QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: Apples probably weren’t cultivated in the region 5,000 years ago.

Reasoning: Wild apples are smaller than the apples we grow today. 5,000 years ago, when people first started cultivating fruit, the only apples found in the region from that time were the size of wild apples.

ANALYSIS: You may know that cultivation changes foods over time. Early cultivated fruits came from wild fruits, so they would have been the same size. Then slowly over the years, fruit farmers would have selected larger apples to grow.

So it wouldn’t be surprised if early cultivated apples were small. There simply hadn’t been enough time for them to grow.

___________

A. The conclusion was about what was true in this region. Other regions don’t matter.

B.CORRECT. This is a very valid criticism. Cultivation can only change fruits over a long period of time. Every scientist and horticulturist knows this. The argument should have eliminated this possibility.

C. The argument didn’t say that there are no medium sizes apples (e.g. maybe the apples fed to animals?). An answer can’t be a flaw if it didn’t happen.

D.This answer describes an argument that contradicts itself. That didn’t happen in the stimulus.

E. This describes circular reasoning. This didn’t happen in the argument.
Example of flaw: This apple will be small because apples are small.

AshutoshB, the solution is of some other question and does not belong here.

Agricultural scientist: Wild apples are considerably smaller than cultivated apples found in supermarkets. In one particular region, archaeologists have looked for remains of cultivated apples dating from 5,000 years ago, around the time people first started cultivating fruit. But the only remains of apples that archaeologists have found from this period are from fruits the same size as the wild apples native to the region. So apples were probably not cultivated in this region 5,000 years ago.

The agricultural scientist's argument is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that the argument

(A) fails to consider that even if a plant was not cultivated in a given region at a specific time, it may have been cultivated in nearby regions at that time"
The argument talks of that specific region itself and does not talk of cultivation in general in that period. So choice is out of scope

(B) fails to consider that plants that have been cultivated for only a short time may tend to resemble their wild counterparts much more closely than plants that have been cultivated for a long time"
CORRECT. we are talking of the remnants of the earliest cultivated apples, it may be that the earliest were of the same size of wild apples and it is now that the sizes have become visibly different

(C) takes for granted that all apples are either the size of wild apples or the size of the cultivated apples now found in supermarkets"
out of scope

(D) employs a premise that is incompatible with the conclusion it is supposed to justify"
uses the premise that is compatible. Discovery of remains of earliest cultivated apples correctly relates to the conclusion

(E) uses a claim that presupposes the truth of its main conclusion as part of the justification for that conclusion
There is only one conclusion. so wrong

B
_________________

Thanks for pointing out, Corrected the response

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