Farmer: Several people in the past few years have claimed to have seen

Argument:

- Several people claimed to have seen a mountain lion in this region.
- These people have no reason to lie.

Conclusion: Hence, we should start addressing this problem (implying mountain lions are present in this region)

To weaken this, we need to doubt the claim of "several people".

C. No person who claimed to have seen a mountain lion had anyone else with them at the purported sighting.
Whenever a person claimed to have seen a mountain lion, there was no one with him who could corroborate. Certainly seems to make the claim weak. Could it be that these people were under the influence of some drug and hence mistook another animal for a lion etc? It does seem to make us question the validity of the claim if in every instant, there was no second person around. It is a weak weakener, I agree, but it is relevant.

E. Recent surveys show that more than half of the people in the region report that they have never seen a mountain lion before.
More than half of the people reported that they have never seen a mountain lion before. But are these the people who reported to have seen the mountain lion? If the people who claimed to have spotted the lion had not seen a mountain lion before, then it makes their claim weak. But who these "more than half of the people" are, we don't know.

Answer (C)

Check out this video in which I discuss how this official question is different from another similar looking official question:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55QgRwZmFRo

Farmer: Several people in the past few years have claimed to have seen a mountain lion in the suburban outskirts—the latest just last month—and, while mountain lions were thought to have been driven from this entire region about twenty years ago, there is no reason for the people who reported seeing a mountain lion to have deliberately concocted a false report. Therefore, local wildlife managers should begin to urgently address the mountain lion's presence.

Type- weaken
Conclusion-local wildlife managers should begin to urgently address the mountain lion's presence.

A. Farmers in the suburban outskirts mostly raise cattle and hogs, which when fully grown are generally not attacked by mountain lions.- incorrect, cattle and hogs that have not fully grown might be attacked by mountain lions
B. Mountain lions are dissimilar in size and color to other wild animals found near the suburban outskirts.- incorrect, this strengthens the statement that people saw mountain lions
C. No person who claimed to have seen a mountain lion had anyone else with them at the purported sighting.- Correct, so people who claimed to have seen a mountain lion have no evidence to prove that they indeed saw one
D. There have been no regional reports in the past year of mountain lions migrating to the area.- incorrect
E. Recent surveys show that more than half of the people in the region report that they have never seen a mountain lion before. - incorrect, the argument states that several people claimed to have seen the mountain lion. Statement E still leaves room for several people to have seen a mountain lion before.


Answer C
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A. An over-generalized statement (in general), may qualify as a weakener.
B. Opposite, defends against a possible weakener.
C. A weakener, but a very weak statement that can easily be argued against.
D. words "past year" make this statement incorrect, otherwise a valid weakener.
E. "half of the people" : not far enough statement.

Closest Ans choices: A vs C.
Correct official Ans: C
IMO, a poor quality question as per GMAT standards

AjiteshArun :

I am not convinced with the answer. I even can't say this choice is better than others. No proof does not mean people are telling lie.
This is not a good official question I believe.
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I agree that this is a weak weakener.

Let's try replacing "mountain lion" with "aliens".

1. Several people in the past few years have claimed to have seen aliens.
2. There is no reason for the people who reported seeing an alien to have deliberately concocted a false report.
3. Therefore, the government should begin to urgently address the presence of aliens.

If it turns out that every single person who reported seeing aliens was alone at the time, we'd probably be less likely to believe them. And this is not to say that we'd think that all of them were lying. It's just that having more "eyes" on something is generally better.

Most importantly, we must remember what our task is. We are not looking to find an option that is (on its own) convincing. Instead, we are looking for the best of the 5 options presented to us. The correct option, therefore, just needs to be better than the other 4 options.
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Farmer: Several people in the past few years have claimed to have seen a mountain lion in the suburban outskirts—the latest just last month—and, while mountain lions were thought to have been driven from this entire region about twenty years ago, there is no reason for the people who reported seeing a mountain lion to have deliberately concocted a false report. Therefore, local wildlife managers should begin to urgently address the mountain lion's presence.

Which of the following would, if true, most seriously weaken the farmer's argument?

A. Farmers in the suburban outskirts mostly raise cattle and hogs, which when fully grown are generally not attacked by mountain lions.
B. Mountain lions are dissimilar in size and color to other wild animals found near the suburban outskirts.
C. No person who claimed to have seen a mountain lion had anyone else with them at the purported sighting.
D. There have been no regional reports in the past year of mountain lions migrating to the area.
E. Recent surveys show that more than half of the people in the region report that they have never seen a mountain lion before.

A brilliant question yet again from GMAC.
The focus on this question should be on the year stats.

Farmer: Several people in the past few years have claimed to have seen a mountain lion in the suburban outskirts—the latest just last month—and, while mountain lions were thought to have been driven from this entire region about twenty years ago, there is no reason for the people who reported seeing a mountain lion to have deliberately concocted a false report. Therefore, local wildlife managers should begin to urgently address the mountain lion's presence.

So , let's focus on the highlighted parts here.
Ok ...the argument says that the "wildlife managers should urgently address the matter"...thus we need to strengthen the opposite..i.e "wildlife managers should NOT urgently address the matter".
Start eliminating now:

A. Farmers in the suburban outskirts mostly raise cattle and hogs, which when fully grown are generally not attacked by mountain lions.
-what about the non fully grown ones!!--gone!

B. Mountain lions are dissimilar in size and color to other wild animals found near the suburban outskirts.
-This option actually strengths the original conclusion...i.e if lions are dissimilar in size and color, then there is not a single bit of confusion, and hence the matter should urgently be addressed.

D.There have been no regional reports in the past year of mountain lions migrating to the area.
-To eliminate this option , look at the 2nd highlighted part (last month) of the argument above...this option talks about "past year", but people have reported the sightings in the last month too..so what about the last month reporting......Gone!


E.Recent surveys show that more than half of the people in the region report that they have never seen a mountain lion before.
-This option talks about Majority (more than half)...ok...so two points here :
1)If 51% of the population have never seen a mountain lion before but the rest 49% of the population have seen and reports then definitely, urgent action needs to be taken.
2)If 98% of the population have never seen a mountain lion before but the rest 2% of the population have seen and reports then OK action can be taken but not necessarily an urgent one.
this option works as - "can be and can be not"...Gone!

C.No person who claimed to have seen a mountain lion had anyone else with them at the purported sighting.
-Finally.. this option says that any person ,who claimed to have seen the lion, saw it all alone... OK we can address the issue but not on an urgent basis...Thus it swings only one way..thus it weakens the claim that wildlife managers need to address on urgent basis.

I hope it helps!

I have a question here, how can C be a weakener when the stimulus has mentioned that people have no reason to deliberately report a false claim. When the farmer is making a statement which says that people are not lying, how can we weaken the argument by saying they are lying or having no evidence?

If something is already mentioned in the stimulus, paraphrasing it can actually weaken it? Thinking a lot over it....

Experts please help me in this VeritasKarishma GMATNinja

Posted from my mobile device

Dear VeritasKarishma,

Why A. does not weaken the urgency of the conclusion?

If farmers in the suburban outskirts mostly raise cattle and hogs, which when fully grown are generally NOT attacked by MLs, then the problem is not urgent at all because MLs pose no harm to grown hogs and cattle. I am not sure whether we have bother small baby hogs and cattle.
So, it is likely that the problem of MLs is not urgent and hence weaken the conclusion.

Please help

Option (A) tells us that mountain lions do not harm fully grown animals found in the region. But that doesn't mean that they do not harm people/kids etc. The argument discusses whether mountain lions exist in the region or not. It does not discuss what impact they have on the region. Hence option (A) is not relevant.

The argument says that "there is no reason for the people who reported seeing a mountain lion to have deliberately concocted a false report"
We do not have to assume that they are deliberately concocting false report. But perhaps they mistook another animal for a lion or were under the influence of something.

VeritasKarishma - I'm curious to hear your thoughts -

Option 'C' will qualify as attacking the premise (rather than the conclusion as is generally taught for the GMAT), correct? I selected 'C' but out of my more "general reasoning" and not GMAT reasoning. If I come across a similar situation again, how would I know which "mode" to think the question through?

If your argument says, "research shows that A is bad for health so please avoid A," you will need to attack the research to weaken the argument. Eliminating the other four options works well in this question.
In my mind, this question pushes the boundaries of a valid GMAT question but since it appears in the official guide, there isn't much I would like to say. I am reasonably certain that a live question will have a more tightly packed logic.

GMATNinja: I was so confused between C and E. Can you please help me with that?

Have you had a chance to check out this post? It discusses C and E pretty thoroughly.

Let us know if you have any more specific questions after reading that post!
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Yes. But I am still confused as the passage clearly says that "there is no reason for the people who reported seeing a mountain lion to have deliberately concocted a false report".

So to me, option C looks like it is contradicting the premise of the passage.

I understand that E is also not good. As we don't know whether the several people who have claimed to have seen the lion belong to the more that half of the community (option E). But still, it creates a doubt.

Where am I making a mistake? GMATNinja

I also had the same thinking that we should take the premise at face value and not weaken the premise.
I was thinking thinking that the author claims that the managers should address the problem of lions and we need to find an answer that goes against the conclusion and supports that we maybe do not need to address the lion problem. I was stuck between A and C and chose A because it shows that lions are not too much of an issue to address if lions don't prey on adult livestock. I eliminated choice C because it was weakening the premise and not necessarily attacking the conclusion.

VeritasKarishma - Can you please elaborate on when we need to doubt the premise? Is it okay to do that when the premise is a claim, opinion or belief of others instead of facts?

The premise says "people claimed to have seen a lion". It does not say that people saw a lion.
The only thing we need to take to be true is that people claimed to have seen. Whether they actually did see, we don't know.

Ok, let's take a look at (E) first, to see why that cannot be the answer to this question before we take another look at (C).

We can still use the passage breakdown from this post as it still applies here.

(E) tells us:

We don't know who these people are that have never seen a mountain lion before. They could be no overlap between the group of people mentioned in (E) and the group of people from the passage that claim to have seen a mountain lion.

If there is no overlap between the groups, then (E) does not weaken the argument at all. It would be talking about a group of people that are not involved in the passage's argument.

Since you cannot tell whether the people (E) is referring to are relevant to the argument, it cannot create doubt and cannot be the answer to this question.

Now, we'll take a closer look at (C) to see if we can clear up your confusion but first let's examine the part of the passage you quote:

"there is no reason for the people who reported seeing a mountain lion to have deliberately concocted a false report."

From this, we can assume that the people making the reports of mountain lions are acting in good faith. These people are not trying to deceive us, they genuinely believe they saw a mountain lion.

Here's (C) again:

This tells us that no one who claimed to see a mountain lion had someone to back up their story. This doesn't contradict the part of the passage quoted above because there's nothing in (C) to suggest the people claiming to have seen a mountain lion are being dishonest, they were just alone.

The people making these reports can still genuinely believe that they'd seen a mountain lion but they might have been mistaken. What they thought was a mountain lion might have been hidden behind trees or in some long grass, making it difficult for them to see what kind of animal was there. As VeritasKarishma said in her post, the person making the claim may have been under the influence of a drug and mistook another animal for a lion.

The argument is not weakened by the people claiming to have seen a mountain lion being dishonest -- this would contradict the part of the passage you quote. The argument is weakened by the claim being unreliable because there was no one else there to back-up the claim. This makes (C) our final answer.

I hope that helps!
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My thoughts : Why C is not better than E:

I agree that E does need additional assumption to make it a weakener but so does C. Moreover C tries to imply that people who sighted the mountain lion are lying , which is trying to falsify the premise ( that they have no intention to lie) .

If we accept that they must have made a genuine mistake in concluding a different animal as mountain Lion, this statement in itself is an additional assumption.

Can anyone help me in systematic approach to clarifying the confusion?