Thanks a lot David, that makes a lot more sense! This answer choice is definitely out of scope and you're right the word "any" extends this answer choice beyond the scope of the argument. Perhaps a person that is not fearful of situations in which other people are could be fearful in situations that others aren’t and thus could be courageous by persevering in the face of that fear to attain a particular goal.

My problem was that I kept assuming that a failure to fear situations in which other people would be fearful = a failure to persevere in the face of fear when acting towards a goal and as a consequence I erroneously inferred that it was the contrapositive of the second sentence. However the two statements are not all all equivalent because as I said earlier, even if someone did not fear situations that everyone else did, they could fear other situations (situations that are not feared by everyone else). If they persevered in face of that fear to attain a goal then that person would indeed be acting courageously as indicated by the stimulus.

How do we know that "out of business" needs to be linked to "difficult to obtain". I thought that we needed to help "newspaper correct" reach "safer", the perceived gap in the argument doesn't do that. Help!

Bumping this.

Is there any other reason apart from the word "unacceptable" for why D is incorrect?

It seems like the author is saying: The idea that some species can look the same and not be part of the same species (because they cannot interbreed) is not compatible with the typological theory, therefore is not acceptable.

Somebody must know why D is wrong.

(A) He seems to consider this possibility or insinuate that it may indeed the case by arguing that the cancer rate is not a consequence of synthetic carcinogenic compounds

(B) Descriptively accurate but not why it's wrong. The author doesn't make a declarative statement as to what actually caused the increased in cancer, only that synthetic carcinogetic compounds are not the cause. If he he concluded that non synthetic carcinogens compounds caused it then this would be correct.

(C) Descriptively accurate, but it's wrong because we're talking about synthetic compounds that are known to be carcinogenic.

(E) Descriptively accurate but it's wrong because we don't care about susceptibility. A wide range of susceptibility does not establish whether or not the overall cancer rate will increase or decrease, be high or low.

Ah thanks a lot for your response Motivated! The huge gap in this argument seems to be that genetic similarities between organism is indicative of whether they share a common ancestor, B weakens the argument by contradicting this assumption. As to answer choice (C), Even if we conceded that the non-rodents the researcher is speaking of were not representative and we assumed that cell structures were in some way relevant to genetics it still wouldn't argument, it is still not clear how it would affect the reasoning of the argument. Assuming (1) that mice also have these same cell structures (2) Again that cell structures were relevant to genetics, at best (C) boosts (albeit slightly ) the premise that "some non rodents have the similar genetic differences as mice". Just overall a terrible choice. What do cell structures have to do with genetic similarities? Like I said even if we assumed tat they were relevant to one another, it still does nothing to exacerbate the reasoning in the argument. In all (C) just requires way too much conjecture and additional assumptions to even be considered.

Is my reasoning off on this one or good? Please tell me if I am overlooking something.

I think I got it. The gap in this argument is between the premise and the intermediate conclusion. Essentially the author presents a false dichotomy. The correct answer will most likely protect the argument against an explanation that will foil this dichotomy, i.e, one that will present an alternative solution.

(A) Whenever I see answer choices with absolute quantifiers like "all" in NA questions I am immediately suspicious. This doesn't need to be true because even if it were the argument leaves us with the possibility of doing without such resources, so the argument isn't necessarily destroyed.

(B) Bingo. This negates an alternative solution i.e., "third way" to the false dichotomy presented in the argument that if true would completely destroy the validity of the argument.

(C) Like (A) this doesn't need to be true because if it wasn't we still have the possibility of doing without such resources.

(D) Out of scope. We don't care about the rate of consumption.

(E) Even if this were not true there's still the possibility of just replacing them so this doesn't need to be true.

Thanks for your response Jonathan, my question was about PT35.S1.Q18. I think a mod edited my post when I originally posted it, and put int he wrong question. I've just seen it and changed it back.

Your explanation for C was fantastic but just for clarification for answer choice D, is it wrong basically because we don't know which specific workers are being cut?

Doesn't C question the veracity of the premise?

Sue

Premise: usually no one bothers to observe comets when they are so far away from the sun, but in this case it was.

Conclusion: It is not the case that the flare must be highly unusual.

(A) Sue doesn't point out Anne's use of any words

(B) Sue doesn't draw attention to any of Anne's claims. Further there are no apparent inconsistencies in Anne's argument.

(C) Sue doesn't present any evidence that contradicts any of Anne's claims. This would be correct if Sue presented evidence that Comets had indeed been observed far away from the sun.

(D) Bingo. Sue offers an alternative explanation for Anne's evidence : Flares had not been observed because nobody had bothered to observe it, not because such flares were unusual.

(E) Sue undermines Anne's evidence but doesn't agree with her conclusion.

(A) This must be false, we're told that robin committed an act that was illegal and he knew it was illegal

(B) Bingo, we're told in the third sentence that Robin didn't recognize that act was morally wrong (due to his inability to distinguish between morally right and wrong acts)

(C) Is not at all provable based on what we're told in the stimulus.

(D) Same as C

(E) Same as C and D.

Why was he able to eliminate the S ←s→ LO chain ?

When I diagrammed it, I included it and so my diagram came out like so:

LO ←s→ S → C → MM

Thanks for your post Daniel. After reviewing this question ad nauseam, I think I got this.

Original argument:

Anyone who insists that X is a subset of Y should agree that Z gave rise to a subset of Y.

Since Z gave rise to X.

(A) This isn't even an argument, it's just a statement.

(B) Bingo. Anyone who insists that A is a subset of B should agree that some C is lower in [insert characteristic] than A. Since C is lower in [insert characteristic] than A.

(C) The conclusion is prescriptive but it doesn't have the subset component that the original argument does. Plus the conclusion is talking about one thing, the conclusion in the original argument talks about two, one of which is a subset of the other. Secondly, none of the subjects the are mentioned in the premises are talked about in the conclusion.

(D) Conclusion mismatch. The conclusion in this argument is not prescriptive, it denotes probability. Plus it doesn't have the have the subset component that the original argument does.

(E) The conclusion is prescriptive but like (D) does not have the subset component that the original argument does.