#4 - Industrialist: Environmentalists contend that emissions from our factory pose a health risk to

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Flaw in the Reasoning. The correct answer choice is (C).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

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

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

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

[nmolho26]

I'm confused why E is not the answer here. I understand now, seeing the answer, that the author did not substantiate his claim with any testimony from experts, but didn't the author also use two different notions of the term "health risk?" In the first sentence, the author is talking about "health risks" but says that only trained scientists can determine whether these emissions are "dangerous." In another question I feel like E would be the answer and the explanation would say: well the author was talking about identifying "health risks" but then said that only scientists can determine "danger" and these two terms are not equivalent. Can someone provide guidance for how much/when I should scrutinize the subtle differences between words and when I should not? It seems a little arbitrary to me at this point. Thanks!

[Luke Haqq]

Hi nmolho26!

Answer choice (E) states that the argument "equivocates between two different notions of the term 'health risk,'" but you only identified one notion. For something like answer choice (E) to be correct, you'd want multiple different uses or definitions of a key term. So here, a "health risk" might be defined as something that is dangerous, but we'd then want an additional definition that somehow defines it differently.