kittle wrote:
GMATNinja can you explain how option choice B is correct? Because even if B is true, then it strengthen's our conclusion that SAT cannot help determine the age as we had to get outside help of another procedure to determine the age of prehistoric paintings on limestone. Would look forward to knowing your thoughts. I think option B could have been better worded, sure it is the best out of the worst options.
Let's start with the exact conclusion, in the author's words:
Quote:
Therefore, it is not possible to determine the age of prehistoric paintings on limestone using standard archaeological techniques.
Notice that is quite a broad statement -- we can't determine the age using standard archaeological techniques. Does (B) weaken it? Well, if we
could remove the limestone from the sample, then we
could use standard archaeological techniques to determine the age. So strictly speaking, (B) does weaken the conclusion as it is stated.
But removing the limestone isn't a standard archaeological technique, right? That's true. But the argument doesn't claim that we can't determine the age using ONLY standard archaeological techniques. Rather, it says we can't determine the age using standard archaeological techniques PERIOD. In other words, to weaken this argument, we don't need to find a way to determine the age using ONLY standard archaeological techniques. We just need to find a series of steps that
includes standard archaeological techniques.
Long story short, (B) tells us that by applying a certain laboratory procedure, we can then use standard archaeological techniques to determine the age of the paintings. For this reason, it weakens the conclusion.
I hope that helps!