Scientist: A number of errors can plague a data-collection process. Since examining the collected data enables resear...

SamA on September 17, 2019

Hello @Ryan-Mahabir,

We are looking for something that will explain why the the corrected data tends to match Jones's theory more than the raw data does.

You asked why C is incorrect. I would argue that this answer choice is outside the scope of our premise. We need an answer choice that has something to do with the data corrections. We weren't given a connection between the researchers' likelihood to pursue certain lines of research and the data collection process, so answer choice C does little to explain the data corrections.

Answer choice B is a better option. It answers the question, "What could cause the corrected data to agree with Jones' theory?" Researchers focusing more heavily on data that opposes Jones' theory would cause them to find more errors in that group. Even if the same amount of raw data supports Jones' theory, researchers are less likely find errors in that group because they are not scrutinizing that data as heavily.

I hope this helps.

avif on June 15, 2020

I get why B can be right. I just still can't understand how you can eliminate C. The fact that most researchers will pursue topics which they expect to confirm their data will lead us to believe that the data in general would support their theory. Therefor things which don't support their theory are likely to be mistakes in the data. Why is this logic wrong?