#8 - Would it be right for the government to abandon efforts

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Main Point. The correct answer chioce is (A)

The author begins her argument with a rhetorical question: should the government abandon efforts to determine at what levels to allow toxic substances in our food supply. As you can expect, her answer is, "no." The rest of the stimulus merely explains why this would be a bad idea.

Because this is a Main Point question, having a solid grasp of the precise nature and scope of the conclusion will be crucial — in fact, it is often the only thing you need to do in order to answer the question correctly.

Answer choice (A): This is the correct answer choice. If the author's conclusion is that the government should not abandon efforts to determine at what levels to allow toxic substances in our food supply, this is just another way of saying that the government should continue trying to determine the acceptable levels for these substances.

Answer choice (B): It is clear from the stimulus that we can never be certain of having reduced the concentration of any substance to zero. The point is that since "zero" is not a viable alternative to determining the acceptable levels of toxic substances, further efforts are warranted. This answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (C): While this is an inference that we can draw from the stimulus, main point questions require us to summarize the argument. This answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (D): Just like answer choice (C), this is an inference that we can draw from the last sentence in the stimulus. However, main point questions require us to summarize the argument, not answer a Must Be True question. This answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (E): It is not necessary that the government refine its methods of detecting toxic substances in our food supply; the author is only advocating not abandoning the efforts to determine what constitutes an acceptable level of such substances. It is unclear what precisely such efforts will entail. This answer choice is incorrect.

[ay514]

Hello,

I was just wondering how I would come to the conclusion that the government should continue to determine the levels of toxicity. I felt that the argument states the government should abandon efforts to determine levels if they can reasonably argue that the level is zero and last sentence seems to indicate that you can never conclude that the level is definitely zero but that it may be very close to zero (beyond detection) so further efforts to find acceptable levels is unnecessary. Please let me know what I'm missing here. Thank you!!

[Nikki Siclunov]

The author poses the question, "should the government abandon efforts to determine acceptable levels of toxic substances in our food supply?" The answer is: only if the acceptable level is zero:

Abandon efforts ---> Acceptable level of toxic substances is zero.

However, the information in the second part of the stimulus indicates that we can never be certain of having reduced the concentration of toxic substances to zero. Therefore, using the contrapositive property of the conditional relationship (above) we can conclude that the government should NOT abandon its efforts to determine acceptable levels of toxic substances in our food supply. In other words, they should continue trying to determine these levels.

[rameday]

How do we know that the stimulus is advocating that the government should not abadon their efforts to determine at what levels to allow toxic substances in food supply?

Also for MP questions that feature a question, is the MP typically just the answer to that question?

I saw in the explanation that we just need to be aware of the nature and scope of the conclusion when handling MP questions? Could you clarify what that means?

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi rameday,

Being aware of the nature and scope of the conclusion means that you want to pay attention to not only what is being concluded, but also how broad that conclusion is; what exactly does the conclusion cover?

MP questions that contain a question will not always have the MP as the answer to the question; this will vary, so you wouldn't want to count on that.

Finally, we know that it is advocating for the government to continue trying to determine acceptable levels because the stimulus tells us the only scenario when the government should abandon its efforts would be if the only acceptable level of toxic substances is zero, and then goes on to explain that can't be true since all food contains toxic substances in some level.

Hope that helps!

[PositiveThinker]

Was just doing this question. It was tough or me to find the conclusion but i understand now. Came here to see if anyone else had the same issue i had. Finding the conclusions are key!

[isabellecollingwood]

Hello,

The "Only if it can reasonably be argued that the only acceptable level of toxic substances in food is zero" part is confusing me. Who exactly would be arguing this?

The second part of the stimulus seems to indicate that there is never any way to ensure that the level is zero, and that it is pointless to try and get to that point since many natural toxic substances cause no harm anyways. So wouldn't this mean that it is unreasonable to try and argue that only a level of zero is acceptable, thus the government should abandon efforts?

Thanks!

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Isabelle,

This stimulus starts off with a rhetorical question, but there's only one speaker the whole stimulus. It's all one complete argument.

It might be helpful to look at this one conditionally. Should the government abandon efforts to set a safe toxic level in foods? Only if that level is zero. Only is our necessary indicator here.

Government abandon efforts to set safe level of toxins that level is zero.

The rest of the argument is showing why that level can never be zero. First, toxins are naturally in many foods in non-toxic levels, and second, the best we could do is zero detectable amount, which is different than zero.

Therefore, we can say

that level is zero

That lets us draw the contrapositive of the original statement and conclude the government should not abandon its efforts.

Hope that helps!

[Esquire123]

This stimulus really threw me off. I think the biggest confusion for me came with the use of the term, "however." To me "however" indicates a pivot in the author's point of view. So at the beginning the author was saying "yes, the government should abandon efforts to determine levels of toxins." Then, the stimulus goes on to day "However.." Should the use of "however" been enough of a clue to recognize that the author was pivoting their view to, "the government should not stop its efforts to identify toxins? For some reason the actual stimulus isn't making sense to me so I'm trying to figure out if the structure of the stimulus can help me figure out why A is the correct answer choice.

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Esquire123,

You are right that the word "however" is an important contradiction indicator, but it is critical to understanding what the author of the argument is saying in the second sentence and then what contradicts it in the third sentence.

First, the author is definitely NOT saying "yes, the government should abandon efforts to determine levels of toxins." Instead, what the author is saying is that there is only one situation in which it might make sense for the government to abandon efforts to determine levels of toxins, and that situation would be if we had a zero toxin level policy. Hypothetically, if we were able to get rid of all toxins in all foods and we decided this was our policy, what would be the point of determining what levels of toxins are safe because none of the foods would have any toxins anyway?

What follows in the next sentence is basically saying that the one possible situation where it might make sense to abandon efforts to determine the safe levels of toxins (i.e. the situation where we have zero toxin policy) ain't gonna happen because virtually all foods have some toxins. In this case, the word "however" is contradicting the one possible situation that might make sense to abandon the efforts to determine safe levels of toxins.

Now you might ask, "well even if virtually all foods have some toxins, can't we get rid of them?" The rest of the argument explains that we don't have the technology to be 100% sure that all of the toxins are gone, so that's a no go.

Given that the one possible exception has been ruled out, we get the implied conclusion that the government should not abandon the efforts (i.e. should continue the efforts).