Struggling on LR Weakening -- Lesson 13/21

turnerwaddell

Hey all,

The weakening section is making me really frustrated and I'm starting to panic because I'm just not consistent. I'm even missing some of the "easy" 1/5 difficulty questions. On the most recent example I still cannot understand why the answer I selected is wrong and the correct answer is right.

The problem in question is LR Weakening lesson 13/21, PT32 S1 Q12 "Polar Bear Navigation"(https://7sage.com/lesson/animal-navigation-weaken-question/?ss_completed_lesson=994). I selected E because the argument's context defines navigation as returning to familiar territory _without using the five senses.__ This shows that the animal wasn't "navigating" as defined in the arg, but doesn't contradict the premise that the polar bear did return home-- it just contradicts that this shows it was navigating. How is this possibly an incorrect weakener?

Answer B was correct, which states that the location 300 miles away was actually along the polar bear's normal migration route. This makes sense as a weakener, because it shows that the return route wasn't actually unfamiliar. However, in my mind this required an assumption on directionality. Why would this mean the polar bear would return home, and not to the other endpoint of the migration route? To me this was too big of an assumption to make and so I eliminated this answer choice. Why is this not too big of an assumption to make?

Thanks so much for your time! Really struggling with weakening even though my scores are fairly good, almost always -5 on LR.

juliettelee99

I actually chose E when I was doing this PT too so my explanation could be wrong or confusing but I'll just leave what I think just in case it helps.

I think the reason why E is wrong is because having extreme sensitivity to smell doesn't necessarily exclude the possibility that an animal has navigation abilities. We don't know the extent of their "extreme sensitivity to smell" abilities- so is 300 miles away really "familiar territory"? AC E kind of relies on an assumption too.
I'm not sure where you're from, but to put it into perspective, San Francisco to LA is a bit over 300 miles. That's suuuuuper far.
It could be true that polar bears use their sense of navigation from the starting point (LA for example) and then when they're about 10 miles away from SF (which is still considerably far in terms of how well an animal can smell), they might start to use their extreme smelling abilities. Technically both abilities can exist together- the stimulus doesn't necessarily say that having navigation means polar bears can't use any of their other senses at all- it could be possible that they can navigate AND have extreme sensitivity to smell.
For example, if the stimulus remained the same, imagine AC E was vision instead. Polar bears often rely on 50/20 vision which allows them to see much farther than other animals.
(IDK LOLL Random hypothetical answer)
It doesn't really weaken the conclusion that way right? Because how far can they see? Can they see 300 miles worth?
I'm kind of bad at explaining haha but hope this helps

As for B, the stimulus already states that the polar bear returned to its home territory so its not really making an assumption that the bear returned home