PrepTest 119, Section 4, Question 4
Anne: Halley's Comet, now in a part of(71 more words not shown)
Sue challenges Anne's reasoning(1 more words not shown)
- Apointing out that(9 more words not shown)
- Bdrawing attention to(7 more words not shown)
- Cpresenting evidence that(4 more words not shown)
- Doffering an alternative(6 more words not shown)
- Eundermining some of(7 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Maybe nobody saw these flares because nobody was looking.
Anne goes from 'we haven't observed one this far from the Sun before' to 'a flare this far from the Sun must be highly unusual.' Those are different claims. A rare observation doesn't establish a rare event if people seldom look for the event in the first place.
Sue supplies exactly that concern. People usually don't try to observe comets when they're so far from the Sun. This time, an observatory happened to be tracking Halley's Comet carefully enough to see the flare. That gives us a reason for the unusual observation without establishing that the flare itself was unusual.
What we’re looking for
Notice that Sue can accept Anne's report about what has been observed. She challenges what Anne infers from that report. For the method question, I'd describe Sue as adding a fact that gives us another explanation for the lack of earlier observations: limited observation, rather than necessarily rare flares.
Working the answers
- A
Sue doesn't question what Anne means by 'observed.' That would sound like asking whether Anne means seen with the naked eye or detected with a telescope. Sue's objection concerns how often anyone tries to look, not which meaning of the word Anne intends.
- B
Anne's statements aren't inconsistent with each other. She says this flare was observed and that no previous flare had been observed so far from the Sun. Those can both be true. Sue questions the further conclusion about how unusual the event must be.
- C
Sue doesn't produce a previously observed flare that would contradict Anne's evidence. She explains why the record of observations might be sparse. Accepting evidence while disputing its interpretation isn't directly contradicting that evidence.
- DCorrect
Anne explains the lack of earlier observations by treating these flares as highly unusual. Sue offers another explanation: people ordinarily don't look for comets at that distance. We can have very few observations because of how people observe, even without knowing that the underlying events are rare.
- E
This has the roles backward. Sue accepts that the flare was observed and explains why observations are scarce, but challenges Anne's conclusion about rarity. She doesn't agree that the flare must be highly unusual.
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