PrepTest 151, Section 3, Question 11
Lobbyist: Those who claim that automobile exhaust emissions(28 more words not shown)
The flaw in the lobbyist's(16 more words not shown)
- Ainspecting commercial airplanes(17 more words not shown)
- Bsmoking cigarettes is(13 more words not shown)
- Cusing a cell(21 more words not shown)
- Dskydiving is not(13 more words not shown)
- Epeople with insurance(20 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What if health improved despite the pollution?
I'll accept the two trends: automobile emissions increased, and the public-health indicators improved. But we need to separate the overall result from the contribution of one factor. Perhaps better medicine or improved living conditions helped health so much that they outweighed damage from exhaust. Public health would improve while emissions were still harmful. Removing the pollution would make that improvement greater still; an improving total doesn't show that every influence on it is harmless.
What we’re looking for
For a parallel, look for the same attempted defense: something potentially dangerous appears or increases during a period when the overall outcome improves, so the author declares that thing safe. Another improvement during that period could be hiding its harmful effect.
Working the answers
- A
This says fewer crashes make safety inspections unnecessary. But inspections might be part of what produced the reduction, in which case stopping them could undo it. That is a problem with dismissing a possible protective measure based on its apparent success. The original dismisses a possible danger because a broader outcome improved while that danger increased. Inspections don't play the same role as exhaust emissions.
- B
This uses the fact that some smokers escape smoking-related illness to deny that smoking is harmful. The original doesn't point to some people escaping harm; it points to an improving historical trend while emissions increased. B confuses risk with inevitable harm to every exposed person, rather than using those two concurrent trends.
- CCorrect
Cell phones appeared, yet traffic accidents decreased, so using a phone while driving is supposedly safe. That mirrors emissions increasing while public health improved, supposedly showing emissions pose no risk.
What if safer roads or technology that helps prevent crashes reduced accidents enough to outweigh a danger from distracted driving? Then the accident count could fall while phone use still increased the risk. As with improved medicine potentially offsetting pollution, another favorable change could produce the overall improvement. Neither declining accidents nor improving public health establishes that the particular activity being defended is harmless.
- D
Fewer skydiving injuries doesn't establish that skydiving is safe. This does share a weakness with the original: an improvement is treated as absence of danger. But it looks at a decline in injuries within the activity itself. It doesn't give us the original's comparison between an introduced or increasing source of risk and a broader improving outcome during the same period. C preserves that additional structure more closely.
- E
Insurance replaces stolen property; it doesn't show that leaving a door unlocked creates no risk of theft. The reasoning relies on compensation after a bad event as a reason not to take a precaution. There are no paired trends and no claim that an improving outcome demonstrates the harmlessness of a growing risk. That mechanism differs from the emissions argument.
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