In Peru, ancient disturbances in the dark surface material of a desert show up as light-colored lines that are the width of a footpath and stretch for long distances. One group of lines branching out like rays from a single point crosses over curved lines that form a very large bird figure. Interpreting the lines in the desert as landing strips for spaceship-traveling aliens, an investigator argues that they could hardly have been Inca roads, asking, “What use to the Inca would have been closely spaced roads that ran parallel? That intersected in a sunburst pattern? That came abruptly to an end in the middle of an uninhabited plain.”

The argumentative strategy of the investigator quoted is to


(A) reject out of hand direct counter evidence to the investigator’s own interpretation

(B) introduce evidence newly discovered by the investigator which discredits the alternative interpretation

(C) support one interpretation by calling into question the plausibility of the alternative interpretation

(D) challenge the investigative methods used by those who developed the alternative interpretation

(E) show that the two competing interpretations can be reconciled with one another