M24 #6: Are we too quick to assume that the most recent evidence is inevitably the strongest? Discuss with reference to the natural sciences and one other area of knowledge.HL
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B
Official IB Result
IB Grade: B
Criteria A: TOK Essay
6/10
0
5
10
Criteria StrandsPro
A.1Understanding
Knowledge
Questions
Moderate
Criteria Feedback
- The student stays clearly focused on the prescribed title and maintains a coherent line of argument throughout.
- The student's use of specific, relevant examples (N-rays and the Hitler Diaries) gives the essay real TOK substance and prevents it from becoming purely abstract.
- The student shows awareness of different perspectives, especially in the way they contrast skepticism with openness to new ideas and question whether consensus is always trustworthy.
- The student's essay is organized and logically structured, making the comparison between the natural sciences and history easy to follow.
- The evaluation is often broad rather than deeply developed, so the essay does not fully sustain the level of precision needed for the top band.
- Some claims about the two areas of knowledge are too general or simplified, especially where history is treated as if consensus and objectivity operate too uniformly.
- The argument would be stronger if the student more explicitly distinguished recency from other indicators of evidential strength such as replication, provenance, corroboration, and contextualization.
- The conclusion does not fully resolve the tension between cases where newer evidence is misleading and cases where it is genuinely superior.