A question about two texts with a marked claim tests how one author would respond to that specific claim. Read the question so you know who answers whom, then put the claim and its reason in a few words. Then read the other text to see whether its author rejects the claim, accepts it as partly true, or applies it to a new case. The reason decides, because even a choice with the right view can give a reason that the author never supports.
Hints
- Hint 1
Focus on what the bolded claim adds to Text 1’s model result. How strong is that claim?
- Hint 2
Read Madigan’s simulation result alongside her last sentence. What does her evidence show, and what does she say observations still need to settle?
- Hint 3
Does calling a planet a viable hypothesis mean accepting the bolded claim?
Step-by-step
Test the claim’s strength
Step 1Read the exact claim
The question points us to the bolded claim in Text 1, with Text 2’s author doing the answering. What does that claim add to Batygin’s model result? The model shows that a planet could produce the clustering, but Batygin calls it the only plausible explanation for these clustered orbits. His claim rules out every other plausible explanation.
- Step 2
Find the competing explanation
Madigan’s simulations point to the cumulative gravitational interactions among thousands of icy bodies, meaning many small bodies pulling on one another. Could that explain the same clustering? Her results suggest it could, so the pattern has another possible cause. Yet she still calls a distant planet a viable hypothesis.
- Step 3
Name Madigan’s view
Does that mean Madigan rejects Planet Nine altogether? No: she rejects the claim that only one cause is plausible, not the possibility of a planet. Her words until observations rule out self-gravity models tell us what’s missing: evidence that the other model can’t explain the orbits. Showing that a Planet Nine model works doesn’t rule out a self-gravity model that can produce the same clustering.
- Step 4
Match her reason
Which response gives Madigan’s own reason? The choice calling the claim premature says that collective gravitational effects could also account for the clustering. Premature means made before there’s enough evidence, which fits her warning that Planet Nine cannot be deemed uniquely credible while self-gravity models remain possible. Choice D.