#15 - Columnist: Many car manufacturers trumpet their cars'

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi there farmer,

The key to circular reasoning is that there is no evidence given for the claim, other than the claim itself. Here, we have evidence: the columnist's experience. It may not be good evidence, but it is evidence.

Answer choice (D) here isn't even really a circular flaw though. It's a flaw about what the manufacturers do or don't know. But the big problem here is that it doesn't describe the information in the stimulus. The stimulus isn't about minimum standards. The stimulus is about meeting the standards manufacturers themselves report. That's a different situation, and thus answer choice (D) isn't describing what we see in the stimulus.

Hope that helps!

[hadimadi]

Hi,

I find A quite unrealistic:

There are millions of cars produced by machines which are nearly similar. The likelihood that 3 cars from manufacturers all have inflated fuel economy seems very far to me.

I somehow can't get away from B, maybe you could help me. The statement says:

3 cars underdelivered on the fuel economy promise -> FE is inflated by manufacturer

Now, preassuming B, I get:

3 cars underdelivered on the fuel economy promise AND driving conditions are the same everywhere -> FE is inflated

It is easier for the Columnist to get to this flawed argument now, because he protects himself at least against criticism that he drove in disadvantegous areas for fuel economy.

So it's likely to me that he might have preassumed that rather than A, please help

[Robert Carroll]

hadimadi,

Out of what you call many millions of cars, three cars' having fuel economy not meeting the manufacturers' standards sounds to me very possibly to be three outliers, not three cars representative of the many millions of cars. The author needs to show that these three cars are representative of the many millions you talk about. It seems that, if anything, you're actually showing why the argument is wrong in the way answer choice (A) indicated.

The columnist does seem to be assuming that they drove in normal driving conditions. Nothing about that involves a presumption that driving conditions are the same in every geographical region. What about the regions the columnist was never in in their three cars? Why would they be presuming anything about those conditions?

Robert Carroll