People who are allergic to cats

Answer choices

1. A

   Trap4% picked this

   Any particular individual will be allergic to some breeds of cat but

   Too Strong / Too Broad: any particular individual We're told that it's common for someone with a cat allergy to be allergic to some cats but not others. But not everyone has a cat allergy! The fact that this answer applies to everyone is grounds for dismissal. Another more subtle reason to dismiss this answer is "breeds of cats." We talke about individual cats but not about their different breeds.

   4%
2. B

   Too Strong: no14% picked this

   No cat is capable of causing an allergic reaction in all types

   We're told it is common for a given cat to cause an allergic reaction in some but not all people who are allergic to cats. But that still leaves open the possibility that some cat out there has a perfect storm of allergy-inducing skin and spit proteins and could wreak allergic havoc on every cat-allergy sufferer.

   14%
3. C

   Correct59% picked this

   Not all cats are identical with respect to the proteins contained in their skin

   Why this is right

   The first thing that should make us like this answer is the "not all ___ are ___ " format. This style of claim is VERY easy to support. It only takes 1 cat that's different from the rest to prove that they're not all identical. So, that's a strong start to the answer. Do we have reason to believe that not all cats have identical proteins? Sure. The proteins are what cause the allergies, and different proteins aggravate different people, and it's common for a cat that triggers one person's allergies not to trigger somebody else's. One possible explanation for this set of curious facts is that different cats have different proteins. What makes this question so hard is that this isn't the only possible explanation. It's also possible that all cats have the same proteins and the different reactions are 100% explained by the difference among the people who are allergic. The fact that this answer would be wrong on a Must Be True question makes lots of people eliminate it. But since this is a Most Supported question, that's not grounds for dismissal. An answer that doesn't have to be true might still end up being the best available choice, and in this case, it is.

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

   59%
4. D

   Out of Scope: intensity / other allergies8% picked this

   The allergic reactions of some people who are allergic to cats are more intense than the allergic reactions

   The intensity of the allergic reactions are not discussed, and neither are people who suffer from allergies other than cat allergies: those are both out of scope ideas. This answer is also making a comparison that isn't justified by the facts: an Unsupported Comparison, one of the most common Most Supported wrong answer types.

   8%
5. E

   Too Strong / Speculative15% picked this

   There is no way to predict whether a given cat will produce an allergic reaction in

   Too Strong / Speculative: no way to predict We are told that different proteins cause different people to have allergic reactions, and that some cats provoke some people but not others. But does that really support the claim that there are zero ways to predict whether a certain cat will make a certain person react? That's too speculative. We don't have any info about allergy prediction. Maybe certain breeds of cat tend to have certain proteins, and maybe certain allergy symptoms are the result of particular proteins. If we knew that Mancoons have protein X and that protein X causes itchy eyes but not sneezing, and we know that Greg gets itchy eyes around cats but doesn't sneeze, we could reasonably predict that Greg would be allergic to Max the Mancoon.

   15%