though I have understood the passage, I can't figure out the question w.r.t. the answer choices. D and E seems to be too direct in tone wherein the passage built-up is not so, however, I might be dead wrong for eliminating them with that reasoning. In C, the one i marked as my answer, eventually it seems to say that newspaper must have believed in the spaceship claim as well as it(might have) did in meteor case.
B is making a further conclusion that is addressed to someone, as in people should be skeptical of that newspaper.

I had originally spent more than 2 minutes on A(double negative makes things worst) but as i hadn't understood passage properly i moved on. Now, i think the green text is what that makes this choice conflict with passage. Mr. Hanlon was already a trusted member(with high standard) of the community but newspaper presented his claim with some(unjustified) bias which the author of the letter felt was biased unjustifiably. However, A suggests that it presented critically as if it wasn't backed by extraordinarily high standard(Mr. Hanlon).

Any inputs...

crazyBuny · Answer

unraveled  100% agree with your post.

thakurarun85 · Answer

jn0r 
can you please post an explanation as well.

jn0r · Answer

Here is the explanation from Power Score:

The letter writer claims that the newspaper has shown "unjustified bias" in the skeptical way it reported Mr. Hanlon's extraordinary claim that he saw an alien spaceship. The evidence is that Mr. Hanlon is a trusted member of the community and that, if his claim was of a more ordinary sort, the report would not have been so skeptical. We are asked to find a principle that conflicts with this argument, weakening it. This means the correct answer will be a rule that suggests that the newspaper's skeptical tone in their reporting may NOT have been unjustified. A good prephrase here might be "if a claim is extraordinary, skepticism in the reporting of the claim is justified."

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice.  This is a pretty close match to our prephrase, although some might not at first see that "uncritical" means "without skepticism." Note that in the stimulus the only evidence is that Mr. Hanlon said he saw a spaceship, and one eyewitness claiming to have seen something extraordinary is surely not "evidence of an extraordinarily high standard." This answer is, in essence, saying that the reporting in this case should have been critical or skeptical, and that undermines the claim that the skepticism was evidence of an unjustified bias.

Answer choice (B): The stimulus gives no reason to believe that any intermediary was involved in passing the information from Mr. Hanlon to the newspaper. Thus, the rule in this answer does not appear to have been violated, because the rule simply doesn't apply.

Answer choice (C): A bit of a shell game here, we have no way of knowing whether Mr. Hanlon has ever been a trusted source for the newspaper, but only that he is a trusted member of the community. But even if he had been a trusted source before, this answer would actually strengthen the claim that the newspaper was unjustified in the way they reported the story.

Answer choice (D): The rule in answer D has nothing to do with what the newspaper should or should not have done in their reporting, but is only about what Mr. Hanlon should have done. As such, it cannot weaken the argument that is about what the newspaper supposedly did wrong.

Answer choice (E): The rule in answer E is about whether the paper should have published the story at all, and tells us nothing about HOW they should have reported it. Whether the story was confirmed by an independent source or not, that would tell us nothing about how skeptical or uncritical they should have appeared in their reporting.

IanStewart · Answer

This question is directly testing a famous saying of Carl Sagan, which he said about reports of aliens visiting earth: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Not only is the question about an alien sighting, it even uses the word "extraordinary" in the stem.

A meteor sighting is easily distinguished from a UFO sighting because we have ample corroborating evidence of the existence of meteors. We have no undisputed evidence of the existence of UFOs. It's perfectly reasonable to want more evidence for implausible claims than for plausible ones. If someone told you they just scored a 350 on the GMAT, you might not need any more evidence than their claim to believe them. But if they told you they just scored an 850 on the GMAT, you'd probably want a ton of additional evidence before crediting their claim, because there's no a priori reason to think that claim can even possibly be true (and it can't be true). Answer A describes this principle, so it's the right answer to the question.

unraveled · Answer

I would like to see more analysis, do share your's. That would help me with my confidence.
Also, waiting for more expert comments.

VerbalBot · Answer

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Letter to the editor: When your newspaper reported the (admittedly

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Letter to the editor: When your newspaper reported the (admittedly

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