Logical Reasoning

PT134 · S1 · Q7 Recently, a report commissioned

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Recently, a report commissioned by a confectioners trade association noted that chocolate, formerly considered a health scourge, is an effective antioxidant and so has health benefits.

Conclusion (it is clear that)

If you wait long enough, almost any food will be reported to be healthful.

Evidence

Chocolate was formerly considered a health scourge, but now it's touted as an effective antioxidant with health benefits.

Oily foods were thought to clog arteries and contribute to heart disease, but now reports say that olive oil has a positive influence on the circulatory system.

Evaluate

The author provides two examples of foods that had an unhealthy reputation and that are now being recognized for their health benefits.

Do those two examples persuade us that "almost any food" will one day be reported to be healthful?

Certainly not. The conclusion seems overdramatic and too extreme.

Goal

Let's look for something like, .

7.

The reasoning in the argument is flawed in that the argument

  1. relies on the truth of

    Doesn't Rely on Truth

    This answer is very tempting, because the confectioners trade association seems like a group that is likely to be biased when it comes to putting out pro-chocolate propagana. We might think to ourselves, though, "The 2nd example about oils doesn't have any sketchy source, so it's not like the author is entirely dependent on a claim from a sketchy source." Furthermore, it's called Ad Hominem when we dismiss the validity of a view just because the source might have a biased interest. So if we were discounting the truth of the reports about chocolate's antioxidant properties because the source was biased, then we would be committing an Ad Hominem flaw. But perhaps the easiest way to tell yourself this answer doesn't work is that the author doesn't actually care whether the confectioners trade association's report is true. The conclusion isn't saying that "if we wait long enough, we'll find out that almost every food is healthful". It's only saying that almost every food "will be reported to be healthful". So even if the association's claim is biased and false, it would still accord with the author's conclusion: they did report that it's healthful, so it still counts as an example of what the conclusion is talking about.

    3% picked this

  2. applies a general rule to

    Out of Scope: general rule

    An author can apply a rule to a specific case to then derive a judgment (i.e. conclusion) about that case. The only thing in this paragraph that sounds like a general rule would be the generalization in the conclusion. But the author isn't applying that rule to any specific cases. She's deriving a general rules from a couple specific cases. And those cases clearly do pertain to the rule, since they involve foods that after some period of time were finally reported to be healthful.

    3% picked this

  3. Correct

    bases an overly broad generalization

    Why this is right

    This is just measuring our ability to react to the extremely hyperbolic conclusion. "Because these two foods eventually got reported as healthful, we're supposed to believe that almost any food will have the same fate?" How come? Why should we believe that these two examples are indicative of an almost-universal trend? Couldn't these be atypical examples? This answer is one of the 10 Famous Flaws, Sampling, in which the conclusion generalizes from a sample that could be too small, unrepresentative, self-selecting, or biased in some way.

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

    91% picked this

  4. takes for granted that all

    Not Assumed / Too Strong: all

    Is this author assuming that 100% of nutritional research results eventually get reported? Of course not. Would the argument be any different if only 99% of nutritional research results eventually get reported? Nope. So there's no reason the author needs to assume "all".

    1% picked this

  5. fails to consider that there

    Doesn't Fail to Consider

    The author seems to be directly acknowledging that foods are often reported to be unhealthful (after all, both chocolate and oily foods were reported as such). And the foods that are still currently reported to be unhealthful are almost-all in the list of foods she thinks will eventually be reported to be healthful, if we wait long enough.

    2% picked this

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