#10 - Farmer: Agricultural techniques such as crop rotation

[Administrator]

Please post below with any questions!

[dtodaizzle]

So is (C) right because it strengthens the argument by introducing a bi-conditional world to the argument?

Under timed conditions, I had trouble eliminating (A) and (E)...These are essentially "conclusion boosters" right?

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi dtodaizzle,

Basically, the argument is, "it can't come from A, so it can only come from B." Answer choice C, as you noted, eliminates the possibility of a third source of research.

A and E support the idea that the government is sponsoring this research, but fail to address the idea that only the government sponsors it. Does that make sense?

[rneuman123@gmail.com]

but what confuses me is that the stimulus says that NO for profit organizations would support it. And c says that they would.

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi rneuman,

Take another look. The stimulus is talking about marketable products, and the answer choice is talking about agricultural techniques generally - C doesn't contradict the stimulus. See if you can spot that difference I'm talking about and let me know!

[rneuman123@gmail.com]

I see it. Thanks!

[jennie]

I know why I'm having difficulty with this one. Instead of identifying "only government-sponsored research investigates agricultural techniques that do not use commercial products" as the overall conclusion, I thought it was the sub-conclusion, and the overall conclusion is that "agricultural techniques... that do not use commercial products may solve agricultural problems at least as well as any technique (just that it is not adequately researched)."

What's the problem with this reading? How can I avoid making this kind of mistake?

[Who Ray]

Hi Jennie!

Watch out for when you have to add reasoning in parenthesis to your conclusion like you did just there. While it might have been necessary for prephrasing an assumption question, we need to use just what we have in the stimulus for other question types. When we try an make the first sentence the conclusion rather than background information by assuming things, we open up a can of worms.

If you find yourself having difficulty again, you can try consciously assigning phrases different roles to do a check if another reading makes more sense.

Cheers,
Who Ray

[ltowns1]

This question is interesting to me. I’ve gotten it right before and I have gotten it wrong too. This time I got it wrong. I know why I got it wrong (my prediction was off). I thought the argument assumed that marketable products do not come from agricultural techniques that do not use commercial products. Was I wrong to assume that marketable products and commercial products are two different things?

[Robert Carroll]

l,

The issue in this stimulus is not any distinction between marketable and commercial products but instead the false dilemma. The author has provided premises giving me some reason (perhaps not perfect, but some reason) for thinking that private for-profit corporations will not engage in a certain kind of research. The conclusion claims that therefore only the government will engage in that research. This works if only the government or private for-profit corporations are the kinds of entities that might ever engage in such research. But if there are other possibilities, the author is wrong to assume them away.

Robert Carroll