PrepTest 120, Section 3, Question 23
Television network executive: Some scientists have expressed concern(55 more words not shown)
The television network executive's argument(12 more words not shown)
- AIt fails to(16 more words not shown)
- BIt takes for(16 more words not shown)
- CIt fails to(23 more words not shown)
- DIt fails to(19 more words not shown)
- EIt takes for(27 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Scientific understanding could have advanced faster without the ghost stories.
The executive points to two things that have coexisted: supernatural stories and improving scientific understanding. That doesn't establish that the stories had no slowing effect. Imagine progress continuing, but at a slower pace than it would have without an obstacle. Moving forward and being held back can happen at the same time.
I could imagine another response to the scientists: perhaps viewers know a ghost story is entertainment and don't adopt it as a belief. But the executive doesn't offer evidence of that. The defense actually given is that scientific understanding advanced anyway. That's the reasoning we need to test, regardless of whether entertaining people is the network's main aim.
What we’re looking for
For the flaw question, my prediction is that continued improvement doesn't establish absence of interference. In the abstract choices, translate each “phenomenon” back into the actual things discussed. That will keep a familiar-sounding answer from getting a pass without matching the argument.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
The advancing phenomenon is the public's scientific understanding. The possible impediment is the supernatural storytelling. Understanding could keep improving while those stories slowed its improvement. The executive needs more than evidence of progress to dismiss the warning; we'd want to know how much progress would have occurred without the alleged obstacle.
- B
The executive doesn't conclude that ghost stories caused scientific progress because the two occurred together. That would be a different argument. Here, continued progress is used to deny a hindering effect. The mistake is treating progress as incompatible with interference, not treating coexistence as proof that one thing caused the other.
- C
This concerns an indirect effect on how widespread something is without impeding it. But the scientists' concern is precisely that the shows will hinder scientific understanding. Pointing out some other possible influence that isn't a hindrance wouldn't expose the mistake in dismissing that warning. We need the possibility that progress and hindrance coexist.
- D
This concerns effects running in both directions: one phenomenon affects another, and the second may also affect the first. The executive hasn't established one direction and then denied the reverse. The disputed issue is whether the storytelling impedes understanding at all. A captures that issue directly.
- E
The passage doesn't say ghost stories have steadily increased; it says dramatists have relied on them throughout history. Nor does it simply say the alleged effect persisted while its proposed cause grew. Its evidence is that scientific understanding advanced despite the stories' presence. Once those pieces are mapped back, E describes a different argument.
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