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

jn0r
can you please post an explanation as well.

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.

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.

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