#3 - The manager of a nuclear power plant defended the claim that the plant was safe by revealing it

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Weaken—Numbers and Percentages, Cause and Effect. The correct answer choice is (E).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E): This is the correct answer choice.

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[LeslyLSATinLA]

Can someone explain why D is wrong? I chose D because because the conclusion is that the plant is safer than most other plants where the employees could work. So with that, I was thinking about the unreported injuries. But now as I'm writing this, I'm focusing on the "could work" part. So is answer choice E correct because it's less likely to be true that people will have medical issues once they leave the plants they are assigned to?

[Robert Carroll]

Lesly,

Answer choice (D) indicates that workers file only a few lawsuits. That doesn't mean there are unreported injuries - few lawsuits can be filed because there aren't many injuries to form the bases of lawsuits. Nothing about that answer indicates that injuries were many, but unreported. Answer choice (E), on the other hand, indicates exactly that - injuries may not be present yet. The stimulus claims that the injury rate for "current workers" is rather low. Answer choice (E) gives a reason why the rate for "current workers" may not reflect the actually injury rate, because workers may be injured in ways not detectable until after they leave their jobs (and thus are no longer "current workers"). It's in fact more likely to be true that they will have medical issues later, which is why this weakens the argument.

Robert Carroll

[Cflores17]

Is the causality issue "Data used is in error"?

[Adam Tyson]

The stimulus isn't explicitly causal, Cflores17, but the correct answer is. The causal issue here is that working in a nuclear power plant can cause health problems that appear much later in life. Thus, looking only at injuries among current employees means overlooking these other harmful effects. Yes, to some extent then, it's about the data, because the argument fails to account for some other relevant data.