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Difficulty:
25%
(medium)
Question Stats:
72% (01:20) correct
28%
(01:22)
wrong
based on 381
sessions
History
Date
Time
Result
Not Attempted Yet
Sheila: Health experts generally agree that smoking a tobacco product for many years is very likely to be harmful to the smoker’s health.
Tim: On the contrary, smoking has no effect on health at all: although my grandfather smoked three cigars a day from the age of fourteen, he died at age ninety-six.
A major weakness of Tim’s counterargument is that his counterargument
(A) attempts to refute a probabilistic conclusion by claiming the existence of a single counterexample
(B) challenges expert opinion on the basis of specific information unavailable to experts in the field
(C) describes an individual case that is explicitly discounted as an exception to the experts’ conclusion
(D) presupposes that longevity and health status are unrelated to each other in the general population
(E) tacitly assumes that those health experts who are in agreement on this issue arrived at that agreement independently of one another
Tim: On the contrary, smoking has no effect on health at all: although my grandfather smoked three cigars a day from the age of fourteen, he died at age ninety-six.
A major weakness of Tim’s counterargument is that his counterargument
(A) attempts to refute a probabilistic conclusion by claiming the existence of a single counterexample
(B) challenges expert opinion on the basis of specific information unavailable to experts in the field
(C) describes an individual case that is explicitly discounted as an exception to the experts’ conclusion
(D) presupposes that longevity and health status are unrelated to each other in the general population
(E) tacitly assumes that those health experts who are in agreement on this issue arrived at that agreement independently of one another
13 Apr 2021, 06:15
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nahid78
OFFICIAL EXPLANATION
(A) Yes. Sheila does not claim that smoking is necessarily harmful to one’s health, just that smoking is very likely to be harmful to one’s health. Hence, one counterexample is poor evidence against Sheila’s claim.
(B) No. We cannot determine whether the experts had information about the cause of death of Tim’s grandfather.
(C) No. There is no information in the passage to indicate that the case of Tim’s grandfather has been discounted.
(D) No. Tim assumes the opposite. Sheila argues that smoking is unhealthy, and Tim disagrees based on his grandfather’s longevity. He assumes that a long life indicates good health.
(E) No. Tim’s counterexample is intended to challenge the claim of the experts; it is not concerned with how the experts arrived at their conclusion.
General Discussion
10 May 2017, 02:07
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let us simplify the argument given -
Sheila
Smoking tobacco for many years --> very likely to be harmful to smoker's health
Tim
Grandfather smoked 3 cigars a day from age 14 + lived up to 96 years --> Smoking has no effect at all
Immediately, we see a problem with Tim's reasoning. He tries to negate Sheila's conclusion by providing a single counterexample(there might be hundreds of thousands of people who might have suffered severe consequences to their health after smoking). Tim makes a extremely broad statement based on just one example.
Moreover, we are not told whether his uncle lived a healthy life or not; we are only told that his uncle lived a long life.
Let us look at the answer options --
Option A - Correct answer
Note that Sheila says that smoking is "very likely" to cause cancer.
Option B - Incorrect
We do not know whether experts did NOT have access to information about Tim's grandfather.
Option C - Incorrect
Nowhere has it been mentioned that health experts have discounted his grandfather's case as an exception.
Option D - Incorrect
Tim does not assume. Rather, he assumes precisely the opposite -- that longevity and health are related (As in the case of his grandfather).
Option E - Incorrect
No. Tim does not make this assumption. Even if he did, it wouldn't be a weakness of his argument.
Sheila
Smoking tobacco for many years --> very likely to be harmful to smoker's health
Tim
Grandfather smoked 3 cigars a day from age 14 + lived up to 96 years --> Smoking has no effect at all
Immediately, we see a problem with Tim's reasoning. He tries to negate Sheila's conclusion by providing a single counterexample(there might be hundreds of thousands of people who might have suffered severe consequences to their health after smoking). Tim makes a extremely broad statement based on just one example.
Moreover, we are not told whether his uncle lived a healthy life or not; we are only told that his uncle lived a long life.
Let us look at the answer options --
Option A - Correct answer
Note that Sheila says that smoking is "very likely" to cause cancer.
Option B - Incorrect
We do not know whether experts did NOT have access to information about Tim's grandfather.
Option C - Incorrect
Nowhere has it been mentioned that health experts have discounted his grandfather's case as an exception.
Option D - Incorrect
Tim does not assume. Rather, he assumes precisely the opposite -- that longevity and health are related (As in the case of his grandfather).
Option E - Incorrect
No. Tim does not make this assumption. Even if he did, it wouldn't be a weakness of his argument.
