Interested!

@Stas1973 Ohhh the property meant the ground where the grave was located! I've also missed that part and got really confused with the explanation.

@Elle I believe A actually strengthens the hypothesis. If diatoms went through major evolutionary changes since the last ice age, one can argue "Just because 'modern diatoms' absorb carbon dioxide, we can not assume 'ice age diatoms' absorbed carbon dioxide since it changed so drastically".

So A actually blocks a possible argument against the hypothesis, thus strengthening the it.

@Stas1973 Yes, maybe some shells of diatoms in the sediment of last ice age might not be there due to fishes or any other events.

But wouldn't it be also the case for any other periods? Unless we can assume "any other events" only affected shells of diatoms in specific period - which we can't - it would be reasonable to believe the diatoms shells in the sediment is proportional to its population of that age.

To be honest A,B,C and E does not undermine the hypothesis in any way and I chose D by the method of elimnation.

@RyanTalbot321 I just went through BR on this question and now I can explain.

The second part of principle says when the office "should" get commendation. Just because Penn is not in a position to "should" have received commendation, we can't assume Penn "should not" receive commendation.

Remember, opposite of "should" is not "shouldn't", but "not necessarily" in logics.

The only way we can conclude Penn should not receive MC is assuming Penn was not eligible from the beginning.

To be honest I chose C just because other statements are supporting wildlife commission.

The wildlife commission literally started their argument by stating development of wetlands has resulted in species being endangered. Unless supported by further evidence which demonstrates how "Figorian wetland development" is different from "development of wetlands in industrialized nations", C is very weak argument.

@MichaelKrayyem There's no logical correlation between pollution and high-fat diet - which is why D is answer.

D provides alternative explanation on why countries with high-fat diets have higher cancer rate (i.e. pollution, which happens to be in high level in high-fat countries, cause cancer), thus weakening the argument.

B also provides alternative explanation on the reason(wealth), but relies on further assumption that wealth cause cancer - thus being worse at weakening the argument.

Pollution causes cancer -> makes sense.

Wealth causes cancer -> people will start asking why

@dreamingofwharton I think (E) does strengthen the hypothesis in some way since it eliminates the possibility of CJD being result of blood injection, regardless of Alzheimer "virus".

However D is certainly much stronger statement to support the hypothesis since it actually shows connection between Alzheimer and CJD virus, rather than eliminating one of countless other explanation.