Legislator: The recently released crime

Answer choices

1. A

   Bad Premise Match5% picked this

   pointing out that the legislator has provided no evidence of the reliability of the statistics on which the

   The analyst doesn't bring up anything about the reliability of the statistics. If anything, given that she says “the stats are welcome news”, she seems to implicitly accept / trust the statistics.

   5%
2. B

   Bad Premise Match20% picked this

   arguing that the legislator has unreasonably concluded that one event has caused another without ruling out the possibility that both events are

   The does conclude that the legislator has unreasonably concluded one event caused another (“hey – that's not strong evidence that the new laws caused the drop in crime”). But the analyst isn't suggesting that something caused the new laws and caused the drop in crime. She's suggesting that something else, besides the new laws, must be causing the widespread drop in crime.

   20%
3. C

   Bad Premise Match1% picked this

   objecting that the statistics on which the legislator is basing his conclusion are drawn from a time period that is too short

   The analyst doesn't say anything about the time period being too short. She's saying, “over the same time period, areas that didn't have X showed just as much Y as areas that did have X. So it doesn't look like X is the difference-maker that's causing Y.”

   1%
4. D

   Bad Premise Match0% picked this

   claiming that the legislator has attempted to establish a particular conclusion because doing so is in the legislator’s self-interest rather than because of any

   The analyst doesn't say anything that matches up with this Ad Hominem sounding answer. She didn't accuse the legislator of making this argument out of self-interest rather than any true concern for the truth.

   0%
5. E

   Correct74% picked this

   implying that the legislator has drawn a conclusion about cause and effect without considering how often the alleged effect has occurred in

   Why this is right

   The premise is certainly pointing out that alleged effect (drop in crime) has occurred in the absence of the alleged cause (new laws/legislation). The other part of this answer is a little weird: “implying that the legislator hasn't considered this”. It's ultimately safer than any other answer, but because it's saying “implying”, we don't need to even see this happen explicitly in the analyst's paragraph. If you say, “Your premise isn't strong evidence for your conclusion, because OBJECTION idea”, then you're implicitly saying, “You must have failed to consider OBJECTION idea, cuz otherwise you'd see how unpersuasive your argument is.” On Flaw questions, many of the answer choices do this same thing: The argument is flawed because the legislator A) fails to consider [this objection idea]

   Skill tested: Method · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   74%