Activist: Food producers irradiate food in order to prolong its shelf

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION

The structure of the argument is as follows: Premise: Food producers irradiate food in order to prolong its shelf life. Premise: Five animal studies were recently conducted to investigate whether this process alters food in a way that could be dangerous to people who eat it. The studies concluded that irradiated food is safe for humans to eat. Premise: These studies were subsequently found by a panel of independent scientists to be seriously flawed in their methodology. Conclusion: Irradiated food is not safe for human consumption. The author uses the fact that the studies were flawed to conclude that irradiated food is not safe for human consumption. Is this a reasonable conclusion? No. The studies purported to prove that irradiated food is safe. The fact that the studies used flawed methodology should have been used to prove that the studies did not prove that irradiated food was safe. Instead, the activist takes the argument too far, believing that because the studies did not prove that irradiated food is safe, therefore irradiated food is not safe. Here “Some evidence against a position is taken to prove that position is false.” Answer choice (A) perfectly describes this mistake.

Answer choice (B): Use the Fact Test to easily eliminate this answer. Although past studies were shown to have methodological flaws, this evidence is not used to prove that methodologically sound alternatives are impossible to achieve.

Answer choice (C): It’s true, the argument does fail to consider the possibility that a non-flawed study might provide only weak support for its conclusion. But—and this is the critical question—is that a flaw in the reasoning of the activist? No, it is perfectly acceptable for the author to ignore an issue (non-flawed studies) that does not relate to his argument. Remember, the correct answer choice must describe a flaw in the reasoning of the argument, not just something that occurred in the argument.

Answer choice (D): As with answer choice (C), the author has failed to consider the statement in this answer choice. But is this a flaw? No. The fact that animal testing is widely done and the results are accepted as indicative of possible problems with humans falls under the “commonsense information” discussed back in Chapter Two. Testing products on animals is a current fact of life, and the author made a reasoning error by failing to consider the possibility that what is safe for animals might not always be safe for human beings. Another way of looking at this answer is that it effectively states that the author has failed to consider that there is a False Analogy between animals and humans. He fails to consider it because the analogy between animals and humans is not false.

Answer choice (E): Again, the activist does fail to establish this, but it is not necessary since the independent scientists only commented on the methodology of the study, not the irradiated food itself.