Environmentalist: The commissioner of the Fish and Game Authority woul

Fact1 (commissioner)
increases in the number of marine fish caught demonstrate that this resource is no longer endangered.
Fact2 (Environmentalist counters Fact1 with an analogy) This is a specious
argument, as unsound as it would be to assert that the ever-increasing rate at which rain forests are being cut down demonstrates a lack of danger to that resource.
Fact 3 (Environmentalist ) The real cause of the increased fish-catch is a greater efficiency in using technologies that deplete resources.

In Fact 3 the author provides a alternate theory to the increased fish-catch, hence he argues against the the commissioner's claim that the fish are not endangered.

Question - The environmentalist's statements, if true, best support which of the following as a conclusion? Fact1 is wrong Fact 2 & 3 is right, with this the conclusion given in choice E can safely be drawn.

Question Stem
The environmentalist's statements, if true, best support which of the following as a conclusion?
Inference Question - So the answer MUST BE TRUE.

Argument
Environmentalist: The commissioner of the Fish and Game Authority would have the public believe that increases in the number of marine fish caught demonstrate that this resource is no longer endangered. This is a specious argument, as unsound as it would be to assert that the ever-increasing rate at which rain forests are being cut down demonstrates a lack of danger to that resource. The real cause of the increased fish-catch is a greater efficiency in using technologies that deplete resources.

Pre-thinking
Marine Fish is endangered

Answer Choices

(A) The use of technology is the reason for the increasing encroachment of people on nature.
INCORRECT ANSWER - Fish and Forests is not equal to nature. There are many other things that are a part of nature. So we can make this generalization

(B) It is possible to determine how many fish are in the sea in some way other than by catching fish.
INCORRECT ANSWER - Nothing in the passage suggests that there is a method to determine the fish in the sea.

(C) The proportion of marine fish that are caught is as high as the proportion of rain forest trees that are cut
down each year.
INCORRECT ANSWER - The comparison between proportion of fish and rain forest trees is irrelevant. Nothing in the passage suggest this.

(D) Modern technologies waste resources by catching inedible fish.
INCORRECT ANSWER - Inedible Fish - This is outside the scope of the argument

(E) Marine fish continue to be an endangered resource.
CORRECT ANSWER - "specious argument" tells us that commissioner is not right and that marine fish still continue to be an endangered resource.

Hi Guys,

Sorry to bring this thread alive again. But I was re-doing the CR questions from Og-12 and I got to this question.
While I know the answer E is correct for its definite reasons, I was kinda stuck with A here and was thinking of a definite way to rule it out. I see that A talks about: the use of technology being "the" reason of increasing encroachment of people on nature. I think A goes a little far ahead with this proposition. Also Environmentalists' main idea was the marine fishes and not the encroachment of nature.

Just wanted to bring this up and see what are the different reasons to rule out A.

I agree with your reasoning ... since encroachment is totally different concern .. he is actually drawing a relation between the deletion of the fish resource and the rain forest ... here the author is not pointing to the process they follow such as encroachment, using net etc ...

Environmentalist: The commissioner of the Fish and Game Authority would have the public believe that increases
in the number of marine fish caught demonstrate that this resource is no longer endangered. This is a specious
argument, as unsound as it would be to assert that the ever-increasing rate at which rain forests are being cut
down demonstrates a lack of danger to that resource. The real cause of the increased fish-catch is a greater
efficiency in using technologies that deplete resources.

The environmentalist's statements, if true, best support which of the following as a conclusion?
(A) The use of technology is the reason for the increasing encroachment of people on nature. Technology is only referred to in the case of the marine fish.
(B) It is possible to determine how many fish are in the sea in some way other than by catching fish.not supported
(C) The proportion of marine fish that are caught is as high as the proportion of rain forest trees that are cut
down each year.A comparison is made but no numbers are given.
(D) Modern technologies waste resources by catching inedible fish.not supported
(E) Marine fish continue to be an endangered resource. The author refutes the claim that the increased numbers demonstrates that the "resource is no longer endangered."

Environmentalist: The commissioner of the Fish and Game Authority would have the public believe that increases in the number of marine fish caught demonstrate that this resource is no longer endangered. This is a specious argument, as unsound as it would be to assert that the ever-increasing rate at which rain forests are being cut down demonstrates a lack of danger to that resource. The real cause of the increased fish-catch is a greater efficiency in using technologies that deplete resources.

The environmentalist's statements, if true, best support which of the following as a conclusion?

(A) The use of technology is the reason for the increasing encroachment of people on nature.
" On nature ". We do not know that yet. We have been only told about fishes in particular which is one part of nature.

(8) It is possible to determine how many fish are in the sea in some way other than by catching fish.
We are not concerned about how to count no. of fishes here.

(C) The proportion of marine fish that are caught is as high as the proportion of rain forest trees that are cut down each year.
[color=#ffff00]No real numbers have been given for the proportions to be compared.[/color]

(D) Modern technologies waste resources by catching inedible fish.
We can't really comment on that.

(E) Marine fish continue to be an endangered resource.
After all the POE, this statement is safe.

Environmentalist: The commissioner of the Fish and Game Authority would have the public believe that increases in the number of marine fish caught demonstrate that this resource is no longer endangered. This is a specious argument, as unsound as it would be to assert that the ever-increasing rate at which rain forests are being cut down demonstrates a lack of danger to that resource. The real cause of the increased fish-catch is a greater efficiency in using technologies that deplete resources.

The environmentalist's statements, if true, best support which of the following as a conclusion?

(A) The use of technology is the reason for the increasing encroachment of people on nature.
It sounds good, but nowhere is said that this is the reason - it is speculation
(8) It is possible to determine how many fish are in the sea in some way other than by catching fish.
Nothing is said about it
(C) The proportion of marine fish that are caught is as high as the proportion of rain forest trees that are cut down each year.
We can not know it
(D) Modern technologies waste resources by catching inedible fish.
Totally out of scope
(E) Marine fish continue to be an endangered resource.
That's it. The environmentalist gives an analogy about forest that shows that commisioner says some kind of crap. And then tells about real cause for increased amount of caught fish

Well the thing that struck me here was continue to be endangered. How can we say that it still continue to be endangered?. What I could infer was this: Species is an endangered species.

Please help

I hope my analysis of the argument helps:

Environmentalist: The commissioner of the Fish and Game Authority would have the public believe that increases in the number of marine fish caught demonstrate that this resource is no longer endangered. This is a specious argument, as unsound as it would be to assert that the ever-increasing rate at which rain forests are being cut down demonstrates a lack of danger to that resource. The real cause of the increased fish-catch is a greater efficiency in using technologies that deplete resources.

The environmentalist's statements, if true, best support which of the following as a conclusion?

Argument Analysis: FGA would want public to believe that increased number of fish caught => Marine Fish are no longer endangered but this argument raises serious doubt. It would be a folly to think that the more number of trees cut a particular time means that there is no danger to that resource. In fact, the real reason for increased fish catch is greater efficiency in fish catching technology.

Prethinking: FGA are telling a lie that the marine fish species are no longer endangered i.e marine fish species are still endangered.

(A) The use of technology is the reason for the increasing encroachment of people on nature.
Incorrect: I picked this initially not really having put much thought into the argument. This is a general statement and we cannot conclude from the above argument that technology usage is the reason for increasing intrusion of people on nature in general.

(B) It is possible to determine how many fish are in the sea in some way other than by catching fish.
Incorrect: The argument is talking about the reason for the increased number of fish caught and not the method by which caught fish are counted.

(C) The proportion of marine fish that are caught is as high as the proportion of rain forest trees that are cut down each year.
Incorrect: There is nothing in the argument given that links these two facts together. In fact the rain forest was taken in as an analogy rather than a direct comparison between the rain forest decline and the marine fish decimation.

(D) Modern technologies waste resources by catching inedible fish.
Incorrect: There is nothing in the argument that helps us conclude about inedible fish being caught by modern technologies.

(E) Marine fish continue to be an endangered resource.
Correct: Having done a bit of pre-thinking, it is possible to conclude that what the FGA states i.e marine fish species is no longer endangered is not true and that the marine fish species is still endangered or rather continues to be endangered.

Environmentalist: The commissioner of the Fish and Game Authority would have the public believe that increases in the number of marine fish caught demonstrate that this resource is no longer endangered. This is a specious argument, as unsound as it would be to assert that the ever-increasing rate at which rain forests are being cut down demonstrates a lack of danger to that resource. The real cause of the increased fish-catch is a greater efficiency in using technologies that deplete resources.

The environmentalist's statements, if true, best support which of the following as a conclusion?

Okay this is an inference question. While I was able to figure out that option E was correct, I was stuck with option B for a while, so posting in case someone has a similar doubt in the future.

(B) It is possible to determine how many fish are in the sea in some way other than by catching fish.
My interpretation of the statement was the following: the environmentalist seems to be claiming that marine fish is still endangered (option E).How can s/he say that without knowing how many fishes exist? And how would s/he get to know that? Clearly, if catching fishes is not enough, there must be some other way to determine how many fish are in the sea.

The problem with my argument was that the environmentalist never addresses the underlined part in my reasoning, i.e. s/he never addresses numbers -- how many fishes were or are in the sea--and simply implies that they are endangered by giving an analogy followed by a justification of why more fishes might be caught now.

The commissioner of the Fish and Game Authority would have the public believe that increases in the number of marine fish caught demonstrate that this resource is no longer endangered. [b]This is a specious argument,[/b] as unsound as it would be to assert that the ever-increasing rate at which rain forests are being cut down demonstrates a lack of danger to that resource. The real cause of the increased fish-catch is a greater efficiency in using technologies that deplete resources

See the highlighted blue portions - Comissioner of Fish is saying this + He makes a statement (Marine fish isnt endangered) and says its a specious argument which means the exact opposite is concluded. We can quickly come to E. Now some people might say A but the use of technology is given more as an example to contradict the earlier argument.

Hello experts, ThatDudeKnows ReedArnoldMPREP AndrewN
How to approach a conclusion question.
after reading the whole argument and the last sentence,

choice B strengthens the idea that technology do infact increase the chance of catching the fish--> thereby, suggesting that high no of fish caught could still mean that fish are endangered. because because high number doesn't mean fish are abundant, its just because of technology, people are more efficient in catching fish.

SO, B, It is possible to determine how many fish are in the sea in some way(technology implied) other than by catching fish.

So, B could be our conclusion.

The technology mentioned in the passage is "technologies that deplete resources." The implication is that the technologies are ones used for catching fish, not technologies that can be used to count fish. So, the passage doesn't mention any way other than by catching fish to determine how many fish are in the sea.

Thus, choice (B) isn't supported by the passage.

Hello Experts,

GMATNinja , RonTargetTestPrep , KarishmaB
MartyTargetTestPrep

Lets breakdown the stimulus:-

Environmentalist Claim:-

Increases in the number of marine fish caught demonstrate that this resource is no longer endangered

Authors Claim:-

The Environmentalist reasoning is Crap.
Author gives example of Rain Forests.
"Just because rain forests are being cut down at ever-increasing rate , we cannot conclude that there is lack of danger to rain forests resource."
Author points out the real reason for increased fish- catch => " Greater efficiency in using technologies that deplete resources"

Now,
I follow the POE process to answer CR questions.
I kept option A and E at bay. I easily eliminated options B C and D.

I went with A ,but the answer is E

I donot agree with Choice E.
Just because increases in the number of marine fish caught is not demonstrative that this resource is no longer endangered,
we cannot infer that Marine Fish continue to be an endangered resource.

Nowhere in the passage it has been mentioned that Marine Fish are endangered resource.

Also ,
Just the way ,
No longer endangered is not equal to in abundance
Similarly
May be endangered is not equal to endangered.

Please help me .

Hi PriyamRathor.

The passage begins by saying the following:

The commissioner of the Fish and Game Authority would have the public believe that increases in the number of marine fish caught demonstrate that this resource is no longer endangered.

The implication of that statement is that, if the commissioner's argument is not valid, then it is not the case that "this resource is no longer endangered." Rather, it is the case that "this resource," marine fish, IS endangered.

Then, the author goes on to show that the commissioner's argument is not valid.

Thus, what follows from the passage is what (E) says, " Marine fish continue to be an endangered resource."

We cannot conclude a generic statement from a couple of specific examples.
Say if I say "Crows fly" and "pigeons fly" so this means "all birds fly", is that acceptable? No, there could be some birds that don't fly.
Similarly, we cannot conclude about the reason for encroachment on nature using the example of just fishing and rainforests. Hence (A) is certainly not supported.

As for (E), note the use of "this resource is no longer endangered" in the argument. If we say something is NO LONGER endangered, it means it was endangered before. The passage also tells us that "the real cause of the increased fish-catch is a greater efficiency in using technologies that deplete resources." The question stem tells us that the environmentalist's statements are true i.e. they are all premises. We are looking for a conclusion.
Of the given options, the best supported one is that fish are still endangered.
Answer (E)

The environmentalist's argument is that the increased number of fish caught does not demonstrate the lack of endangerment of the marine fish resource. The argument attributes the increase to greater efficiency in using technologies that deplete resources. To determine which conclusion is best supported by the environmentalist's statements, let's evaluate each option:

A. The environmentalist's statements do not explicitly suggest that the use of technology is the reason for the increasing encroachment of people on nature. The argument focuses on the increased efficiency in technology leading to the depletion of resources, but it does not directly address encroachment.

B. The environmentalist's argument does not discuss alternative ways to determine the number of fish in the sea. The focus is on the flawed reasoning behind using increased fish catch as evidence of a lack of endangerment. Therefore, this option is not supported by the environmentalist's statements.

C. The environmentalist's argument does not make a comparison between the proportion of marine fish caught and the proportion of rainforest trees cut down each year. It emphasizes the flawed reasoning behind using increased fish catch as evidence of a lack of endangerment, rather than drawing a parallel between the two resources.

D. The environmentalist's argument does not directly address the wastage of resources by catching inedible fish. It highlights the greater efficiency in technology leading to resource depletion but does not specify the wastage of resources in catching inedible fish. Therefore, this option is not strongly supported by the environmentalist's statements.

E. The environmentalist's argument implies that marine fish are still an endangered resource. The argument rejects the idea that increased fish catch indicates a lack of endangerment, suggesting that the resource is still at risk. This conclusion aligns with the environmentalist's viewpoint and is best supported by their statements.

Based on the analysis, option E, "Marine fish continue to be an endangered resource," is the conclusion best supported by the environmentalist's statements.