In the last year, biologists

Answer choices

1. A

   Not an Objection5% picked this

   kinds of things and the things that are of

   What does this distinction even mean? "Cereals" is a kind of thing, and Lucky Charms and Cheerios are things that are of that kind. Was the author confusing a category name, like "amphibians", with specific species of amphibians? No, that wasn't the problem.

   5%
2. B

   Wrong Flaw3% picked this

   a condition necessary for a phenomenon and one that is sufficient

   There was no Conditional Logic in this argument, so we should not be describing the problem with the argument as "messing up conditional logic" (aka, Necessary vs. Sufficient)

   3%
3. C

   Wrong Flaw4% picked this

   a cause and an

   There was a not a correlation in which the author concluded X caused Y, when in reality Y caused X.

   4%
4. D

   Wrong Flaw14% picked this

   a correlation between two phenomena and a causal relationship

   The author doesn't go from a correlation between two factors to a causal conclusion/assumption about those two factors. The author's argument is purely about numbers of amphibian species, so the flaw here is mathematical / statistical, not causal.

   14%
5. E

   Correct75% picked this

   changes in our knowledge of objects and changes in the

   Why this is right

   Last year, our knowledge of how many amphibian species there are changed (we discovered 100 new ones on the Galapagos Islands, for example). Bur those weren't newly formed species. Those amphibians we now know about didn't go from not-existing to existing, hence they have nothing to do with the environmentalists' claim that more amphibian species are going extinct each year. We can't say, "yeah 75 species went extinct, but 100 new ones were added", because 100 new ones weren't added to Earth, they were just added to our list of amphibian species we know about.

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

   75%