The author of passage A would be most likely to take which one of the following results mentioned in passage B as sup...

Victoria on June 20, 2020

Hi @hperi,

Happy to help!

We are looking for the answer choice which the author of passage A would be most likely to take as support for the claim they made in the last sentence of passage A.

What is the claim? Negative evidence is rarely conclusive in an experiment. Negative evidence is found where a theory fails to accurately predict something. This evidence is considered to be evidence against the theory.

Passage B tells us that astronomers tried to predict Uranus' orbit using Newton's laws but were incorrect. One possible explanation that astronomers came up with for this failure was that it was possible that Newton's laws were incorrect.

However, Passage A tells us that negative evidence is rarely conclusive. This evidence was not conclusive in this case as the prediction was made based on the assumption that there were no other planets existing in Uranus' vicinity. This assumption was later disproven by the discovery of Neptune and Newton's laws were able to correctly predict Uranus' orbit.

Hope this is helpful! Please let us know if you have any further questions.

Gabe85 on September 21, 2020

Can someone explain why C is wrong, and why B is the better choice?

In the Uranus example, the theory isn't actually incorrect, it's the "auxiliary assumptions"

In C, the theory is proven incorrect (or at least partially incorrect), Vulcan is never found, and so they move to general relativity.

In both there's a theory, evidence doesn't line up to it, these leads to multiple possible avenues of investigation, eventually a new discovery. I don't really see the difference between the two answers.

SawyerJeppson on August 10, 2021

I have the same question^

amajerus on November 6, 2022

It's been awhile since you asked this, but I thought I'd try to help in case any future people have questions. I'm not a tutor but I think I understand enough to explain. (If any real tutors see this please correct me)

The very fact that the example in C involves a theory being proven incorrect is why it is wrong. We are looking for an answer that shows that "negative evidence is rarely conclusive." Negative evidence is evidence that disproves a particular theory. This answer shows just the opposite- negative evidence being successfully used to disprove a theory (at least partially).

B, on the other hand, shows negative evidence being inconclusive because what was originally thought to disprove Newton's laws actually did not.

@MichaelaJ on October 8, 2023

Hi- I am still not understanding why B is the correct answer choice.

Emil-Kunkin on October 10, 2023

Pasting this in from the other question: the final sentence we are trying to support is that negative evidence is rarely conclusive because there are many reasons a theory can seem to be disproved, such as bad measurement or assumptions, that do not actually disprove the core of the theory. The discovery of Uranus is an example of this. It was apparently negative evidence, but ultimately it was not a true black swan because it did not actually disconfirm any theory, it just showed that an assumption that had been made in making calculations was wrong, not the underlying theory.

Also I agree with Amajerus