GRE Vocabulary: Argument

In the journal club, Dr. Shah called the abstract specious because the claim sounded strong until the missing control group came up.

During the hearing, the referee called the last step fallacious because it treated a correlation as if it were a cause.

In the lab meeting, Lena said the second assay could vindicate the trend only if its result matched the first.

At the seminar, Omar used 2, which is prime and even, to refute the claim that every prime number is odd.

In the lab meeting, the link between the two charts was called precarious because a dozen points could not carry a general claim.

In the seminar, Nia argued that a single classroom study does not warrant a nationwide change in the curriculum.

At the seminar, once everyone agreed that every rectangle has four right angles and that every square is a rectangle, the corollary was that every square has four right angles.

In the journal, the author set out the premise that quantity demanded falls when price rises, then derived the rest of the model from it.

In the seminar, Priya wrote this syllogism on the board: all mammals breathe air, whales are mammals, and therefore whales breathe air.

In the seminar, the sentence "it is raining or it is not raining" was called a tautology because it stays true no matter what the weather is.

During the hearing, the chair called the reply sophistry because a clever definition was used to dodge the question on the table.

In the seminar, Jonah pointed out an amphiboly in "the review of the proof with the missing step," since those words can attach the missing step either to the review or to the proof.

In the seminar, the instructor called the rule that equals match indemonstrable, because any proof of it would already have to treat equals as matching.

At the lab meeting, Dr. Feldman asked the group to postulate that the enzyme is saturated, then to derive what the rate equation would say under that assumption.

In the journal club, the editor labeled the proposed cause of the outlier a conjecture because the authors had no measurement that could test it.

In the seminar, with only the abstract in hand, Elena could merely surmise that the trial had failed, and she said so before the tables were opened.

In the lab meeting, the inference from the blinded counts was that the treated wells had more colonies, and the code was opened only after the tally.

In the seminar, by deduction from the rule that every even number greater than 2 is not prime, the class concluded that 24 is not prime.

In the lab meeting, by induction from twenty repeated trials that all ran in the same direction, the team offered a general claim about the effect.

In the seminar, Professor Singh offered an analogy: just as a map is not the terrain, a model is not the data set it describes.

In the seminar, 9 was offered as a counterexample to the claim that every odd number is prime, since 9 is odd and equal to 3 times 3.

During the hearing, the author's rebuttal showed that the critic had misread the table headings and so had answered a different question.

In the journal, the rejoinder answered the reviewer's objection about sample size point by point.

At the hearing, no one could disaffirm the arithmetic, because every member who added the column got the same total.

In the seminar, Dr. Alvarez tried to oppugn the hypothesis by arguing that the cited design could not separate the effect from a change in temperature.

During the hearing, the referee moved to impeach the summary, because two cells in it did not match the raw file.

In the seminar, after checking the proof, Professor Nguyen had to concede that the third line did not follow from the second.

Before the hearing, both sides agreed to stipulate that the sample size was 400, so that number would not be debated.

In the lab meeting, Dr. Cohen asked the group to posit a constant error rate, then derive what the confidence interval would be under that starting point.

In the journal, the authors asseverate that the effect remained after the outlier was removed, and they print the recalculated table.

At the seminar, Professor Berg chose to propound a new definition of risk and asked the room to test it against three known cases.

During the hearing, the author chose to exhibit the raw calibration log to support the reported temperatures.

In the lab meeting, a second technician's count was used to validate the first count of the colonies.

In the journal, the authors use a replication from a second laboratory to fortify their claim.

In the seminar, Professor Diaz said one definition would undergird the whole paper, because every later claim uses that definition.

In the journal, the authors predicate their conclusion on the assumption that the sample was random.

In the seminar, the question "Have you stopped using the outdated method?" was said to presuppose that the method had been in use.

In the seminar, the instructor listed "equals may replace equals" as an axiom and did not derive it from any prior statement.

In the seminar, the Pythagorean theorem was treated as a statement proved from more basic geometric claims, not as a mere definition of a right triangle.

In the seminar, the class proved a small lemma about even numbers first, then used that result inside the proof of the main theorem.

In the seminar, the instructor showed that "this figure is a square" would entail "this figure has four equal sides."

During the hearing, the chair allowed the citation because it was apposite to the exact clause under dispute.

In the journal club, a comment about the author's hobbies was set aside as not germane, while the note on the sample was kept.

In the lab meeting, a note about spilled coffee was called extraneous because it had nothing to do with the assay result.

In the seminar, a remark about the snack fund was tangential to the proof, and the instructor asked the speaker to return to the steps.

During the hearing, the color of the binder was ruled immaterial because it could not change the finding.

In the seminar, whether the definition should include zero was left moot, and both sides gave reasons.

In the seminar, that 2 is the only even prime was treated as incontrovertible, and no one offered a counterexample.

During the hearing, the column total was irrefutable once every member added the column and got the same total.

In the seminar, the instructor called "a claim and its denial cannot both be true at once" unassailable, because no example the class offered could break that rule.

In the lab meeting, the leak was demonstrable when dye placed at the joint appeared on the towel beneath it.

In the journal, the suppositious cause was high humidity, though the authors had not yet measured the room's moisture.

In the seminar, the avowed reason for dropping the trial was a broken sensor, but the lab book showed the sensor had been replaced a week earlier.

In the journal club, reviewers noted a purported large effect in the abstract that the results section never measured.

In the lab meeting, the spike was judged spurious because it appeared in the empty control lane as well as in the sample.

During the hearing, the rumor of a swapped sample was unfounded, because the barcode log showed the original vial at every step.

In the seminar, a joke about the speaker's height was called gratuitous because it did nothing to test the argument.

In the seminar, the claim that all birds fly was untenable once the class named penguins, which are birds and do not fly.

In the lab meeting, a calibration drift was a plausible account of the odd reading, because the last calibration date was overdue.

In the journal club, the huge effect from six participants was called contestable because so small a sample can swing on one person.

In the seminar, the sentence "the bank was steep" was called equivocal until the author said whether bank meant a river edge or a financial firm.

The methods note was univocal: the trial was randomized, and the sentence allowed no second reading.

In the seminar, the instructor's unqualified claim was that no prime greater than 2 is even, with no exception attached.

In the lab meeting, the group adopted an interim cutoff until the larger data set arrived the next month.

The journal's correction was definitive: it replaced the old total, and the editors said no further revision was expected.

During the hearing, the calibration video was conclusive, because it left no rival account of the zeroing standing.

During the hearing, the signed consent log was dispositive on whether participants had agreed, and the panel closed that part of the dispute.

In the hearing, the original chromatogram was probative of the peak's identity because it was the record made at the time of the run.

In the journal club, one patient's story was called anecdotal because the paper offered no systematic comparison group.

In the lab meeting, the claim stayed empirical because it rested on measured weights, not on the meaning of the word "heavy."

In the lab meeting, "check the blank first" was offered as a heuristic, useful in practice but not a proof of any result.

In the seminar, the instructor called "reviews ought to report conflicts" normative and kept a separate sentence about what reviews actually do as a different kind of claim.

The journal added a caveat that the result held only for adults in that one city, so the claim would not be read as universal.

The seminar accepted the model with the proviso that the error terms are independent, and without that condition the vote would not stand.

During the hearing, the panel's criterion for relevance was whether a document was cited in the methods, and items outside that test were set aside.

In the seminar, reproducibility was the touchstone for the new method: if a second lab could not repeat the result, the method failed that test.

In the seminar, the instructor presented a paradox: a treatment can have a higher success rate in each of two hospitals and a lower success rate when those hospitals are combined.

In the seminar, the instructor described an antinomy: the rule "cite every source" and the rule "keep the note under fifty words" can both look binding and still conflict.

In the seminar, the board showed a dichotomy, with each example placed either under fact or under proposal, and none placed in both columns.

During the hearing, the panel faced a dilemma: accept a late table and reopen the record, or keep the deadline and omit data the author said mattered.

In the seminar, treating "most" as if it meant "all" was labeled a fallacy, and the instructor showed that the step did not follow.

During the hearing, the chair said the long definition was there to becloud the point, because a plain restatement was available and the long one hid which claim was at issue.

In the seminar, the instructor used a worked example to illuminate the rule, and afterward the class could state the rule in ordinary words.

In the journal, a footnote was added to explicate the notation, defining each symbol before it was used in the proof.

At the seminar, Professor Adler took time to expound the proof, going line by line until each inference had been stated.

In the lab meeting, the team refused to prognosticate past the measured range, because no observation lay beyond the last point.

In the journal, the authors hedge the conclusion by adding "in this sample," so they do not claim the result for every population.

In the seminar, the instructor wrote a disjunction on the board, "the integer is even or it is odd," and noted that for any integer one of those two must hold.

In the seminar, in the sentence "if a number is divisible by 4, then it is even," the instructor labeled "a number is divisible by 4" the protasis.

In the seminar, in "if a number is divisible by 4, then it is even," the instructor labeled "it is even" the consequent.

In the lab meeting, the decision to repeat the assay was conditional on the blank reading, and if the blank was clean the repeat would not be ordered.

In the seminar, the counterfactual was "if the sensor had been zeroed, the reading would have been lower," about a run in which the sensor was not zeroed.

In the seminar, "this figure is a square, so it has four equal sides" was called an enthymeme because the general rule about squares was left unstated.

In the seminar, the dialectic proceeded by a claim, then an objection, then a revised claim, and the instructor said that exchange was the method.

During the hearing, the panel cited a 1998 holding because that earlier ruling had applied the same rule to a similar methods dispute.

In the seminar, the instructor's dictum was written on the board as a general rule: a valid argument can have a false conclusion only if a premise is false.

In the journal club, the summary was called tendentious because it reported only the trials that favored the new method and left out the trials that did not.

During the hearing, an objection to the font size was dismissed as a quibble, because the typeface had no bearing on the data.

In the seminar, Dr. Patel did not reject the model as a whole but did stickle at the last step, saying only that the step needed one more premise.

At the hearing, the second reviewer gave assent to the corrected total by signing the line that said the new sum was accepted.

During the hearing, the author chose to acquiesce in the request for the raw file after the panel explained why the summary alone could not settle the dispute.

During the hearing, a remark that someone had heard about the calibration was set aside as hearsay, because the person who ran the instrument was not the source.

At the hearing, the mismatched signatures were prima facie grounds for a pause, because the papers as they stood already gave the panel reason to stop and look.

In the seminar, the instructor said that if the proof covers every rectangle, then a fortiori it covers every square, since every square is a rectangle.

During the hearing, the onus was on the authors to show that the sample was random, and until they did the panel would not accept that claim.

In the seminar, the presumption was that the measuring scale was accurate, and that claim would stand until someone produced a failed calibration.

In the seminar, the crux of the dispute was whether the blank had been subtracted, and settling that one point would settle the whole analysis.