PrepTest 118, Section 4, Question 14
Insufficient rain can cause crops to falter and(47 more words not shown)
The argument's reasoning is most(9 more words not shown)
- Aconcludes, merely from(20 more words not shown)
- Bfails to take(19 more words not shown)
- Cuses the term(15 more words not shown)
- Dinfers, merely from(20 more words not shown)
- Etakes for granted(19 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What if a war destroyed the crops? Bombs hitting fields could reduce the harvest and push up prices even without a shortage of rain.
The passage tells us that insufficient rain can produce these problems. It doesn't tell us that insufficient rain actually occurred during this crisis. A possible cause is being treated as the cause merely because the outcome is something it could explain.
What we’re looking for
I'd also wonder whether the government's takeover of food distribution helped. But that's a different question from what started the crisis. The flaw question should focus on the unsupported causal claim: the author hasn't ruled out other reasons the crops faltered and prices rose, yet concludes that the weather must have played an important role.
Working the answers
- A
We are never told that a period of insufficient rain preceded the crisis. The first sentence gives a general possibility, not a report about the weather in this particular nation at that time. A invents a factual premise and then describes an inference from it.
- B
Whether the government's intervention was justified is a question about the response to the crisis. Our conclusion concerns the cause of the crisis. The government could have intervened appropriately or inappropriately, and we'd still need evidence that weather caused the crop problems.
- C
There's no shift between two different meanings of “crisis.” The argument consistently concerns the problems involving crops, prices, and the threat of starvation. Giving that situation political as well as economic consequences would not, by itself, show that the author changes the word's meaning.
- DCorrect
Insufficient rain could cause crops to falter and prices to rise. The author sees those effects and concludes that weather did help cause this crisis. The possibility doesn't establish the particular explanation. Our war example shows how the reported crop failures and rising prices could occur for another reason.
- E
The first sentence doesn't say that insufficient rain is required for agricultural prices to rise. It says insufficient rain can cause that rise. So the argument isn't taking a stated requirement and treating it as a guarantee. Its mistake is moving from a possible cause to an asserted actual cause.
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