A local marsh would need

Answer choices

1. A

   Bad Conclusion Match7% picked this

   A new highway cannot be built in the lake district unless an environmental impact assessment is first carried out. An environmental impact assessment would

   If we skip straight to the conclusion, we can avoid reading this one, since its conclusion is definitively negative, not provisionally negative. We would need a conclusion like "the proposal for the new highway should be rejected until we ⎽⎽⎽⎽⎽ ."

   7%
2. B

   Correct70% picked this

   Defective products can cost an appliance manufacturer millions of dollars because of product recalls and lawsuits. Yova Corporation's new line of appliances has not

   Why this is right

   This one doesn't quite match the ingredients we pre-phrased, but we could tweak our model of the original argument to make this work. The original argument was saying, "If you build that office complex, you might mess up your city's drinking water (by removing the marsh) and we haven't done an investigation yet to look into that. So don't build it until you've conducted that investigation." This argument is saying, "If we bring our products to market and they're defective, it might cost us millions of dollars because of recalls and lawsuits. We haven't done an investigation yet of whether they're defective. So let's not bring the products to market until we've done that investigation." This is definitely requiring some flexible rephrasing of the original argument, and some charitable interpretation of ingredients to make them line up, but it's ultimately the best match we've got.

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

   70%
3. C

   Weak Premise Match19% picked this

   A laboratory safety check of a portable grill requires a week of uninterrupted testing. The new portable grill has been at the testing lab

   The conclusion is correctly provisionally negative (not at this time). Does the evidence establish that there's a potential danger that we haven't investigated yet? A little bit, but a sloppier match than the correct answer. We haven't identified a precise fear (like contaminated groundwater, or millions of dollars in recalls and lawsuits). We've just said "safety testing", so we would be inferring that the fear is some sort of safety problem. But since this argument doesn't define that specific worry, it is less like the original argument than the correct answer is. And the testing here is just incomplete, not nonexistent. We're already halfway through the week of testing, so we're really just talking about delaying the report for a few more days. In the original and the correct answer, we're saying we haven't yet done (or started) the deep study of the potential problem, and so the conclusion is postponing an action indefinitely, until that's completed. There's also not really an action being considered (like building an office complex or bringing a new product line to market) that would result in potential harm. We're just looking at an object (the portable grill) that could result in harm.

   19%
4. D

   Bad Premise / Conclusion Match4% picked this

   Building the new highway along the proposed northern route would inevitably damage an adjoining wilderness area. The highway would also cause environmental damage if

   If we peek at the conclusion then this is a non-starter, since the conclusion is a conditional statement that talks about what we should do. The evidence also doesn't match. Instead of talking about a potential threat that we haven't adequately investigated, it's talking about a definite threat.

   4%
5. E

   Bad Conclusion Match1% picked this

   Building a light rail line to serve the downtown core could involve cost overruns and expensive delays, but traffic congestion will become intolerable within

   If we check out this conclusion first, we won't need to read this one. It's concluding that an action should be taken.

   1%