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We need to find a flaw in the argument.

Premise 1: the army drunk the lake.
Premise 2: all creatures that lived in the lake vanished.

Conclusion: students alleged that the events actually occurred.

There is an immediate problem in the argument. The author suggests that the army drunk the lake and then the creatures that lived in the lake disappeared. Well, is that a sound argument? Not really. Did the army drink the entire lake? Even if that is the case, maybe something else caused all creatures to vanish. So, the argument is completely untenable. One can anticipate that the correct answer choice should address the causality issue (army drunk lake --> no organisms in the empty lake).

Option (E) is the best answer choice.
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An ancient Pavonian text describes how an army of one million enemies of Pavonia stopped to drink at a certain lake and drank the lake dry. Recently, archaeologists discovered that water-based life was suddenly absent just after the event was alleged by the text to have occurred. On the basis of reading the text and an account of the archaeological evidence, some students concluded that the events described really took place.

Which one of the following is a questionable technique used by the students to reach their conclusion?

(A) making a generalization about historical events on the basis of a single instance of that type of event - WRONG. 2nd best choice. It is not a generalization but simply a conclusion which may or may not be true based on how it was made.

(B) ignoring available, potentially useful counterevidence - WRONG. Not counterevidence is suggested.

(C) rejecting a hypothesis because it is seemingly self-contradictory - WRONG. They make clear conclusion which has some evidence but its not self-contradictory.

(D) considering people and locations whose existence cannot be substantiated by modern historians - WRONG. Irrelevant.

(E) taking evidence that a text has correctly described an effect to show that the text has correctly described the cause - CORRECT. One event cause and effect is simplified which might not be the case.

Answer E.
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