C cannot both be true and weaken the argument.

The stimulus (always true) states that patients will not be harmed by the herbs that have been proven safe to consume.

Therefore, if C is true, and some medicines may cause allergic reactions in some patients, then that has to happen because of some non-herbal medicines because the stimulus already said herbal medicines can't cause harm! This is pretty classic assumption-baiting

A isn't super obvious because you have to piece together that it means more helpful traditional medicine is sometimes not prescribed in favor of herbal medicine. However, it does provide a causal mechanism for how prescribing herbal medicine could be harmful. It comes at the expense of patients taking more effective medicine.

This took me an embarrassingly long amount of time and I only got the right answer after circling back to this Q and switching from E to A right as time expired.

Realized that E was wrong because it doesn't actually contradict any of the premises. A provides a compelling alternative explanation as to how they both could've gotten that metaphor without Grey copying Jordan.

This is a hard question because the correct answer choice doesn't clearly capture what seems to be the obvious point of paragraph 4: to explain why the theory of diminishing returns to scale dominated the theory of the pin factory and increasing returns to scale.

However, B is closer to that than C. It explains why it's hard to model the Pin Factory: because increasing returns to scale are hard to represent mathematically. It's weird because that line is so close to the answer choice itself, but it still gets the point across.

C goes astray by talking about intuitions and assumptions, when the paragraph actually talks about incentives/outside factors.

This is still a super frustrating question though, and I don't really think the main point of the paragraph is to explain the difficulties with modeling the pin factory, but I guess it's the closest answer.

This question is a great example of why it's good to formulate a reason why the argument might be wrong before reading the answer choices.

You can only draw a conclusion connecting the Baja loggerheads to the Japanese ones if their genetic similarity is unique, and worldwide loggerheads aren't similar.

D encapsulates this, even though it's kind of hiddne.

I glossed over D because I saw 'Atlantic loggerheads' and thought it was the wrong subject. I ended up going with C because I didn't catch the difference between 'hatchlings' (individuals) and 'nesting sites' (groups of individuals)

Moral of the story is not to rush.

I personally skipped over A because I mentally combined the bit about plankton at the surface adn bacteria at the ocean floor. Always have to read carefully!

I initially put E, thinking that B couldn't be the answer because it didn't talk about the subject, which is people who read 1984. But clearly when we're talking about a definite sample (and the conclusion only talks about that sample and doesn't try to draw an inference), this matters. 997 people could have chosen the Bible, 2 could have chosen 1984, and the last one could have chosen anything else, and the description would still be correct.

This one took me over 5 minutes for what was in hindsight not that hard of a question. I really was uncomfortable with B because I didn't think the passage was saying anything about there being no solution to the problem, just that injunctions were a bad solution. Ultimately ended up choosing B because C-E seemed obviously wrong, the passage never talks about really talks about A, and the fact that the author spent the whole passage talking about how ineffective the injunctions are without offering an alternative seemed to imply that B was correct.

I also made it harder for myself by thinking that A meant "should be imposed by the courts only..." in a moral sense, and then drew on the talk about psychological barriers to tie that together.

I initially put B but realized it's wrong because (1) it would just mitigate a factor leading to a decrease, not cause an increase, and (2) the situation in A is more convincing overall. A is a weird one though because it brings a new thing in from outside the stimulus, although pesticides are very much applicable here.

@linyang55

1) Even if the pesticide banning only started in the 70s, and caused the deer population to increase thereafter, it still explains why the population today is so much greater than the 60s. If the 60s is your start date and today is your end date, then it doesn't really matter when in the middle of that timeframe the chance occurred.

2) You're not supposed to interpret it as fewer hunters leading to fewer deer being killed because the passage explicitly states that "hunters kill no fewer deer today". Because of that piece of information which discusses the total number of deer being killed, we have to assume that each individual hunter is killing more deer to make that true.

E's brutal because why tf would you even have this thought if you didn't buy the mussels from a seafood market but yeah, without it, the argument collapses.

An issue with B is the idea of "generally less useful". Some old theories could be irreplaceable (like, "it's rude to stare") in addition to those that get replaced over time (like, "The Earth orbits the Sun" replacing "The Sun orbits the Earth"). Additionally, some of the newer theories could eventually go on to get replaced while those super super old theories will stand forever. This means that while these new theories are older than some old theories, you generalize to say that they usually are.

E is correct because it's just a restatement of the stimulus:

"At least some theories that have been tested over time and found useful" (The aforementioned theories that are part of the 'common sense collection' and will eventually be replaced)

are less useful than (The whole point of the argument)

some other theories that have not been fully absorbed into the body of common sense. (The aforementioned new theories that will replace those old ones)

If the essayist's statements are true, then this must be true because it's essentially the same argument.