Logical Reasoning

PT8 · S4 · Q18 In order to control the deer

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In order to control the deer population, a biologist has proposed injecting female deer during breeding season with 10 milligrams of a hormone that would suppress fertility.

Conclusion

The treatment of injecting female deer with 10mg of hormone would be safe.

Evidence (since)

Humans can ingest up to 10 milligrams of the hormone a day without any adverse effects.

No one would eat even one entire deer a day.

Evaluate

It feels hard to disagree with the author at first, but let's try to solve this riddle:

GIVEN THAT the deer would only have 10mg of hormone in it, you can eat up to 10mg a day w/o any bad effects, and no one is eating an entire deer,

HOW COULD WE SAY THAT eating a treated dear will not be safe?

It's tough to figure out a way around the conclusion, since anything under 10mg a day is supposedly "no adverse effects at all". If something has no adverse effects, then we'd have to consider it safe.

So how do we possibly get a deer-eater to pass that 10mg mark?

Goal

Look for an answer that, if negated, would weaken the argument by suggesting a way that a deer-eating human might still pass that dangerous 10mg threshold, even though we're only injecting 10mg into the deer.

18.

The biologist’s response to critics of the proposal is based on which one of the following assumptions?

People would be notified of
Out of Scope: people notified
Notifying people when deer are treated is not directly related to the argument's concern about the hormone levels after the deer have been treated and people consume them.
2% picked this
The hormone that would be
Out of Scope: chemical similarity
The author hasn't made any assumption that this hormone is similar or different to other things. This answer is speculating a causal backstory for how we have a hormone that can suppress fertility, but it doesn't have to be chemically similar to contraceptives in humans.
7% picked this
Hunting season for deer could
Out of Scope: scheduling hunting season
The author is never talking about hunting season at all, let alone making suggestions about the scheduling of it.
2% picked this
Correct
The hormone in question does
Why this is right
This has the lovable Defender "not", so we negate it and see if it weakens. If this hormone DOES occur naturally in female deer, would that weaken? Yes! That gives us a way to argue that even though we're only injecting the deer with 10mg, someone who eats the deer may end up ingesting more than that, because they would consume not only the injected hormone but also the naturally occurring hormone. Maybe a thick cut of female deer meat would include 5mg of naturally occurring hormone and 5mg of injected hormone, causing the human to eat a dangerous dose.
Skill tested: Necessary Assumption · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
63% picked this
Most people do not consider
Out of Scope: most people
The word "most" is famously wrong on Necessary Assumption 98% of the time. This argument doesn't care whether 51% or 49% of people consider deer meat to be part of their daily diet.
27% picked this

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