PrepTest 134, Section 1, Question 7
Recently, a report commissioned by a confectioners trade(67 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the argument(6 more words not shown)
- Arelies on the(13 more words not shown)
- Bapplies a general(10 more words not shown)
- Cbases an overly(7 more words not shown)
- Dtakes for granted(9 more words not shown)
- Efails to consider(11 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
A candy trade association says chocolate has health benefits. I can see why we'd question its motives: selling more chocolate would suit its members very well. But let's see what the author actually tries to prove with that report.
After adding a favorable report about olive oil, the author predicts that almost any food will eventually be reported to be healthful.
Almost any food? We have two examples.
Those examples show that favorable reports can appear about foods previously described as unhealthy. They don't establish a pattern broad enough to cover nearly every food. Chocolate and olive oil could be unusual cases. We need more than these two to support such a sweeping prediction.
What we’re looking for
The flaw question asks what went wrong in that move. I'd look for drawing an overly broad conclusion from too few examples. Keep “reported to be healthful” separate from “actually healthful.” That difference determines whether our initial suspicion about the chocolate report is relevant to the argument's conclusion.
Working the answers
- A
This is tempting because the chocolate industry has an obvious interest in a favorable report. But the argument doesn't need the report's health claim to be true. It needs a report making that claim to exist.
A biased, inaccurate report could still serve as an example of a food being reported to be healthful. If the conclusion were that chocolate really is healthy, the report's reliability would matter directly. Here, questioning its truth misses the actual leap from two reports to a prediction about almost any food.
- B
The direction is wrong. Applying a general rule would mean starting with a broad statement and using it to reach a conclusion about particular foods. This argument starts with particular foods and uses them to support a broad prediction.
- CCorrect
Chocolate and olive oil are just two instances, yet the author projects their pattern onto almost any food. We aren't given a reason to think those examples represent the enormous range of other foods. The conclusion outruns the evidence even if both reports exist exactly as described.
- D
The argument doesn't require every research result to be published. Many results could remain unreported while almost any food eventually received some favorable report. The prediction concerns the range of foods that will be called healthful, not complete publication of nutritional research.
- E
Reports calling foods unhealthy can coexist with later reports calling them healthy. In fact, that shift is what the two examples describe. Pointing to other unfavorable reports doesn't show that favorable ones won't eventually appear, so it doesn't identify the argument's small-sample problem.
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