PrepTest 159, Section 1, Question 1
Columnist: The dangers of drinking are greatly exaggerated(31 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the columnist's(12 more words not shown)
- Adoes not address(5 more words not shown)
- Bfails to consider(10 more words not shown)
- Conly addresses the(11 more words not shown)
- Dconfuses the cause(9 more words not shown)
- Erelies merely on(7 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Your grandfather lived a long time. Does that tell us what drinking usually does to people's health?
Let's accept that he drank heavily and lived to 95. He could have lived that long despite the drinking. A risk doesn't have to harm every person who takes it, and one person's long life doesn't establish that the medical press exaggerates the danger.
Imagine someone defending a law school's poor career results by pointing to one graduate with a wonderful career. That success is real, but what happened to the other graduates? An unusual success story doesn't tell us the typical outcome. We have the same problem with the grandfather: the columnist gives us one person instead of evidence about the broader pattern.
What we’re looking for
The flaw question asks us to describe that mismatch. Be careful with the word “exception.” An exception can disprove a claim that something always happens. But the medical claim here is that alcohol can shorten a life, not that every heavy drinker dies young. The grandfather's experience can coexist with that claim.
Working the answers
- A
The columnist is challenging a claim about health and life expectancy, not arguing that drinking is morally acceptable. Addressing a moral objection wouldn't tell us whether one long-lived drinker is enough to challenge the medical warning.
- B
Other things could shorten a life too. That doesn't establish that alcohol is harmless or that the warnings about it are exaggerated. The columnist doesn't need to show that alcohol is the only possible danger; the problem is using one person's experience to assess this particular danger.
- C
Quality of life could matter in a broader discussion of drinking. Here, though, the columnist specifically challenges warnings about a shorter life by pointing to a long one. Adding a discussion of quality wouldn't repair that use of a single example.
- D
What cause and effect have been switched? The columnist doesn't argue that living a long time causes heavy drinking. The mistake is treating the grandfather's outcome as sufficient evidence against a general warning, not putting the proposed cause after its effect.
- ECorrect
An anecdote is a story about a particular case. The grandfather supplies exactly that: one heavy drinker who lived a long time. We would need broader evidence to assess whether the general warning exaggerates the risks. His experience alone doesn't do that work.
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