Archibald: In over eighty percent of car crashes these days, all drive

Question

Archibald: In over eighty percent of car crashes these days, all drivers involved are found to have an active cellular telephone in the car with them. It stands to reason that making stricter laws against cell phone use while driving will reduce the accident rate. Leonard: I would bet that in almost one hundred percent of car crashes all drivers involved also have valid drivers' licenses. By your logic, we could prevent accidents by getting rid of licenses too.

In responding to Archibald's argument, Leonard:

A. undermines the soundness of using statistics to establish causality.

B. demonstrates that parallel reasoning could lead to erroneous conclusions.

C. an example of a case in which cell phone use did not cause a car crash.

D. offers a cautionary example of a consequence resulting from this logic.

E. implies that the figure quoted in Archibald's argument is inaccurate.

disenapati · Accepted Answer

This is the OE (official explanation)-

"A is not quite right: while Leonard does undermine the validity of this particular statistic cited by Archibald, he does not attack all statistics in general (for this answer choice to be correct, it should read "the soundness of using the statistics"); nor does he make any suggestion that Archibald's statistic is wrong, which eliminates E. C is clearly incorrect: Leonard neither brings up a specific example nor discusses cell phone use at all. D is close to being correct, but Leonard never hints at a consequence of disallowing people to drive with drivers' licenses; instead, he uses this logic to find a clearly absurd conclusion that could be reached from the same kind of premise, defeating the validity of the argument that way. B is thus the best answer."

faltan · Answer

how B? could anyone explain parallel reasoning here?

mbahopeful1989 · Answer

Can someone explain why the answer isn't D? I was in between B and D.

TaN1213 · Answer

Can any expert point the fault in A ? A and B are close but A seems more directly linked to the question.

guptakashish02 · Answer

Please tell me where my reasoning is wrong.

A. undermines the  soundness of using statistics  to establish causality. - like Archibald has used statistics (80%) to come to conclusion that we should not use cellphones and he links this with the active cellphones. He is establishing a causality here. Leonard is undermining this and saying it this is true then Licence thing should also be true.

D. offers a cautionary example of a consequence resulting from this logic. - Leonard gave an example (Licence one) which is from the logic of Archibald

How are these options incorrect? thanks

disenapati · Answer

OE is as below -

A is not quite right: while Leonard does undermine the validity of this particular statistic cited by Archibald, he does not attack all statistics in general (for this answer choice to be correct, it should read "the soundness of using the statistics"); nor does he make any suggestion that Archibald's statistic is wrong, which eliminates E. C is clearly incorrect: Leonard neither brings up a specific example nor discusses cell phone use at all. D is close to being correct, but Leonard never hints at a consequence of disallowing people to drive with drivers' licenses; instead, he uses this logic to find a clearly absurd conclusion that could be reached from the same kind of premise, defeating the validity of the argument that way. B is thus the best answer.

bratbg · Answer

Hello Experts can you please help in explaining this.

Akwei · Answer

KarishmaB  kindly explain why A isn't the right answer but B

Posted from my mobile device

KarishmaB · Answer

I did not pick (A) because Statistics can be correctly used to establish causality. A twisted example of Stats cannot undermine the soundness of its use. 
(B) said "erroneous conclusions" and we know that Leonard's conclusion is erroneous. Hence, (B) made more sense.

It's not an official question so there is not much to takeaway. Don't worry too much about it.

VerbalBot · Answer

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Archibald: In over eighty percent of car crashes these days, all drive

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Archibald: In over eighty percent of car crashes these days, all drive

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