Logical Reasoning

PT7 · S1 · Q2 Bevex, an artificial sweetener used

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Bevex, an artificial sweetener used only in soft drinks, is carcinogenic for mice, but only when it is consumed in very large quantities.

Conclusion (for that reason)

Bevex is safe for people.

Evidence

Bevex is carcinogenic for mice, but only when consumed in very large quantities. A human would have to drink 25 cans of Bevex-sweetened drinks per day to ingest an equivalent amount to what was fed to mice in studies.

Evaluate

There is a New Concept in the Conclusion, "safe".

This creates a missing link assumption like, .

There are other ways for a sweetener being unsafe, besides causing cancer. Maybe it doesn't cause cancer but it causes heart disease.

GIVEN THAT you'd have to drink 25 cans per day to get the amount that was bad for mice,

HOW COULD WE ARGUE that Bevex isn't safe?

We could argue that people might actually drink 25 cans per day! We could also argue that people are more sensitive to Bevex than mice. Maybe for mice it takes 100mg to be harmful (25 cans' worth), but for humans, it only takes 10mg to be harmful.

Goal

Look for a missing link answer relating to "safe" or a Defender answer ruling out a potential objection that would allow us to argue that Bevex is unsafe for humans.

2.

In order for the conclusion that Bevex is safe for people to he properly drawn, which one of the following must be true?

  1. Cancer from carcinogenic substances develops

    Opposite (if anything)

    This makes it sound like humans are more sensitive to carcinogens than mice are, which actually weakens the argument. The author is assuming that the amount a human would have to ingest to be harmed is at least as great as the amount a mouse had to ingest to be harmed, and this answer actually undermines that assumption.

    1% picked this

  2. If all food additives that

    Out of Scope: Other Food Additives

    The carcinogenic properties of other food additives for mice is irrelevant to this specific argument about Bevex.

    1% picked this

  3. Correct

    People drink fewer than 25

    Why this is right

    If we negated this and said, "People do drink 25 or more cans a day," the conclusion would fall apart because it means they are at risk of ingesting harmful levels of Bevex, much like the mice were exposed to in the studies. This would allow us to argue that Bevex isn't safe for people. The author presented a rule, "If you're drinking less than 25 cans per day, then you're not ingesting an amount equivalent to the harmful amount we fed the mice." But the author never triggered this conditional by asserting, "And people definitely drink less than 25 cans per day".

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

    95% picked this

  4. People can obtain important health

    Out of Scope: Health Benefits

    Whether Bevex could have health benefits through weight control is completely beyond the scope of what the author is trying to prove. She is merely trying to convince us it's safe, i.e. not-harmful. She isn't trying to convince us it's beneficial.

    1% picked this

  5. Some of the studies done

    Irrelevant Quality

    This is trying to bait people into inferring something from a premise. The author referred to "the relevant studies", so this answer is suggesting that this implies that there were "irrelevant studies" as well. This has nothing to do with our conclusion. By "relevant studies", the author means "in the studies where we fed Bevex to mice". If there were other studies done on Bevex, does it make any difference to the author whether those studies were or weren't relevant to people? No.

    2% picked this

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