#8 - Letter to the editor: Your article was unjustified in

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Main Point. The correct answer choice is (E)

This letter to the editor is written to assert that a newspaper’s criticism of a particular previously
made claim was unjustified. This claim, made by environmentalists, was that the number of wolves
hunted and killed is greater than the number of wolves born each year on Vancouver Island.

The newspaper pointed out that the number of wolves on the island has remained constant for the last
two decades, and claimed that this disproved the environmentalist claim. What the newspaper failed
to account for, says this editorial letter writer, is that during those last two decades, environmentalists
have been bringing in wolves from the outside to protect against the threat of extinction. The letter
can be somewhat difficult to follow, but when the components of the argument are simplified, it
breaks down like this:

• Premise: The environmentalists claimed that wolves on the island were being hunted
  and killed at a rate faster than they could reproduce.
  
  Premise: The newspaper criticized this environmentalist claim based on the fact that
  the wolf population has remained constant over the last 20 years, refuting the
  claim.
  
  Premise: That statistic doesn’t account for the outside wolves brought to the island.
  
  Conclusion: The newspaper was unjustified in its critique.

The stimulus is followed by a Main Point question, so the correct answer choice will provide the
conclusion above.

Answer choice (A): This is a premise, not the conclusion of the editorial letter, so it can be safely
eliminated.

Answer choice (B): The letter writer actually believes that more wolves are killed by hunters each
year than are born on the island. Since this choice isn’t even accurate according to the facts in the
stimulus, it cannot be the main point of the argument.

Answer choice (C): While this is likely a belief of the letter writer’s, it is not the main point of the
argument; the main point of the letter, as discussed above, is that the newspaper’s critique (of the
previous environmentalist claim) was unjustified.

Answer choice (D): The letter writer does not take issue with the statistic that shows the number of
wolves on the island to have remained constant. Rather, the author believes that this maintenance of
the population is partly attributable to the extra wolves that are being introduced onto the island by
the environmentalists.

Answer choice (E): This is the correct answer choice, although the wording may be somewhat
confusing, this is the choice that says the newspaper’s critique was unjustified, which is the main
point of the letter writer’s argument.

[cornflakes]

Hi Powerscore,

I recognize the flaw in B - I unfortunately did not detect the difference of "as many" versus "more" - which made me revert to seeing both B and E as roughly equivalent, and E being a more convoluted answer, I elected for B.

If B were to state "more" instead of "as many", would it be a correct answer choice? Looking back at it, it seems more narrow than E. Wouldn't we be looking for something here that more plainly states that the writer's criticism was unjust? It seem like E, albeit in a roundabout way, does this a bit more clearly than B (in its "more" forms) would. Therefore, would this lack of directly mentioning anything about the criticism in the answer also be a flaw of B, since it only states what the criticism is arguing against?

Thanks.

[Adam Tyson]

The main point of an argument is its conclusion, cornflakes. Even if answer B were to say "more wolves are killed each year...", that would not be the conclusion of the argument. Instead, it would be a premise used to support the conclusion that the criticism in the article is unjustified. The author isn't trying to prove anything about the wolves, but is trying to prove that the article was wrong!

Focus on finding the conclusion in the stimulus, and then select the answer that best restates that conclusion, rather than restating some of the support for that conclusion. That's what main point questions are all about.