Self-study
Twenty years ago the Republic of Rosinia produced nearly 100 million tons of potatoes, but last year the harvest barely reached 60 million tons. ████████████ ████████████ ███ ████ ██████ ██ ███████ ███ ███████████████ ███████ ██ █████████ ███ ██ █████ ███ ████ █████████ █████ ████ ████ ████ █████████ ████ ████ █████ ███ ████████ ███ ███ ████ ███ █████ ██ ████████
Argument Summary
The author observes a phenomenon: Rosinia's potato harvest dropped from nearly 100 million tons twenty years ago to barely 60 million tons last year. The author's hypothesis for this decline is that agricultural researchers are the cause of this drop, because they failed to develop new higher-yielding strains of potatoes.
Anticipation
When an author proposes a hypothesis to explain a phenomenon, the argument depends on at least two kinds of assumptions. First, the author must assume that the hypothesis is actually a plausible explanation for the phenomenon. Here, the author must assume that the failure to develop new higher-yielding strains could realistically account for the drop in production. Second, the author must assume that there isn't some other explanation that better accounts for the phenomenon—something unrelated to the researchers that could have caused the decline.
We probably can't predict the specific answer, but we should go into the answers looking for something that, if not true, would either make the author's hypothesis implausible or open the door to an alternative explanation for the decline.
15.
Which one of the following ██ ██ ██████████ ██ █████ ███ ████████ ████████
a
Any current attempts ██ ████████████ ███████████ ██ ███████ ███████████████ ██████ ███████ ███ ███████
The argument doesn't depend on assuming that current attempts to develop new strains are futile. The author's claim is about the past—that researchers failed to develop new strains because they were focused on their own research. Whether any current efforts would succeed or fail is a separate issue from whether the researchers' past failure explains the drop in potato production.
b
Strains of potatoes ████ ████████ █████ ██ ███████ █████ ███ ████ ████████ ███ ██████ ████ ████ ████ ████ ████ ████
Necessary, because if this weren't true—if the strains commonly grown in Rosinia could have produced the same yields last year that they produced twenty years ago—then the author's hypothesis falls apart. If the existing strains were perfectly capable of maintaining previous production levels, then the failure to develop new higher-yielding strains couldn't explain the decline. The drop would have to be caused by something else entirely, like bad weather or less farmland. The author can only blame the researchers for failing to develop better strains if better strains were actually needed to maintain the previous level of production.
c
Agricultural researchers often ████ ████████ █████████ ██ █████████ ████████ ████ █████████████ █████████ █████████ ██████████
This would arguably undermine the argument rather than support it. If researchers often find practical solutions while investigating seemingly unrelated questions, then the researchers' focus on "their own research" might have been a reasonable path toward developing better potato strains after all.
d
Wide fluctuations in ███ ████ ██ ███ ██████ ████ ████ █ ███████████ ██████ ███ ███ ████████
If wide fluctuations in the potato crop over twenty years are normal, that would suggest the drop might just be a natural fluctuation rather than something that needs the author's hypothesis to explain it. So this would open the door to an alternative explanation for the decline, which weakens the argument. The author's reasoning depends, if anything, on the assumption that this kind of decline isn't just a normal fluctuation and therefore demands an explanation.
e
Agricultural research in ███████ ██ ██████ ██ ██████████ ███████
You might be thinking that if the research is government-funded, the researchers have more of an obligation to serve Rosinia's needs, which makes it more reasonable to blame them. But the author's argument is about causation—did the researchers' failure to develop new strains actually cause the drop in production? Whether the researchers had a moral or professional obligation to focus on potato yields is a separate issue from whether their failure to do so is what caused the decline. Even if the research were privately funded and the researchers had zero obligation to help Rosinia, the author's hypothesis could still be correct. And even if the research were government-funded, that wouldn't make it any more likely that the lack of new strains actually explains the drop.